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Verlan is said to have started in the 19th century. It was used between criminals as a secret language to talk about explicit activities.
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Verlan was used in World War 2 as a way of encoding messages to stop the Germans from understanding them.
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Post WW2, much of France's infrastructure needed to be rebuilt, and they had an influx of immigrants. This lead to shanty towns on the outskirts of major cities, which after enough political pressure, began to be turned into actual suburbs. These however, were still separated from the main cities as a way to keep the immigrants apart from the people in cities like Paris.
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Rififi is a book that was released in 1955 by Auguste Le Breton. It is a book about an ex-prisoner sets up a heist against a jewellery store. It contained verlan and helped the general public to start to have an idea of what it is. -
During the 1960s, verlan started catching on with second generation immigrants in the French banlieues (or suburbs). This helped as many of the (North African) immigrants didn't feel as though they completely fit into the African or French culture.
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This song is verlan for "Laisse Tomber" which means "drop it". It exposed a lot of people to verlan for the first time and helped expand it outside the French suburbs. -
Rodéo was a form of rioting that gained popularity in 1981 France. It included stealing cars and bringing them to low income areas and burning them to lure police. These riots helped shine a lot on the French suburbs which brought mass media attention to the use of verlan.
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After the riots exposed many people to the idea of Verlan. It started to become more widely used by people that lived outside the French suburbs.
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During the 1990s, verlan became very popular in French hip hop music. This heavily influenced the French youth at the time.
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The movie "La Haine" (or "Hate") came out in 1995 and was focused around 3 friends from the housing projects. It included a lot of verlan and brought even more attention to the slang. There was enough verlan in the movie that many French people couldn't understand it. -
Verlan still remains in use today, despite it being less commonly used than it was at it's peak. It is now mostly a select number of words used in general, while some hip hop still uses it more widely. Words like "ouf" ("fou" which means crazy) or meuf ("femme" which means woman). Some minorities from the suburbs are upset at this usage as they feel it's another part of them being taken away by the country.
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Around 2013, the word "chelou" was added to the French dictionary. The word is the verlanized form of "louche" which means shifty or unsavoury. It is used for creepy or suspicous characters. Despite some purists best attempts to keep the dictionary free from terms like these, they have been added as they are a part of the language used by the population.