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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