Many languages have different varieties of slang - often used by a small percentage of the population (e.g. teenagers from working class suburbs) with the deliberate intention of being incomprehensible to people outside the group.
French, though, has an extensive slang vocabulary which almost everybody understands even if they don't use it. A sentence such as
"La frangine du toubib a flingué son clébard et fait cramer sa bagnole." is understandable to a very large percentage of the population but probably to rather few foreign students of French.
(it means "The sister of the doctor shot his dog and set fire to his car").
The use of this slang marks the speaker as being casual, very informal and unimpressed by the audience.
I can't think of anything equivalent in English; the effect is something like saying "The bloody sister of the f*cking doctor bloody well shot his f*cking dog...""
I asked some German friends and they also said that they don't know of anything similar in German.
Does anyone have examples of something similar in other languages?
Hi Daniel,
As you seem to realize, the sentence you quote is not really slang as much as it is informal. That's one thing. Another thing about French is that it is quite uniform throughout the world, which ensures a degree of intelligibility that is very high compared to other, less uniform languages (e.g. Dutch in Flanders).
on trouve du "javanais" en arabe et en araméen moderne. les locuteurs appellent ça le langage des oiseaux.
gb
I reccomend article of Ajdukiewicz "Obraz świata i aparatura pojęciowa". This article could show You, what means different languages. I hope You will be surprised.
Language could be different by the designates and nominates.
This sentence expresses in a very pleasant manner two very nasty actions. You have made its meaning quite clear, except for the use of f*cking, not at all present in the original French sentence, which contains no profanity whatsoever. Two things are noticeable about the "slang" terms at stake. First, all of them were (apparently) coined in the 19th century, with one possible exception (cf. CNRTL). Second, they seem to have their roots in different regions of France or the French Empire. "Frangine" seems to proceed from the Lyon area or neighbouring Italy. "Cramer" comes from Occitan and is a modern form of the Latin "cremare" (cf. cremation).
"Flinguer" (flingue, flingot=rifle) was originally a term used in the army, derived from a German word. "Clébard" comes from Algerian Arabic "kelb", (cf. classical Arabic "kalb" =dog). "Toubib" also comes from Algerian Arabic, and was first used in the army. This, in my opinion, points to the overwhelming influence of conscription in the formation of vernacular French : From the French revolution until its abolition in 2001, young men, mainly from rural areas, were sent to another region of the country or the empire , thus coming into contact with other French dialects or the Algerian vernacular and adding a "cool" touch to their otherwise limited vocabulary. Given the same conditions (2 centuries of conscription and many regional or local dialects), you would probably obtain similar results.
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