Trois-Rivieres French vis-a-vis voyageurs & Jargon (fwd)

[TuktiWawa at NETSCAPE.NET]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re(2): Apparent calques (fwd)
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 19:09:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: David Robertson <drobert at tincan.org>
To: tuktiwawa at netscape.net



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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 14:49:34 +0200
From: CreoLIST <CreoLIST at ling.su.se>
To: CreoLIST <CreoLIST at ling.su.se>
Subject: Re(2): Apparent calques

Precedence: list

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Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 22:21:22 -0400
From: Henri Wittmann <hwittman at cgocable.ca>
Subject: Re(2): Apparent calques

Larry Rosenwald wrote:

>Henri, a quick question - you write that the Three Rivers basilect is
>"also known as Magoua."  Do you know the source of this term, and when it
>dates from?  Thanks!


MAGOUA (unless otherwise indicated, citation forms are from Magoua
French).  As to form and meaning, magoua seems to be a blend from
Algonkian makwa and French matois /màtwà/.  The meaning of makwa (<
Proto-Algonkian *mwakwa) is "common loon (gavia immer)" in most
Algonkian languages though it may refer to the "great horned owl
(bubo virginianus)" in some languages south of the Saint Lawrence
river.  As a surname/nickname, it can refer to someone known to be
"cunning, crafty".  The Standard French adjective simply means
"cunning, crafty".  As to the shift /tw/ > /kw/ > /gw/:  (a) Shifts
from /t/ to /k/ are very common in Magoua French as well as in other
varieties of colonial French (màklo "matelot", màkyer "matière",
màkyeu "Mathieu", pàtàk "patate", kenn (< tiendre) "tenir", mon kyen
(< mon tien) "le mien, la mienne", etc.);  b) On the other hand, k/g
alternations are not uncommon (kàbòté/gàbòté "caboter", kànif/gànif
"canif", kàyàk/gàyàk "gaïac", làkèt/gèt "hoquet", fàtiké/fàtigé
"fatigué", etc.) though an influence pointing to Abenaki or Micmac
cannot be entirely excluded for a shift from /kw/ to /gw/.
Morphologically, magoua is invariant as to gender like in Algonkian
unlike French matois which feminizes to matoise /màtwàz/ in Standard
French.

Usagewise, the term seems to have been bestowed by the Atikamekw upon
the first "coureur de bois" they encountered around Trois-Rivières at
the beginning of the 17th century.  The coureurs de bois were thought
to be superior ("crafty") oarsmen, the boats they built were to
superior to the Indian ones and, sitting in their canoes with their
black hat on their heads, they might have looked like a bunch of
loons crossing the lake in single file.  Since they were also
landless suckers in the eyes of the Indians as much as to the French
colonial officials, they were more inclined to taking Indian wives,
contrary to other French or English settlers.

Under Frontenac, however, the term took on derogatory connotations,
more like "indolent, rowdy, scoundrel, unsightly bird/man", referring
to the poor, landless coureurs de bois and squatters congregating in
great numbers around Trois-Rivières, much to the dismay of the
official settlers who paid for the upkeep of the fortifications and
their bench in church.  The derogatory meaning spilled over to some
of the Algonkian languages such as Abenaki where magwa became to mean
"deceitful, coward, Iroquois, Mohawk".  The term <macoua> in its
derogatory variant must have had a wider distribution in colonial
times since we still have it as "indolent, unsightly" in the
Gaspesian peninsula and in Haiti and as "unsightly, stupid" in the
Indian Ocean.  The first attestation in the Indian Ocean refers to
<macouas> as oarsmen from the west coast of India.  It later referred
there too to a (presumably unsightly or stupid) bird, the "Black Tern
(anous stolidus)", as well as to a Bantu "tribe" (the latter referred
to themselves as Cuambo, Lomwe, Medo or Ngulu, the Makwa
"Sammelbegriff" being a later development introduced by missionaries
and officiallized by linguists).

To anticipate another question you might have:  No, I don't think
that Magoua French has Algonkian elements beyond vocabulary.  So far,
every peculiarity one can think of also has parallels in other
varieties of colonial French, Koine or Creole, where a Algonkian
substrate cannot be suspected.

PRODUCTIVITY OF "BAD-MOUTH" LEXICAL FORMATIONS.  I can't help
thinking here of:  movez-bouch, bouch-movez, bòn-bouch, bouch-bé,
fin-bouch, bouch-fin, bouch-frèt, bouch-kousu, bouch-mòl,
pàròl-an-bouch, bouch-an-cu-d-poul, movez-geùl, grann-geùl, sàl-geùl,
movez-lanñ, lanñ-sàl, gro-bèk, sàl-bèk, bèk-fen, bèk-pensé, etc.,
which are widespread in most varieties of French, European or
colonial, koine or creole, standard or non-standard.



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