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xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech (imgs.xkcd.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months 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.