As someone with more than just a passing interest in languages and linguistics, I found this article on "Verlan" - a form of French slang - absolutely fascinating: Backward Runs French. Reels the Mind. (username/password: wrreaders).

Verlan involves reversing the syllables and/or spelling of French words. It became popular amongst immigrant communities in housing projects in France several decades ago. Now it has apparently crept into the mainstream as well - to the irritation of both French language purists and the disenfranchised communities to whom Verlan originally "belonged".

Verlan is proof of the power of a shared language to bind people together. The article mentions that Verlan is used by different groups of immigrants who have no common language. By expressing themselves through Verlan, they are not only able to communicate, they are also able to express a certain identity - one that is separate from that of mainstream France (just as the housing projects are separated from the hearts of French cities) and yet still a part of it. As a "corrupted" form of French, Verlan acknowledges that these immigrant communities occupy the space between two cultures. Of course, this is a double-edged sword. While this shared language forms a sort of third culture to which various immigrant communities can relate, it may also reinforce the gap between these communities and mainstream France.

I think Verlan is also proof of the organic nature of language. Languages develop and change naturally, and no language can - or should - be set in stone. Okay, I do cringe when faced with the deliberate Anglicization of languages such as German, and I do think it is a crime that obscure languages are allowed to die at an extraordinary pace while more common languages become bland and homogenized. But to a certain extent, I’m afraid resistance is futile.

I suppose what I like about the idea of Verlan is that, like Cockney rhyming slang, it is not so much borrowing from other languages as it is playing within a language itself to create something rich and interesting. There is something self-consciously trendy about deliberately throwing English words into a German or French conversation. A linguistic phenomenon like Verlan, on the other hand, is much more clever, playful and organic, and I think that, like African American Vernacular English in America, Verlan will be far more politically and sociologically relevant in France than the occasional Anglicisms at which the Academie Francaise continually rails.