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Comment by h1fra | Hacker News Reader

It's always fun to see foreigners coming to paris discovering that the french they learned at school is basically useless.

Not only we use africans or arabic words, but we also speak in reverse, with noises, everything is shortened, etc.

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In Nice, I learned that nobody ever calls a toilet a "WC", but rather a "toilette", and that "ne" is generally optional in "ne .. pas" negation. But rappers like Dadju taught me Congolese slang like "kitoko." It took years to transform my American high school French into something less alien to people in France. Music was a huge part of that, though.

you can say « les vécés » (or « le vatér » if you're an old Belgian man maybe), but more common are « les toilettes », « les chiottes » (vulgar but very common)

> « les chiottes » (vulgar but very common)

Don’t use that word with people you don’t know, though… Being rude when asking for something is not the best strategy.

Mmm, same word as "shitters" in British English, with what I have to imagine is an identical etymology

It's not a daring conjecture that the slang word for toilet has an etymology related to shit.

In German there's "Scheisshaus" (shit house)

As for any other language, textbook French isn't exactly what French people speak, and different social classes have their own slang, but the language isn't changing that much.

I'd argue that it's becoming simpler as younger generations have a more limited vocabulary. They also tend to integrate more and more English words (pronounced as French words), as it's something perceived as cool. Interestingly, this is true in all layers of society, including business and politics.

Like everywhere it depends a lot on who you speak to in term of social class.

I'd say the main issue for everyday life with French as taught abroad is that it can be a bit dated and very proper.

But when one does not know it is always better to speak too high class than too low class, like it's better to overdress than underdress.

I'd say that's one of the worst thing in French : The gap between written and spoken is so much bigger than say spanish which I think makes it hard for foreigners.

i'd say the problem is mainly the inability of young generation to be able to write and speak proper french.

Speaking slang is fun and everybody's been doing it forever. However being only able to speak slang is a problem.

Gosh I know, right? Kids these days!

> the inability of young generation to be able to write and speak proper french

The language isn’t going to stop evolving just because you were born.

there's evolving and there's devolving. As in loss of precision in the grammar and in the vocabulary.

That's a bummer for me. I spent +2 years learning French and now you're telling me this is useless. I'd assume I can talk with older folks and try to practice at restaurants, museums, etc. Prob I won't be able to communicate with GenZ but probably that's not the case for millennials.

It’s not useless. It’s just that there is some vocabulary that you won’t learn without some immersion in the culture. Same with any language, to be honest.

It isn't useless. The parent is 100% hyperbolic, at best. The fact is just that some people living in France can't speak french properly for various reasons, but it's not a generality. The french you've learn is the official one, and if you go into a restaurant, speak "academic french" and the waiter doesn't understand you, then that person isn't a french native.

The parent is basically saying "English is useless in USA, because people in some places speak broken English". Of course it's completely absurd in both cases.

The french you've learn, everybody who went to school in France learns that exact same language.

In reverse? Do you mind sharing a couple examples? I’m not a French speaker and this sounds intriguing to me.

They likely meant non-standard word order in a sentence. Not reading the words backwards.

No, it's speaking the word backwards, syllable-wise.

L'envers becomes verlan, femme becomes meuf, fête teuf, louche is chelou and merci is cimer, for the most common, everyday words.

It can even go further, with Arabe becoming Beur which itself gets verlanised into Rebeu. Or meuf, femeu.

I thought Beur was from Beurre and its yellow color

The (racist) stereotype is that Asians have yellow skin, not Arabs...?!

What color would be associated with the Arabic ethnotype ?

Look up verlan. It’s a type of French slang where you reverse syllables or sounds of words.

“Verlan” itself comes from the reverse of “l’envers” which means “reverse”.

And "l'envers" is pronounced lanver

Who has time for that?

It’s street slang, for the same reason Cockney rhyming slang exists: solidarity and so that their so-called “betters” don’t understand them.

I imagine kids/teenagers originally, as with many linguistic innovations. But of course such people grow up and their conventions become mainstream.

spanish has the same thing where you call your friend "chupa nepe" instead of "chupa pene".

What do you mean "who has time"? It doesn't take more time to e.g. say "meuf" than to say "femme".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan

I think the reference is to Verlan, where the syllables in a word are inverted. It reminds me of "Pig Latin": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan

French has "verlan", which is when you swap some of the syllables of a word to give it a slang or "street" vibe.

The world "verlan" itself is verlan for "envers" ("in reverse")

Cute, same thing in Buenos Aires Spanish.

TIL and this clicks a lot with Italian slang in the town I growth where we did exactly this as early teenagers 30 years ago.

Here's a classic example :

Je suis allé à une teuf de ouf => je suis allé à une fête de fou

Literally :

I went to an zeecray teepar => I went to a crazy party

C'est pas oim => c'est pas moi (It's not me)

Fais pas ièch => fais pas chier (stop bothering /(f*cking with) me)

Je l'ai ken => je l'ai niqué(e) (I screwed him/her)

Found that with a quick Google search: https://www.francaisavecpierre.com/le-verlan/

Colloquial speech exists in every language and new learners usually aren't taught colloquial speech in a formal manner (hence their confusing upon actually interacting with speakers of that language). This isn't unique to French.

OUI !

I've immigrated to France in high school - my French was pretty good by academic standards, and I was able to understand what teachers were saying in class, from day 1.

Conversations with my peers were a different story - like they were speaking another language. First time I've heard (on the first day there) 'chais pas' and somebody explained that to me, I realized I'm in for another 3-6 months of learning the language. One thing that was apparent though, is that the best way to learn is just to immerse yourself into a group - even if you don't understand anything in the beginning. The progress will be much quicker than any sort of academic training.

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