May. 25th, 2007 03:16 pm
F is for Cajun French
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Cajun French I. Faulk, James Donald. Crowley, La. : Cajun Press, c1977.Long ago it occurred to me that the truly ironic thing about my dislike of French is if it were some freakish marginalised Romance variety instead of an elabourated literary language with 100 million or so native-speakers, I'd be all over it. I mean, what's not to love about a phonology that turns [akwa] into [o] or [insula] into [il] or verb complex that's got more in common with Swahili or Basque than anything Romance? But, unfortunately, French is associated with France and--even worse--pretentious American Francophiles. I've had to spend my whole life hearing people babble on about how "beautiful" it is while they condemn American English for its "nasality" and German for its "gutteralness", even though French is more nasal and gutteral than the two of them put together.
What I needed, I realised, was a freakish marginalised variety of French, one without any snob appeal or fawning devotees. I thought Québécois would fit the bill but the Québécois are, if anything, more annoying about their language than the French. I got excited when I found out that there were vestiges of colonial French in Missouri, but finding anything on this dialect turned out to be harder than impossible. So when e. and
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And they did--but not this one. All they could find was a recent reprint of a turn-of-the-century French work that failed to turn my crank much. Cajun French I (AFAICT, Cajun French II never saw the light of day) came from a fellow language geek at my previous job. (It's to him I'm also grateful for the only grammar of Latin I've ever owned. It's in Welsh.) In its own way, it's leaves as much to be desired as the aforementioned reprint, but it's got more charm.
How much more? Bumloads more. For one thing, it looks exactly like what you'd expect something cobbled together in a teacher's spare time to look; browsing the typescript pages, you can almost smell the mimeograph ink. For another, the concerns are unabashedly parochial. Don't expect to come away from it able to discuss the latest Caro and Jeunet film, but you'll be able to talk about fence-mending, critter-hunting, and going down to the Lucky Seven for milk with practiced ease.
The transcription system used is the kind of "phonetic English" that would normally have me pulling my hair out by the roots, but somehow it works here. And I love the long lists of vocabulary terms; makes up for the lack of a glossary. Besides, if I want some prettified documents, there's always the slick pages on the Tulane University site that I've discovered in the meanwhile. (Plus it's nice to have collaboration for some of the more unusual grammatical features identified by Mr Faulk, like the loss of the subject pronoun elles or the pronunciation of elle as [al].)
I just can't wait to use some of it on a snooty poseur francophone and have him tell me how atrocious my French is.
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By far, yes.
I've seen that book you've got. It was a product, I suppose, of that 'American folk revival' of the 60s/70s - along with CODOFIL, and Cajun self-awareness/commercialization in general.
Sadly, Creoles had no such "pride boom", otherwise I could refer you to some killer sources for Colonial French and/or Creole. I mean, other than Valdman's work at Indiana University.
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OT: I guess there's a whole argot for breaking down the elements of accents, but I have no idea what it is: is this something you've come across?
I'm thinking about habits of speech which may not come under the rubric of accent at all: voice pitch, speed, cadence, where in the mouth the sounds are held, or made, or whatever (such as: what category would "nasal" come under?). The reason it's on my mind is that I'm in Holland and some of the locals sound just like they're from London - until I pay attention and realise they're speaking Dutch. There seems to be some stratum in Holland that has the same pitch, cadence and tics you find in the Thames estuary. So I'm cashing in my "ask a linguist" coupon to ask: does anyone discuss this stuff? What's the current thinking on these aspects of speech?
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Pitch, speed, cadence, etc.--these are all suprasegmentals (if they are phonemic) or aspects of prosody (if they are not). What I mean is that in a language like Panjabi or Swedish, the relative pitch of a syllable can change the meaning of word, so you have to treat it as a suprasegmental phoneme. In English, pitch may have some pragmatic meaning (e.g. expressing interrogation, worry, boredom, sarcasm, etc.) so it gets handled under prosody.
You're not the first person to notice this similarity within the North Sea area. I've had people tell me that the German of Hamburg is also spoken with a peculiarly English-like intonation. I don't know if anyone's studied this particular phenomenon, but it is the kind of thing that does come under examination in linguistics.
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I didn't either, and I speak some Swedish. :) Da, can you give a contrasting pair as an example, please?
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anden "the spirit" vs. anden "the duck"
tomten "Santa Claus" vs. tomten "the lot, the site"
stegen "the footsteps" vs. stegen "the ladder"
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The wikipedia entries on the various voices, including creaky, breathy, harsh and slack are also a joy - though I still don't quite know what any of these sound like: why, why, why doesn't wikipedia provide sound files :(
Finally, I wonder over what spread of languages and cultural groups this statement is true (from "prosody," wikipedia):
"prosodic units, intonation units, or declination units... are characterized by several phonetic cues, such as a coherent pitch contour, and the gradual decline in pitch and lengthening of vowels over the duration of the unit, until the pitch and speed are reset to begin the next unit. Breathing, both inhalation and exhalation, only seems to occur at these boundaries."
That sounds pretty specific: if it can be demonstrated in a large range of languages, it seems odd, maybe very interesting (though of course I have no idea what you'd do with such a tidbit of information).
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What's notable about English vs. French is that from my experiences, hardly any native speaker gets the other language's pronunciation the least bit right. Frenchmen speaking English mostly sound horrible, and vice versa.
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Also, they pretty much invented the to-die-for dessert. You can see how that's a mixed blessing.
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By the way, I'm a bi woman, and a language nerd. I clicked on your journal from linguaphiles, and have been loving it. I've also discovered aadroma through your site, and am enjoying his posts a lot too.
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http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/E/eurotrash/Rapido_trash/
He's actually made a career out of it. Offhand I can't think of an Englishman famous for speaking French badly - although I'm not in France, so I may just be unaware.
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But, as I point out above, the problem is less the French themselves than, on the one hand, the Statesiders who idealise them and, on the other, their political and cultural leaders, who reflexively turn to USA-bashing when they need to shore up support. The Germans have a very different experience of French political ambitions since the EU is, at its heart, a Franco-German collaboration. However, the lesson the French drew from the Suez Crisis of 1956 is that the USA was getting too big for its britches and had to be counterbalanced within the Western Bloc. Ever since then, it seems it's hardly missed an opportunity to stick one in the eye of the USA (as long as nothing really important is at stake).
Frenchmen speaking English
The tourist came back where I was sitting and I asked where he was from. He said "France". So I told him that at a bar here in Spain it is customary to pay when you are served. He seemed a little surprised. Later I told the camarero that the tourist was from la republica de Sarkozy.
As you know there can be a lot of animosity between different national/ethnic groups in Europe. The Spanish don't seem to care so much, just as long as they spend money.
Chuck
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Did you mean corroboration?
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http://www.amazon.com/Could-Turn-Tongue-Like-That/dp/0807127795
I don't think I'll ever really use it, so you're welcome to have it...
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