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

[Mike Cleven]

janilta wrote:
>
> Hello, Mike,
>
> Yes, I know that there are still some elderly speakers of Mitchif (too
> few unfortunately) but what I meant is that we must know how they (and
> other French speakers) spoke when French words entered the Jargon, not
> now. And I am afraid that most written records of that time are polluted
> with 'standard' French, the language of reference for educated people
> (ie priests f ex)... that is the ones able/willing to keep written
> records...

As far as non-Metis French goes, somewhere I read that the clergy in the
manitobaine, acadien, and saskatchais communities generally helped
entrench these dialects rather than standardize them; this is only in
the case of the cut-off parts of the Canadian francophonie; in some ways
these remoter, more isolated dialects are "older" than quebecois; but in
the case of the Prairie and Maritime dialects these "older" differences
were helped survive by the church, and what intelligentsia there was
within the community (mostly Acadia, except for musicians from the
Prairies).  As fas as _Metis_ French (and here we're still not speaking
about Mitchif, which is a different language entirely), there are two
main dialects/streams - traditional Prairie Metis French and northern
Ontario native/Metis French, both of which are distinct from manitobaine
and saskatchais on the one hand and ontarien on the other, but which are
different from each other despite common roots in the fur trade and the
courier du bois.  French is actually the second-language of choice
(after Cree, Ojibway, or Mohawk) on many northern Ontario reserves; I
was constantly surprised on a drive across the Canada via the
TransCanada at how many native communities were evidently francophone;
ironically, the opposite is true in Quebec, where most First Nations
people have English as a second language.  Prairie Metis is also
flavoured a bit by Scots/Irish, I'm told, because of the shared
Celtic-native family heritage that has blended with the French one among
the Prairie Metis; prononciation-wise, I would imagine, plus maybe some
ideoms rendered into French and the occasional word or two.

Please note that Prairie Metis French is a form of rusticated antique
French, it is NOT Mitchif; Mitchif was never that widely spoken across
the Metis community as French was; I'm not sure that Dumont and Riel
even spoke it.....


> F ex, the only spoken reference we may have for the French spoken in the
> 18th century is roughly... the Quebec French... and it is not completely
> accurate of course.

I'll get you some reference links for Acadian, which I know exist; I
doubt anything is on-line for manitobaine and saskatchais, but you never
know....

> Oh, yes, you mean that the evolution in meaning of 'mahsh' itself was
> 'strange'. Well, this is the way languages evolve, no logic of any kind
> (thus difficult to grasp sometimes).

Well, English is certainly full of examples of words that once meant
something entirely different....

> The msg I wrote about the final vowels of Mitchif and verbs apparently
> was not delivered to the list. I resend it then.

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