[Ads-l] Heard: positive _anymore_ south of Saint Louis

[Wilson Gray]

Speaker from Old Mines/La Vielle Mine, MO, ca. 65 mi. south of StL:

"Conversational French is very rare, _anymore_."

The speaker is discussing Missouri French, a.k.a. Paw-Paw, the
nearly-extinct - perhaps ten fluent speakers left - variety of French
formerly widely spoken in south-eastern Missouri and southwestern Illinois,
the former _Pays des Illinois_, which once stretched from Vincennes,
Indiana, to the Ozarks. (StL was once _Saint-Louis des Illinois_.)

Carrière, J. -M. (1939). "Creole Dialect of Missouri". American Speech.
Duke University Press. 12 (6): 502–503. JSTOR 451217.
—
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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