Re: [OT] Grammatic gender

[Karlin High]

On 11/15/2017 2:44 AM, Jacques Menu Muzhic wrote:
> This tends to denote the speaker as old or from the countryside.

Since we're already OT and having fun...

Here are some articles from my corner of the world about a French 
dialect surviving from 18th century fur traders, probably with fewer 
than 50 speakers left.

http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/paw-paw-french-two-20-somethings-bet-st-louis-can-save-vanishing-dialect#stream/0

This one has recordings of the spoken dialect and a traditional song:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/9/missouri-s-paw-pawfrenchdialectfadingintosilence.html

This one has my favorite stories about the dialect:
https://www.stlmag.com/-ldquoY-rsquoAll-Vous-Autres-rdquo/

"When Dennis Stroughmatt did graduate work at the University of Quebec, 
he stayed with a French family. “Mais ça fait fraitte dehors,” he 
remarked casually one night, coming in from the chilly evening.

His host looked up. “What did you say?”

He’d said it was cold—literally, “it makes cold outside.” But the modern 
French word was froid, not fraitte.

“How do you know that word?” his host persisted.

“From Missouri,” Stroughmatt said, not realizing that fraitte hadn’t 
been used in contemporary French for centuries.

“That’s impossible,” the host declared. So Stroughmatt pulled out maps 
of Missouri and Illinois, and the two bent over them and read all the 
tiny town and river names. The man shook his head in amazement.

***

Once in the early ’90s, when he tried to rent a car at the Paris 
airport, intending to drive to the Normandy battlefield, he asked for un 
char, and a sitcom of frustrated “Monsieur, you cannot do that” and 
“Whaddya mean I can’t rent a car?” ensued. Char, short for chariot, is 
Old French for “cart.” What Stroughmatt didn’t know is that its modern 
meaning is not “car” but “tank.” The car-rental guy thought the crazy 
American wanted to rent a tank and drive it to Normandy.
--
Karlin High
Missouri, USA