xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech

https://xkcd.com/2942

explainxkcd.com for #2942

Alt text:

Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you’re okay.

  • @[email protected]English
    76•21 days ago

    My wife being bemused I don’t understand french in Paris after learning french for 3 years. Dude, they speak such sloppy french I’m impressed they understand each other.

    • @[email protected]English
      21•21 days ago

      Agreed…I was especially impressed after I learned about their Verlan. As far as I can tell it’s basically pig Latin that they take seriously and use regularly as slang? As a quick example, the word Verlan is Verlan for l’envers. They can keep their secrets I guess haha.

      • @gentooerEnglish
        17•21 days ago

        I think Verlan is pretty neat. We had a full lesson on it in middle school because of one of our country’s most popular musicians, Stromae, which is Verlan for Maestro.

        • @[email protected]English
          8•21 days ago

          Fantastic! Stromae is actually the reason I learned verlan existed! I got to see him live in the US, and it was one of the coolest live shows I’ve ever seen. The majority of the video for quand c’est is an actual part of the live show, and I wasn’t expecting it at all

        • @[email protected]
          English
          7•21 days ago

          Wait, Verlan is l’envers, stromae is maestro… Is this Verlan thing just like Rioplatense Spanish’s Vesre? (Vesre basically means revés i.e. inverse)

          EDIT: Just looked it up on Wikipedia and it turns out this phenomenon happens in a number of languages: Riocontra in Italian (riocontra -> contrario), Podaná in Greek, Šatrovački in Serbia, Totoiana in Romanian.

      • @[email protected]English
        10•21 days ago

        Lol is that what happens when they have an official institute that dictates correct French? “Oh it’s not slang, it’s verlan!”

    • @[email protected]English
      9•21 days ago

      Joseph Justus Scaliger said something similar about Basque in the 17th century:

      C’eſt un langage eſtrange que le Baſque… On dit, qu’ils s’entendent, je n’en crois rien

      Basque is a strange language… It is said that they understand one another, but I don’t believe any of it.