Non-Russianists should not be put off by the titles of these two volumes on verlan in French rap, both of which – apart from a short (and largely uninformative) publisher's blurb in Russian – are written entirely in French. Of greater interest is the 2008 work which, as can be inferred from the author's own translation of the title above, stresses the socio-political significance of verlan in rap music, seeing the variety as a sociolect through which marginalized youth finds expression. Verlan becomes ‘la symbolique d'une contestation juvénile permanente’ while French rap itself is seen as a ‘contre pouvoir culturel adapté à la société hexagonale post-industrielle’, transforming French society and culture. Drawing on an impressive range of late 20^th and early 21^st century rap lyrics, Debov sets out to describe the ‘normes culturelles bien spécifiques’ of the genre. For each entry a definition and some example quotations are given, followed by a commentary on derivation and use, a short list of attestations and a general indication of frequency of use. Some entries carry helpful additional remarks, and/or ‘synonymes/antonymes intra-verlaniques’ (or occasionally ‒ as in the case of beur/beurre – ‘homonymes extra-verlaniques’), and some collocations. Thus for the entry gogol we learn that the term derives from apocope of the verlan term golmon (<mongol) and reduplication of the first syllable, and that the word is used by Sefyu.

While the entries are detailed and painstakingly researched, presentation is a little cumbersome. A very large number of items are listed as ‘verlan simple, régulier’, but the very short introduction (three pages) offers no guide to the basic syllable reversal rules of verlan derivation, so the reader is left to infer what this actually means. Most of the listed verbs carry the same four-line observation concerning their invariability and use as present tense, past participle and infinitive forms (see for example témon, gerbou, quéma). This information could have been presented much more economically in an introductory section on verlan derivation and grammar, the absence of which renders unclear the criteria for inclusion. The term merco for commère, for example, seems to follow the syllable transposition rule associated with this verlan but the second listed meaning, as an abbreviation of ‘Mercedes’, does not. There are some other disappointing omissions and inconsistencies. For peclo the reader is referred to peuclo, only to discover that this item is not listed; neujeu likewise is listed among the collocations of gogol, but does not get an entry of its own. In some cases, one presumes that omission has been motivated by non-attestation in rap lyrics, leaving the item in question in a rather awkward lexicological no-man's land. Thus the ‘reverlanised’ feukeu (< keuf < flic) is restricted to the list of synonyms for keuf in the 2008 volume, but secures an entry of its own in the later work by virtue of a 2009 appearance in lyrics by La Fouine.

An important shortcoming is the very limited background to verlan as a variety, presented here as a relatively recent phenomenon and a ‘langage original inventé par les jeunes des cités en galère’ (p. 3). This is a little simplistic: while it is certainly true that rap has given verlan a new lease of life, its pedigree is in fact much older, and a broader historical perspective would have been welcome. A second, obvious, problem besets any attempt to pin down youth speak in book form. While all dictionaries are, in a sense, obsolete from the moment of publication, the non-standard codes of the young are almost by definition more creative, ephemeral, and rapidly changing than any other, and any dictionary of verlan will struggle to keep pace with online rivals, of which Le Dictionnaire de la Zone – cited by Debov, though the URL he gives is no longer valid – is probably the best known. Comparing these two works, it is not difficult to find examples of changes in the three years since publication of Debov's work, or of verlan terms which are richer or more polysemous than their attestation in rap suggests. Thus, Debov offers three meanings for pouilledé, all of which derive from dépouiller in the sense of ‘to rob, steal’, whereas the first, adjectival, meaning given by the Dictionnaire de la Zone (‘drunk, stoned’) is not listed.

In the 2010 ‘Dictionary of Verlan Rhymes in French Rap’, Debov further extols the creativity of rap artists, citing Hagège who called them ‘vaillants défenseurs de la langue française’, and stresses the blending of endogenous and exogenous elements in rap poetry. Like its predecessor it is well researched and covers and even wider range of sources – 161 rap artists are cited as opposed to 113 in the earlier work. For each entry here a simple derivation is given, followed by rhymes attested in rap lyrics and a list of sources. For tromé (<métro), for example, the reader learns from six sub-entries that it is rhymed with chromé, and remé then gommer, fêlé-accompagné, vu des- qu'des-tromper, and finally with remé-gommer-jamais-se paumer. As an illustration of the fact that verlan provides an array of new possibilities for rhyming in [e], this seems a little laboured. For all its detail and meticulous referencing, the one-page introduction is too short to make the fundamental premise of the work clear. Debov's point that verlan in rap affords new poetic potential outside the straitjacket of traditional French versification is worth making, but one wonders whether 247 pages of examples of rap verlan rhymes is really the best way of doing so.