Louchébem

Template:Short description Template:Expand French or () is Parisian and Lyonnaise butchers' (French ) slang, similar to Pig Latin and Verlan. It originated in the mid-19th century and was in common use until the 1950s.

Process

The word-creation process resembles that of , , and , in that existing words are camouflaged according to a set of rules. Strictly speaking, is a more rigid variety of in which the ending is obligatory. substitutes Template:Angle bracket for the consonant or consonant cluster at the beginning of the word, or, if the word begins with an Template:Angle bracket or a vowel, the second syllable; the initial consonant is then reattached to the end of the word along with a suffix particular to the argot: , , , , , or in the case of louchébem, .

Note that is first and foremost an oral language, and spelling is usually phoneticized.

History

Despite the name, seems to have been created not by butchers, but by inmates at Brest Prison, with records dating back to 1821.

Edmund Clerihew Bentley used the language as a plot point in his 1937 short story "The Old-Fashioned Apache".

During the Nazi occupation was used by Parisian members of the Resistance.

Even today, is still well-known and used among those working at point-of-sale in the meat retail industry. Some words have even leaked into common, everyday use by the masses; an example is the word Template:Wikt-lang, meaning "eccentric".

Examples

Here are a few example Louchébem words.

English	French	Louchébem
slang
butcher
customer
coffeehouse
(don't) understand	()	()
woman (lady)	()	()
blunder
boy/waiter
Roma (ethnicity)
leg (of mutton, etc.)
insane		; ;
pork
mackerel
Sir; Mister; gentleman
piece
overcoat		()
excuse me?; sorry
to talk
manager
tip
bag
expensive		; (often in the negative, as )
sneakily		;
wallet		;
thief, crook
knife

There is another French argot called , which differs from only in the suffix that is added ( instead of ); the term is derived from jargon.

Bibliography

• Marcel Schwob, Étude sur l’argot français. Paris: Émile Bouillon, 1889.