Louchébèm: the secret language of Parisian butchers

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guyome
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Louchébèm: the secret language of Parisian butchers

Postby guyome » Fri Nov 19, 2021 8:41 am

I was made aware of Louchébèm recently, when someone posted this video on Reddit. Louchébèm is the French-based secret language (or code, rather) used by Parisian butchers until quite recently. It may survive today in a limited way.



The basic thing to do in order to speak Louchébèm is:
1) to remove the first consonant of the word, mostly nouns and verbs, and put it at the end of the word (boucher > ouchéb)
2) put l- at the beginning of the word (ouchéb > louchéb)
3) add a suffix, generally -èm, -ès, -oc, -ic, -uche, -é (louchéb > louchébèm)

Note that Louchébèm is primarily a spoken phenomenon, which means these modifications are applied to the spoken word. Hence "boucher" being treated as "bouché", etc.

Other examples:
- parler > arlép > larlép > larlépèm
- comprend > omprenk > lomprenk > lomprenkès
- chef > efch > lefch > lefchoc
- morceau > orsom > lorsom > lorsomic.

Some of these words have passed in everyday French and you can still hear them: en loucedé (< en douce) and loufoque (< fou) are probaly the most common ones.

What was the fonction of this secret language/code? At 3:20 in the video, the butcher says:
- Mais, c'est qu'on a rien à cacher. C'est à dire...pour mieux servir le client, mieux souvent.
- C'est çà.
- Voilà. Pour que le client i vienne et i soye content quand i reparte.

- No, it's not that we have anything to hide. I mean...[we use it] to serve the customer better, most of the times(?).
- Ok.
- Right. So that the customer comes and is happy when he leaves.

(Note the colloquialisms:
- nominal subject repeated by a pronoun (le client, il...)
- "il" pronounced "i"
- "soit" pronounced "soye"
- "mieux souvent"?)
I don't find this very convincing (serving a customer better by speaking a language they can't understand?). From the little I read and listened to elsewhere, a couple of things come back again and again: butchers admitting that Louchébèm was very useful when you wanted to give a customer another piece than the one they asked for (because you are out of it) or when you had some meat that was going bad and wanted to get rid of it quickly. Using Louchébèm enabled the butchers to communicate about these matters in front of the customers without them understanding what was going on. Note that at 6:25 in the video, the second butcher starts spilling the beans and his colleague is quick to stop him (in Louchébèm).

If so, I'm not sure we (the customers) lost much by Louchébèm being used less nowadays. But there were also more innocent uses of Louchébèm. You could use it to tell ribald jokes at the expense of a difficult customer, as is reported by a young butcher in the early 1990s:
C'est une cliente qu'arrive. — « Bonjour, Monsieur l'boucher, j 'voudrais un morceau dans la culotte. » Le patron dit : « Bien sûr ». Alors l'patron i' coupe un morceau dans la culotte, i' l'pèse, passe le prix. Elle dit : « Ça fait rien, j 'passerai t'à l'heure le chercher. » Elle va faire ses courses ailleurs. E' r'vient et è' dit : « Ah, j'suis embêtée, j 'me suis trompée, c'était pas un morceau d'boeuf dans la culotte que j 'voulais, c'était une langue de boeuf. » Ah, ben le patron, à son ouvrier qu'était libre, son chef quoi, i' dit : « Monsieur Alain, enlevez la culotte de la dame et passez-lui la langue. »

C'est une lamdé qui lavèm loirvèm son louchébèm qu'i lasfèm une lomandkès d'un lorsemik de lulotkès et lidèm au louchébèm « j 'vais lerfèm mes lourské ». Quand è'r'vient, è 'dit au latronpèm louchébèm que è' louvèm lapuch du lorsemik dans la lulotké et qu'elle lavèm une langues heu...qu'elle loulèvèm une langue de boeuf à la place. Alors le latronpèm i' lelpèm son lefchikasse et lidèm « lirévèm la lulotkèm à la lamdé et vous lui lacépèm la langué ».

(The joke hangs on the word culotte meaning both "knickers" and a specific piece of meat. The punching line thus reads as "Remove the lady's knickers/culotte and give her tongue".)
A couple of links, if you want to know more about Louchébèm:
- La joyeuse java des Louchebems (30-min. podcast by France Culture)
- Larlépem largomuche du louchébem. Parler l'argot du boucher (1991)
- Secrets de bouchers et Largonji actuel des Louchébèm (1991).

A series of steampunk young adults books has been published in recent years, in which some Louchébèm is used. I haven't read them though, so I can't say much about them. The books are called Les Mystères de Larispem* and are set in 1899 Paris, with butchers having taken over management of the city.

*I guess the title hints at Eugène Sue's Les Mystères de Paris, the influential 1840s bestseller.
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