Study of an Acadian-French Dialect Spoken on the North Shore of the Baie-Des-Chaleurs

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 Excerpt: ...interrogatif devient ty. Ainsi, j'entends assez souvent, et tres clairement: i je ty, pour (il est ti =) est-il? ou encore, ce qui est pln- clair: tS fre.r rje tsy? = ton frere, vient-il? C'est un curieux phenomene, produit, je pense, par l'etymologie populaire." Comment in regard to Canadian usage by Professor Rivard. 1 Romania, VI, p. 442. Cf. Suchier in Grober'- Grundriss, (p. 610, 47) "Mundarten haben aus diesem til ein Fragewort gebildet, welches ein Gegenstuck zu dem antwortenden oil bildet" (or Monet's translation, p. 104, 47). 4 u to and not ai vo is the Canadian French usage, i. . before consonants and ai before vowels generally; likewise the Canadian usage is a vo ti instead of al to ti. See the Note on pp. 133, 134 for the explanation of ti, and for examples see below. The negative forms of the verb, omitting anything corresponding to Fr. ne before the verb, simply add p = Fr. pas directly after the affirmative or interrogative form, thus: z -o p--Fr. je vais pas; z ti Jjo? = Fr. je vais ti pas, i. e. ne vais-je pas. 1. z is of course popular in ordinary conversational French, influence of the second and third persons on the first. z - o seems to result from bilabial v under influence of forms like Fr. me and moi in the speakers mind for the first person.3 2. The future and conditional forms with j and likewise the infinitive form jale are likely due to the influence of the adverb Fr. y so much used with this verb. 3. z e ete used for je suis alle, z aie ete for j'etais alle, and so on thruout, is merely French analogy where these forms may be used instead of aller when return is implied. I...