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My ears are bleeding.

Chiac.

Sounds like something you'd hock up from your lungs after a bender, doesn't it?

I live in the Acadian center of New Brunswick, or so they tell me. And with all this sad history of no one actually wanting them, comes something that would put fear and pain into the heart of any self respecting english major.

Chiac.

According to Wiki, Chiac is a mixture of Acadian French (which includes words from old french) and English. Chiac uses primarily French syntax with French-English vocabulary and phrase forms. It is often deprecated by both French and English speakers as an impure hybrid — either "bad" French or "bad" English. However, Chiac has been reclaimed in recent years by some Acadian groups as a living and evolving language, and part of their collective culture.The word itself is generally considered a derivation of the name Shediac a town near by. Some have also suggested that it is a derivative of the French word chier, meaning "to shit".

I of course, favour the last bit, considering how it sounds.

Ej vas driver mon truck à soir pis ça va êt'e right la fun. (I'm going to drive my truck tonight and it's going to be lots of fun.)

Proper french, courtesy of Babel Fish
Je vais conduire mon camion ce soir et ce va être un bon nombre d'amusement.

I don't think that I can truly convey the pain this "language" causes in writing. It's painful to hear, because it's like listening to someone speak both french AND english BADLY. And all the sentances, english or french, end with "LE".

"Hey, let's go to the store le."

I constantly make fun of this dialect, which has made me a NUMBER of friends, let me tell you. And yes, people keep trying to tell me it's a viable language form, in it's beginning phases. I ain't buying it. Poor grammer and poor sentence structure does NOT a language make. You know what it is? It's LAZINESS. Because when I ask people about it, they tell me "Oh, I can speak PERFECT french if I TRY."

Really? So when do they try? When the moon is full and in the third house? Because I rarely ever am treated to proper french. Actually, about as much as I am treated to proper english around here.

It's my biggest pet peeve. I don't really approve of laziness, except in vague, unformed ways. Language conveys who we are, how other's see us, how our social station is percieved. And quite frankly, I find it sounds terrible, and does make the speaker sound uneducated and rather stupid. I really don't understand why someone would want to speak like that. While I lasp into lazy forms of speech sometimes, I do what I can to catch myself, since I do want to present the best example for my children. I do not want their abilities to be underminded by how they speak to others. Sadly, it matters.

Now THAT statement won't make me any friends either.

Hah! That's so funny.
My family is french (eastern Ontario) which is a mixed up language all in its own, not as bad as that, but pretty bad, and we make fun of my grandmother all the time.
That sounds pretty cruel, actually.
Making fun of your grandmother.
But her hearing's bad anyway.

At the risk of being politically incorrect, it's the Acadian version of ghettoese (or ebonics). It's one thing while hanging out with your buddies and I don't sound in person as grammatical as I should. I get lazy and I picked up some unfortunate idioms in the south.

However, when the rubber hits the road, it's very different; especially when dealing with Authority (the powers that be)

I'm not terribly PC when it comes to stuff like this, because I believe that everyone should be speaking proper english when dealing with each other. I equate it to the way I swear with friends. I don't do that in "public".

And hey, making fun of grandmothers is ALWAYS fun if they're french!

LMAO!

We get em out here too, being military and all, it hurts my ears to hear it because you go....what the hell, are you speaking english or french? PLEASE pick one.

Oh, and the Diaper Fairy works like a dream. I honestly cannot beleive it. I tried EVERYTHING else, this was my last resort.

That makes me proud to be mostly Italian with a few other varieties thrown in.

No French so far as I know but then who knows really?

Oh, you were talking about the granny in the first comment.

Oops. I was being paranoid.

Ehnh, accept that languages be gonna change.

I've believe it is more important what poeple say, than how they say it.

I agree that language changes. More than anything, it's the laziness that accompanies the language that bothers me.

I also question the need for dialects, as they seem to function as a tool to exclude 'THEM'-anymore, we need to have more commonality to draw as together, since people who understand eachother tend to not try and kill eachother.

I believe that HOW you say something has a huge bearing on how it's received. If people cannot understand what you are saying, then the value of your thought won't matter much at all.

I think those who speak Chiac, Joual and letespeak should go off to an island together.

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

I'm so jealous that you know something about another language, no matter WHAT dialect it is.

Jealous, jealous, jealous!

I wouldn't be jealous Nicole. I know enough spoken french to basically say my french is shit. I understand far more than I can speak, but my spoken french...SHUDDER

Mine is more like stutter. I feel like my spoken french is like an old car in need of an oil chnge. It starts up and coughs and sputters and grunts but when I get going, I'm ok.

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