''Louchébem'' or ''loucherbem'' () is

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

ian and

Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of t ...

naise

butcher A butcher is a person who may Animal slaughter, slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat, or participate within any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat and poultry for sale in retail or wholesal ...

s' ( French ''boucher'')

slang Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-gro ...

, similar to

Pig Latin Pig Latin is a language game or argot in which words in English are altered, usually by adding a fabricated suffix or by moving the onset or initial consonant or consonant cluster of a word to the end of the word and adding a vocalic syllable ...

and

Verlan () is a type of argot in the French language, featuring inversion of syllables in a word, and is common in slang and youth language. It rests on a long French tradition of transposing syllables of individual words to create slang words. The wor ...

. It originated in the mid-19th century and was in common use until the 1950s.

Process

The ''louchébem'' word-creation process resembles that of ''largonji'', ''

verlan () is a type of argot in the French language, featuring inversion of syllables in a word, and is common in slang and youth language. It rests on a long French tradition of transposing syllables of individual words to create slang words. The wor ...

'', and ''

javanais Javanais () is a type of French slang where the extra syllable is infixed inside a word after every consonant that is followed by a vowel, in order to render it incomprehensible. Some common examples are ''gros'' (, "fat") which becomes ''gravo ...

'', in that existing words are camouflaged according to a set of rules. Strictly speaking, ''louchébem'' is a more rigid variety of ''largonji'' in which the ending ''-èm'' is obligatory. ''Largonji'' substitutes for the consonant or

consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...

at the beginning of the word, or, if the word begins with an or a vowel, the second syllable; the initial consonant is then reattached to the end of the word along with a

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

particular to the

argot A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argot ...

: ''-ji'' , ''-oc'' , ''-ic'' , ''-uche'' , ''-ès'' , or in the case of louchébem, ''-em/ème'' . Note that ''louchébem'' is first and foremost an

oral language A spoken language is a language produced by articulate sounds or (depending on one's definition) manual gestures, as opposed to a written language. An oral language or vocal language is a language produced with the vocal tract in contrast with a si ...

, and spelling is usually phoneticized.

History

Despite the name, ''louchébem'' seems to have been created not by butchers, but by inmates at

Brest Prison The Brest Prison (French - ''bagne de Brest'') was a 254m long prison in Brest, France. It was built between 1749 and 1751 by Antoine Choquet de Lindu, dominating the military port it was built to serve. It could house 3000 prisoners (sometimes ...

, with records dating back to 1821.

Edmund Clerihew Bentley Edmund Clerihew Bentley (10 July 1875 – 30 March 1956), who generally published under the names E. C. Bentley or E. Clerihew Bentley, was a popular English novelist and humorist, and inventor of the clerihew, an irregular form of humorous verse ...

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

Nazi occupation German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 ...

''louchébem'' was used by

ian members of the Resistance. Even today, ''louchébem'' is still well-known and used among those working at

point-of-sale The point of sale (POS) or point of purchase (POP) is the time and place at which a retail transaction is completed. At the point of sale, the merchant calculates the amount owed by the customer, indicates that amount, may prepare an invoice f ...

in the

meat Meat is animal flesh that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted, farmed, and scavenged animals for meat since prehistoric times. The establishment of settlements in the Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of animals such as chic ...

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...

industry. Some words have even leaked into common, everyday use by the masses; an example is the word '' loufoque'', meaning "eccentric".

Examples

Here are a few example Louchébem words. There is another French

called ''largonji'', which differs from ''louchébem'' only in the suffix that is added (-i instead of -em); the term is derived from ''jargon''.

Notes

Bibliography

Marcel Schwob Mayer André Marcel Schwob, known as Marcel Schwob (23 August 1867 – 26 February 1905), was a French symbolist writer best known for his short stories and his literary influence on authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Alfonso Reyes, Roberto Bola� ...

, '' Étude sur l’argot français''. Paris: Émile Bouillon, 1889.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Louchebem French slang Occupational cryptolects Language games Cant languages