Verlan Handout #3VERLAN, a French dialect developed in the suburbs of Paris in the early 1980's as a new street language, continues to be spoken today among teenagers across most French cities. The name Verlan comes from reversing the word l'envers, meaning "back to front". In Verlan, syllables in existing French words are reversed to produce a totally new word. For example, le rap ("rap") becomes le pera, le pasteur ("pastor") becomes le steurpa, and une baraque (a slang term for "house") is une raquebar. Sometimes syllables or consonants are dropped altogether, or consonants within a syllable are reversed. The French word for "car", voiture, is tourv in Verlan, and flic, or "cop", becomes keuf. Current rap music and film have further popularized this urban dialect. Can you guess the standard French word for each of the following in Verlan? Note that une, un, le, and la are the indefinite and definite articles in French. The answers to this exercise are listed at the bottom of the page in alphabetical order.
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