Phonological system of Mitchif ======>some CJ words

[Mike Cleven]

janilta wrote:
>
> Mike,
>
> Yes, indeed as your long and rich msg states, checking the various
> origins of the 'French' words in CJ and Native languages of the West
> would be very interesting... but rather difficult I guess.
> It is in fact quite difficult to know how the French speakers throughout
> the prairies spoke without written records about their pronounciations,
> as they had probably many ways of speaking whether they were from France
> (with regional accents), from various parts of Canada and the US, from
> mixed ancestry (Metis)...
> But it is perhaps worth a try I guess...

Actually Prairie and Metis French are still spoken and identifiable; and
there is written documentation of their respective dialects and their
history; quite a bit is known about 19th Century Metis French, in fact.
Very few to none of the Prairie French speakers would have been from
France, and those few that did come up from the States would most likely
have been Metis or Cajun.

>
> Why do you think 'mahsh' is a strange borrowing ? The first meaning 'to
> walk' for 'marcher' also bears the sense 'march' as in 'en avant, marche
> !' when you give the march order, thus 'leave'... No ? And then this
> very 'movement' meaning evolved quite logically...

It's true that motion is still implied, and not limited to leaving; it's
still a strange borrowing anyway, the native word-borrowers
misapprehending the voyageur expression marche va-t-en (as I remember
it); put it down, let it go.  It came to mean to throw, to leave, to
send, to discharge, and a whole range of other meanings that this
flexibly useful word acquired once it was in the Jargon.  As with 'en
avant', marche', it does carry the tone of an imperative and was
probably was mostly used as such....


> I am afraid the Mitchif for 'to run' won't help you much for 'cooley'!
> As I said in a prior msg, the verbs in Mitchif are from Cree and not
> from French, except a few exceptions (1%) as 'benir' (to bless) or
> 'temoigner' (to witness in court) eg 'li per kilibiniw li mund' (the
> priest blessed the people) (Bakker 1997). But in a sentence as
> 'kaituhtehitin ite ewituhtejan' (I will take you where you want to go)
> (Bakker 1997) you can look for any French element...

Didn't know that about Michif and verbs; then we'll have to look at
Metis French, or just to Canadian French as a general category.  Or to
consider that the final vowel in "courez" shifted to become "cooley" -
if that is indeed the origin or this word; the lexicon-writers say so,
but apparently it's not that cut-and-dry....