Some Specimens of a Canadian French Dialect Spoken in Maine

Extract

These specimens are based on notes taken by me in August and September, 1877, in Waterville, Maine. I used selections from them at the first meeting of the Romance Philology Conference, at Harvard University, in the year 1886-87, to illustrate the use of phonetic spelling for philological purposes and to illustrate also the regular character of sound changes in popular dialects.—There is in Waterville, as in many other places in New England, a colony of French Canadians, who live by themselves in a part of the village known as the Plains. My specimens were taken down in phonetic spelling from the mouth of a single person of this colony, who was employed as a servant girl at my father's house. It is a disadvantage that only one person's speech was thus observed, but she being uneducated—I do not think she could write and am not even sure that she knew how to read at all—her dialect was little if at all influenced by written French. She understood English well enough for most purposes, and all my questions were put in English, and she gave English translations when desired. I think there was hardly any possibility of her using a word not natural to her in consequence of any suggestion from me. I am not sure that her dialect was that of the whole French colony in Waterville; indeed it seems to me that some double forms she used with the same meaning may have been due to her knowing words belonging to originally different dialects. I have some reason to believe that at least one other French dialect than hers is or was not long ago spoken in New England.—My observations are very incomplete, as I expected and intended to continue them later and did not use all the opportunities I had, but scanty as they are, they suffice to give some idea of the peculiarities of the dialect.