Verlan

all the polari/palare talk has reminded me about verlan, a bastardised french slang which appeared in the 80s, primarily in the grim projects which surrounded paris [as featured in la haine, where verlan crops up, from what i remember].

there’s not much on the interweb [well, not much that’s both in english and in depth, at least], but there’s an article i remember reading in the guardian a couple of years ago, and there’s a lexicon, of sorts, here, but it’s in french. oh, and there’s some verlan poetry kicking around too.

to commemorate the fact that andy warhol has been following me this weekend [jack and i ended up talking about him yesterday; sat in front of me at the cinema earlier there was a guy wearing an andy warhol museum t-shirt, and there’s a documentary on him about to start on tv], here’s an argument against the standard view of warhol-as-cold-heartless-dispassionate-observer-of-the-american-dream. and it rules.

Posted at 7pm on 27/01/02 by Leon McDermott to the art and culture category.
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