French of the Mountains encore?
David Robertson
ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU
Tue Nov 9 18:35:26 UTC 2004
These 2 quotations are in Ch. Wolfe, OMI. 1924. Colombie Britannique: en
mission chez les Babines. Petites annales de Marie-Immaculee (March:79-80).
I think this looks like French with pidgin syntax, in fact in some ways
similar to Chinook Jargon if it had only French words. Possibly another
example of the "French of the Mountains" referred to by David Mulhall in
his 1986 book "Will to Power" which dealt with exactly the same
geographical region of BC. My interest: I suspect this language variety
has not been described in the linguistic literature.
"Content il est mon coeur de voir la figure a cela tout vous autres. Loin
il a marche', vous autres pour voir, le pretre: le Bon Dieu son Coeur va
faire charite' a vous, etc. etc."
"C'est cher cela l'Eucharistie! Gros Il aime vous autres Jesus-Christ!"
I am curious to know whether a native French speaker understands these
sentences, and what they mean to his/her ear.
--Dave R.
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