Read Charles Bremner’s exclusive blog from Paris

Youths from the ghettos of outer Paris have become unlikely stars of the literary season with a guide to caillera, the rich street-slang that is impenetrable to most babtous, or white French.

Purists are appalled at the illustrated Lexik des cités, which is the first formal attempt by insiders to translate la tchatche (the chat), the mix of old argot and Arabic, black American, African, Creole and Romany spoken by the kids of the minority-ethnic estates. Instead of saying, for example, “Regarde cette dame, elle est française, elle va s’énerver”(Look at that old lady, she is French, she’s going to get annoyed), they say: “Regarde daronne, c’est une babtou, elle va se vénère.”

The world learnt one term two years ago when Nicolas Sarkozy, then Interior Minister and presidential candidate, caused a storm by promising to rid an estate of its racaille. The word, meaning hoodlums or ruffians and wrongly translated as “scum”, is the ghetto kids’ mocking term for themselves.

The Lexik, produced by ten young hoody-wearing men and women from the southern Paris banlieue, has won highbrow praise as a cultural achievement. Middle-class teenagers, who have long aped French hip-hop, are using it to expand their street skills. Adults are chuckling over terms such as une boîte-de-six, meaning a police van, from the “six-box” of chicken nuggets. The dictionary is also helping citizens to understand Cabinet ministers whom President Sarkozy has appointed from the ethnic minorities.

Fadéla Amara, Minister for Urban Affairs, who is of Algerian origin, shocked colleagues with a draft law that she called un plan anti-glandouille, or “antifarting-around scheme”. She added that she was talking “cash” — from English meaning no-nonsense.

The Lexik (slang spelling for Léxique) was piloted by Alain Rey, 79, founding editor of the Robert Dictionary. Dalla Touré, 22, one of the compilers, said that it began as an idea among her mates. “I was doing rap and I wanted my mum to understand,” she said.

Much of the argot uses new variants of verlan, the reversing slang that is equivalent to cockney rhyming, and which has been popular in recent decades. So méchant, meaning bad or nasty, becomes chinmé, with the black American sense of good or great. Caillera was invented as verlan for la racaille after France cottoned on to the inside meaning of that word.

Mr Rey said that he was surprised by how much of the slang hailed from obsolete French. Daron/darronne, for example, was lower-order slang for a toff but unknown in modern French. An opponent of Mr Sarkozy’s right-wing immigration policies, he regards the Lexik as a blow for diversity.

Le Lexik des cités

kéblo inhibited (reverse form of bloqué, or blocked)

bellek! look out (from African Arabic)

un meskin poor sod (from Arabic meaning of poor. It means ungenerous in standard French)

une merco nice car

un flow smooth talker (from US rap)

un frolo boy (from the film The Hunchback of Notre Dame)

une frolotte girl

kalech skint (from old Parisian calèche, a wagon to the poor house)

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