Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

[Le Baron]

Rabbit holes is a good sign, isn't it?

Depends, if a ferret is following you...

[CaroleR]

Rabbit holes is a good sign, isn't it?

It CAN be a good sign, but if you're easily distracted, one leads to another and to another and so on. And by the time you come up for air, you realize you've missed lunch and you're starving.

Depends, if a ferret is following you...

Nope, not going down that rabbit hole.

ETA: Ok, I briefly went down the rabbit/ferret hole. Something about Apollo the hob ferret ... I watched a couple of minutes and then realized, see, this is why I try to avoid rabbit holes! Yikes!

[CaroleR]

9-15 Dec, 22

News feeds, the usual every day

Textbook + workbook
Par ici: méthode de français – Échelle québécoise 5-6 (B1)
**Printemps**
• Épisode 12: Oui, allo! – finally done
• Épisode 13: Le Québec à la carte. I like this lesson so far. The first exercise is to determine where certain products are made. One is chocolate-covered wild blueberries. This is a side story in one of Louise Penny's books, Le beau mystère, where a monk has been murdered in a monastery in an undisclosed Quebec location. Turns out there are Trappist monks in Lac-St-Jean who actually make the chocolate-covered blueberries that they gather from around the monastery. I like how Penny works real life into her books. Presumably the murder part isn't true.
– Later in the lesson, there are lyrics to the song Mishapan nitassinan, written by Joséphine Bacon, who was a guest on La table de Kim. I mentioned her in a previous post. The song, sung by Chloé Sainte-Marie, consists solely of indigenous place names, and ends with « Que notre terre était grande! » It's painful to think about ... An audio-only version is on YouTube. It's a lovely, but heartbreaking song. Lyrics here
– A question in the lesson made me laugh. Why do you suppose so many places are named after saints? Well, duh. As Mark Twain once said of Montreal, "This is the first time I was ever in a city where you couldn't throw a brick without breaking a church window."

TV
• L'épicierie – 22 min
– s21ep11 Quel avenir pour les microdistilleries d'ici? Aussi, le pikliz, un condiment Haïtien, et un test de goût de ketchup.
– s2ep12 L'offre alimentaire pour les personnes qui vivent seules (comme moi, par exemple), les saveurs du rhum arrangé
• Moi, j'mange – 23 min
– s4ep12 Ça sent les fêtes – and yet, not a tourtière or a tarte-au-sucre in sight.
• STAT – 22 min
– s1ep47-52 – catching up on my soap
• De garde 24/7 – 46 min
– s8ep12 Le poids des responsabilites – and not enough resources – takes place in the Baie-Comeau area, across from Gaspé. Learning a bit about that in my textbook lesson.

Youtube videos
• Ma prof de français – 13:27 min
– Anglicismes: France vs Québec 1/2
• L'Histoire nous le dira – 41:29 min
– C'était quoi les années 90 au Québec? What it wasn't was an innocent time. There was the October crisis, the Oka crisis, the Valery Fabrikant murders in the university where I worked, etc, etc. And Quebec voted not to separate from Canada by a very slim margin: 50.58% no, 49.42% yes. It was very stressful. I do not look upon that decade with rose-coloured glasses, that's for sure.
• Wandering French – 1:26
– Un vrai dépanneur à Saint-Jean: elle nous monte un vrai de vrai dépanneur – "un vrai de vrai" is a new expression for me. The town where I grew up had two depanneurs like that, across the street from each other, misty watercolour memories ...

Current book
Still reading La grande aventure de la langue française – it's going to take forever. I keep going off track with things like, why was Louis 14th called the Roi-Soleil, and Cinderella was translated from the French Cendrillon? What? How come I didn't know that? Nearly every page has something I need to know more about.

Québécismes
Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! – a town in Quebec. This is part of the textbook lesson where we're asked to choose four Quebec place names and research the origin of the names. I'd heard of this place before but never knew why it had such an odd name. From the municipality's site: « Saint-Louis-du-Ha ! Ha ! est la seule municipalité au monde qui porte fièrement deux points d’exclamation dans son nom. » Although, there is a village called La baie des Ha! Ha! in the Côte-Nord of Quebec plus a number of waterways and constructions.
– The explanation for the name comes from the Commission de toponymie du Québec: « "Le haha" en français, est un archaïsme qui identifie une voie sans issue, un cul-de-sac, une impasse, un obstacle inattendu. » etc, etc. Usito does not have this but Larousse has « "haha !" an interjection: exclamation marquant l'admiration, l'ironie, l'intérêt, etc. » It still doesn't explain why anyone would use that to name a town. Maybe you had to be there ...

I'm still kind of faffing about trying to decide how to change/improve what I'm doing, hoping that I'll break through the plateau I'm on. But I read on one of emk's posts on HTLAL Cheating & Consolidating Method about a way of doing Anki that I haven't tried before. So maybe I'll do that. He also mentions reading La grande aventure de la langue française over a couple of months. It will take me longer, no doubt. Thanks to elAmericanoTranquilo for the reference in the thread Vocabulary for listening/reading vs. speaking.

Note: I got my phone bill today. Did they give a credit for 5 days without phone, without even the ability to call 911 in an emergency? No they did not.

Yesterday I got a text from the phone company saying they were crediting me $15. I whined too soon.

ETA: Yikes that was long. Someone once said that people who live alone talk a lot when they're around people. Apparently writing is my talking.

[DaveAgain]

My step-grandad was born in 1918 in Lafourche Parish. He and his whole family spoke Cajun French. My step-dad says that was still normal for his dad’s generation, and that the decline really happened in his generation. (His dad never taught him any French, there was no need for it in California.) As of 2000, nearly 20% of Lafourche Parish still spoke French at home, by 2010 it was down to 15%. That’s still pretty impressive!

(When I called my step-dad to ask, he was cleaning up after making gumbo for a Halloween party… Cajun culture in action!)

It's wonderful that your step-grandad's generation still spoke the language. It's too bad that it wasn't passed down. What Amandine says about patriotism after the war makes sense. I love that your step-dad was cooking gumbo! It's very much Cajun or Creole I think, possibly a homegrown Louisiana specialty. It doesn't seem to have originated in Acadie, as far as I know.

There may be a connection to French Bouillabaisse, but no specific connection to Acadie that I’m aware of. I laughed that he was cooking gumbo, I had caught him in the act of being Cajun right when I was going to ask him about his heritage!

I watched a documentary from telelouisiane.com earlier that included a little history of Gumbo lesson.

I was surprised to learn in a radio programme that a lot of French-louisana people came from Haiti/Dominican Republic, fleeing the slave revolt.

[CaroleR]

I watched a documentary from telelouisiane.com earlier that included a little history of Gumbo lesson.

Jourdan Thibodeaux: "They told me, you can't call it gumbo if it doesn't have okra in it." Oh yeah?! Then he wrote a thesis on gumbo.

I watched the whole video, very interesting. The fellow who said, "we're not Cajun, we're French," made me scratch my head. He meant that their ancestors came directly from France. As far as I know, Cajuns came from France too. They just made a stop further north first. I wonder why he made that distinction.

I went to school with a Thibodeaux girl. It's not an uncommon name in Quebec.

I was surprised to learn in a radio programme that a lot of French-louisana people came from Haiti/Dominican Republic, fleeing the slave revolt.

I didn't know that people from Haiti and the Dominican Republic went to Louisiana either. My book undoubtedly mentions it, but I haven't got to that yet. There are a lot of people of Hatian descent in Quebec. Language is a powerful motivator.

[Le Baron]

Language is a powerful motivator.

I.e. best to go to some place where you don't have to learn a new one!

[CaroleR]

16-22 Dec, 22

Read the usual news feeds, comme d'habitude.

Textbook + workbook
Par ici: méthode de français – Échelle québécoise 5-6 (B1)
**Printemps**
• Épisode 13 cont'd: Le Québec à la carte; one of the exercises includes an audio clip of a traffic report. It focuses mostly on Montreal bridges, all of which I've been on. There are a lot of similar instances, such as a mention of the town where I grew up, and it's a bit disorienting. It's giving me a feeling of being in "time out of place," if that makes sense. Maybe it's a question of "hiraeth", that lovely Welsh word for homesickness (more or less).
• Épisode 14: Tu me manque :-( + bandes dessinées + le passé composer et l'imparfait

TV I'm developing a bit of an aversion to watching TV ...
• STAT – 22 min
– s1ep53-56
• La vie secrète des animaux – 23 mins – Takes place in Granby Zoo. I don't care for zoos but this one specializes in animals whose status is vulnerable or threatened. Plus, I went there when I was a kid.
– s2ep1 – Comment on fait les bébés? A little privacy would have been nice. Sheesh!
• Tout le monde en parle – talk show – 147 min
– s19ep10 Boucar is cohost – guests: Steven Guilbault, federal minister of the environment and Alice de Swarte of la Société pour la Nature et les Parcs, talking about biodiversity and COP15, which took place in Montreal this month; Fred Pellerin, who was mentioned in a textbook lesson and who has a new show, Il était un forêt, which I may watch. All the guests on the show wore white ribbons in support of the movement to end male violence against women and girls. The sisters who started the movement, Florence-Olivia and Marie-Emmanuelle Genesse were guests as well (the.sisofficial on instagram and tiktok, in English). Also: Olivier Aubin-Mercier, who won the PFL lightweight title in November, which DaveAgain mentioned upthread; and Hugo Meunier, host of Péter la balloune, a documentary about alcohol and public health issues. I could watch that, but probably won't.

Youtube videos
• Ma prof de français – 8:04 min
– Que pensent les Québécois de Céline Dion?
• Wandering French – 1:54 Min
– Le marché de Noël de Montréal

Current book
The usual – I'm quite surprised and pleased by how much I understand, maybe 80-85 per cent. That's almost comprehensible input.
– Came across this gem by Voltaire in reference to La Nouvelle-France:  « ... quelques arpents de neige. » I'm offended. I may have to scratch Candide off my books-to-read-before-I-die list. Ok, at the time it may have been justified, but where was the vision Voltaire?
– Also, the authors mention that Samuel de Champlain, the father of Quebec, was Huguenot. This was a side mystery in Enterrer vos morts by Louise Penny (of course). Why wasn't he buried in the Catholic cemetery? Was he Protestant? Where was he buried? Was he the illegitimate son of Louis XlV? She doesn't solve these mysteries in the book but, selon moi, it's her best so far. It hadn't occured to me that he wasn't Catholic and I don't remember learning about it in school.

Québécismes
• Lâcher son fou: se laisser aller, faire des folleries = let one's hair down
• Une binette = emoji, ex. « une binette n'est pas toujours souriante et joyeuse » :-( DeepL translated this as "a hoe is not always smiling and happy." In fairness, it's also the word for a garden tool.

C'est tout pour l'instant. À tantôt!

ETA: Louis XlV, not the lV

[CaroleR]

Language is a powerful motivator.

I.e. best to go to some place where you don't have to learn a new one!

Particularly if you're fleeing slavery or some other horrible situation. Who wants to learn a new language on top of that?

[Le Baron]

Particularly if you're fleeing slavery or some other horrible situation. Who wants to learn a new language on top of that?

Absolutely.

[CaroleR]

And now for something completely different:
Sḵwx̱wú7mesh – This has nothing to do with French or Quebec, but I've come across the name of this First Nation language a number of times and wondered how it was pronounced. It's from the Squamish language, one of about 16 Coast Salish dialects, in what is now British Columbia. I still can't pronounce it correctly. It's similar to "Snohomish," a town/county in Washington state, but more gutteral.

Here's a short video (1:10) of Sekyu Siyam, Chief Ian Campbell, hereditary chief of the Squamish Nation, explaining how the language relates to the territory. « Que leur terre était grande! »


Link to a longer pronounciation guide. (6:13)