Talk:Chiac language
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This is so excellent! I'm very happy to see the correct spelling added -- I think I just assumed "shee-ack" was "chiaque".
One question: I've heard about revival, artists' use of Le Chiac, etc. I think there's even a dictionary or two somewhere. But I don't have any info, and can't find such on the Web. suggestions? --ESP 21:56, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I also assumed "Chiac" was actually spelled "chiaque", seems its spelling look more "French". I'd like to know if there are any official sources for the correct spelling of that word.
As for good references for the chiac dialect, ESP, the only good reference I know that comes to my mind currently is the French book "Le dictionnaire acadien" ("The Acadian dictionary") by Yves Cormier.
Remi 15:00, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
In regards to the line:
"With generations of contact with the dominant Anglophone community in the area, the local French dialect has been heavily influenced and corrupted by English."
Is it right to use the word "corrupted?" That word gives a negative connotation to the evolution of the language, first, and secondly, such a statement is a one-sided opinion.
--An interested user of Wikipedia.
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[edit] Documentaries
Would it be worthy of inclusion to mention that 2 documentaries were made (both by Michel brault) by the ONF about it ? These were : Éloge du chiac (1969)& L'Acadie, l'Acadie (1971). --Marc pasquin 17:57, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] two meanings?
I grew up and spent dozens of years in SouthEast New Brunswick, and I've heard the term Chiac used for the "second meaning" and not for the first, for which we would simply say "Acadian French". Chiac is a type of Acadian French. What are the sources on the first meaning? Does it really mean that too?--Sonjaaa 05:54, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Chiac, born and bred
As a "native chiac", I was pleased to see some documentation on my language!I'm familiar with the documentary "Éloge du chiac". Although outdated, I thought it was fascinating to see how Chiac was perceived then and how it is now. And to my knowledge, around here, it's always been spelled that way. To the comment that "chiaque" looked more french; well, the definition of chiac is, after all, a mixture of french and english, right? I also think that the line "corrupted by English" is too strong and negative.
- Well, if we're going to go there, French corrupted English into it's current mess, so we're just returning the favor. :) --72.88.210.56 18:59, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Questionable Content
The content of the page is recently becoming very vulgar in it's examples. There's no need for all the crotch jokes. They need to be removed.
I'm assuming you don't know anyone who speaks Chiac. 142.167.55.26 00:06, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Audio clips
Wouldn't it be nice to have some audio in this article? I have no idea how chiac sounds...
- I would add some if it weren't for Wikipedia's misguided policy forbidding mp3s. -Adjusting 00:18, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] A not so telling example
"Moi chu acadienne, hein?" written : "Moi, j'suis Acadienne, hein ?" is perfectly good spoken french and quite admissible even in writing. Chris CII 12:31, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
But the chu is not written, nor pronounced, as j'suis. It is chu.142.167.55.26 00:17, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
== Yes, but chu is used throughout Canadian French, insofar as I can tell. It is not specific to Chiac. - 12 July 2007
[edit] Assessment
I have assessed this as Start Class, as it contains more detail and organization than would be expected of a Stub, and of low importance, as it is a highly specific topic within Canada. Cheers, CP 03:24, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Example translations
I tried fixing this myself, but my changes were reverted.
Can anyone tell me why the following appear in the translations?
- Why does the of the 'Ej va driver mon truck à soir..' example start with 'Hey'? There's no equivalent in the original chiac sentence.
- Why do the english translations say bizarre things like 'it was right fun' instead of something more grammatical like 'it was really fun'?
Adjusting (talk) 00:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
- Hi. I reverted your changes and am happy to further discuss the matter here; thanks for starting a new section. Translation is not an exact science and different interpretations are possible, as the essence of translation is to capture the underlying meaning of the source text. (The introduction at translation is concise and good; I am not sure how familiar you are with translation theory.)
- The first thing to recognise here is that we are dealing with a spoken language, and a language which for all practical purposes only exists orally, unlike English, which has a rich written literature. The examples given are colloquial and a literal translation cannot capture the nuance of meaning. But at the same time, this is a written encyclopedia, so the spoken utterances can be only inadequately represented.
- "Hey" is a typical informal interjection in Canadian English, and clearly signals that what follows is the representation of a speech act. Chiac is a mixed language (as is the better-known franglais) and as such can use "hey" as a loanword to indicate the beginning of a new utterance. The equivalent in the source text is represented by the phoneme e, an abbreviation of et ("and"), which is used in French similarly to signal the beginning of a colloquial utterance.
- "Right fun" is slightly different. Here the person who wrote the example is seeking to capture the flavour of the surrounding regional dialect of English, which may be more narrowly limited than Maritime English. (Indeed, the English spoken by people who also speak Chiac might arguably be considered an ethnolect, though to go further down that road would be original research.) "Right" is an adverb modifying the adjective "fun". The use of this word in this manner, as a strengthener, is common in other varieties of English, see List of dialects of the English language. In standard English, "really fun" would be fine, but the choice of the non-standard "right" signals that the variety of English used is locally specific; the linguistic norms are not globalised ones.
- Another way to consider this issue is as one of linguistic register. The original utterance:
- Ej va driver mon truck à soir puis ça va êt'e right la fun.
- could conceivably be "translated" as:
- I intend to conduct my lorry tonight, and it will be greatly amusing.
- This version is heavily marked, in the linguistic sense (strangely, we don't seem to have an article on marked language), because it indicates formality, Britishness, and old-fashionedness. The version given:
- Hey I'm going to drive my truck tonight and it's going to be right fun.
- attempts to capture the flavour of the English-language speech of those people who use Chiac. I think that is a legitimate aim of the translation. Others may disagree, but I hope that these arguments give something to consider. BrainyBabe (talk) 09:05, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
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- What is the claim that the phoneme "e" is an abbreviation of "et" based on? I presume you're suggesting that "et je" [e ʒœ] has become ej [œʒ]. That vowel change seems unlikely to me. Speakers of chiac are also much more likely to use "pis" instead of "et". In my experience, "ej" is used in place of most instances of "je", not just those that appear at the beginning of a sentence. I still feel that the "hey" in the translation implies that the source sentence contained a similar interjection.
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- As for the use of "right", I can accept its use to convey a casual use of Maritime English, but it seems the subtlety of this choice will be lost on the average wikipedia reader (who is not familiar with the dialect). Upon reading "right fun", she is much more likely to assume (as I did) that this was a slip up in the translation rather than a conscious choice.
