French in Gibbs' Tsinuk Wawa list

[janilta]

Hello David,

And many thanks for this very interesting msg. I am grateful...
I had a msg from Barbara the other day about this le/la confusion and I
do understand that the distinction was impossible to grasp for
non-French native speakers (as it is still the case for our beloved
Britain-born singer/actress Jane Birkin even if she's already been
living in France for 30 years). In fact, my first goal was to correct
Gibbs' errors in French (Jargon can confuse articles, but not the French
version of the words) and then just think over this article confusion...
and you gave me invaluable answers...
I have never been to America and thus did not have the chance to go to
Grande Ronde to hear 'real' Wawa spoken... ;-)
In fact, I keep thinking that the words would logically have be taken
with a 'correct' article and when the sound is closer to 'le' than 'la'
in CJ words, maybe the reason is that these very words were taken with
their plural form (quite logical for many, as I mentioned)...
You are also totally right about the merging of articles in French based
creoles, as for the famous 'dlo' ('de l'eau') for water... and 'dlo-la'
for 'the water'.
Btw, 'bec' in Quebec is 'bo' in some West Indies creoles... not so far
from 'be(be)'... ;-)
I was much interested in Mitchif, but it is so difficult to get academic
material... even on the internet...
Have to check for 'capote' also (in fact, since in slang, 'capote' is
'condom, rubber' as in 'capote anglaise' (cf French letter), this word
has fallen out of use recently... ;-).
Yes, apparently, there are many nouns associated with horses in CJ and a
term as 'la caille' does not sound so familiar at first (exept in the
sense 'quail').
Do you think a book as the Little Prince (Saint-Exupery) could be
translated to CJ ? In fact, is it possible to translate 'anything' to CJ
and how to create neologisms ??? I was thinking of TLP because it is
famous even in the USA, the text is simple (and thus can be used in
schools) and is one of the most translated texts in the world (more than
120 languages/dialects) which is quite interesting for linguists (I am
expecting to get its Udmurt translation any day soon)... but without any
NorthAmerican version (and only Quechua in SurAm)...

Thanks again for your kind message, regards from Tokyo, Yann.

PS I resend the msg through the list since my first answer wasn't
delivered apparently...