Picard language - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Picard is a language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

(or a set of languages) closely related to French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, and as such is one of the larger group of Romance languages

Romance languages

The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...

. It is spoken in two regions in the far north of France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

– Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardy

Picardy

This article is about the historical French province. For other uses, see Picardy .Picardy is a historical province of France, in the north of France...

– and in parts of the Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

region of Wallonia, the district of Tournai

Tournai

Tournai is a Walloon city and municipality of Belgium located 85 kilometres southwest of Brussels, on the river Scheldt, in the province of Hainaut....

(Wallonie Picarde) and a part of the district of Mons

Mons

Mons is a Walloon city and municipality located in the Belgian province of Hainaut, of which it is the capital. The Mons municipality includes the old communes of Cuesmes, Flénu, Ghlin, Hyon, Nimy, Obourg, Baudour , Jemappes, Ciply, Harmignies, Harveng, Havré, Maisières, Mesvin, Nouvelles,...

(toward Tournai

Tournai

Tournai is a Walloon city and municipality of Belgium located 85 kilometres southwest of Brussels, on the river Scheldt, in the province of Hainaut....

and the Belgian border).

Picard is known by several different names. Residents of Picardie simply call it picard, whereas it is more commonly known as chti or chtimi in the South part of French Flanders

French Flanders

French Flanders is a part of the historical County of Flanders in present-day France. The region today lies in the modern-day region of Nord-Pas de Calais, the department of Nord, and roughly corresponds to the arrondissements of Lille, Douai and Dunkirk on the Belgian border.-Geography:French...

(around Lille

Lille

Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...

and Douai

Douai

-Main sights:Douai's ornate Gothic style belfry was begun in 1380, on the site of an earlier tower. The 80 m high structure includes an impressive carillon, consisting of 62 bells spanning 5 octaves. The originals, some dating from 1391 were removed in 1917 during World War I by the occupying...

) and in North-East Artois

Artois

Artois is a former province of northern France. Its territory has an area of around 4000 km² and a population of about one million. Its principal cities are Arras , Saint-Omer, Lens and Béthune.-Location:...

(around Béthune

Béthune

Béthune is a city in northern France, sub-prefecture of the Pas-de-Calais department.-Geography:Béthune is located in the former province of Artois. It is situated South-East of Calais, West of Lille, and North of Paris.-Landmarks:...

and Lens

Lens, Pas-de-Calais

Lens is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. It is one of France's large Picarde cities along with Lille, Valenciennes, Amiens, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Arras, and Douai.-Metropolitan area:...

), or rouchi around Valenciennes

Valenciennes

Valenciennes is a commune in the Nord department in northern France.It lies on the Scheldt river. Although the city and region had seen a steady decline between 1975 and 1990, it has since rebounded...

; or simply as patois
Patois
Patois is any language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. It can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, and other forms of native or local speech, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant...

by Northerners in general. Linguist

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

s group all of these under the name Picard. In general the variety spoken in Picardy is understood by speakers in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, and vice versa.

Recognition

Belgium's French Community gave full official recognition to Picard as a regional language along with Walloon

Walloon language

Walloon is a Romance language which was spoken as a primary language in large portions of the Walloon Region of Belgium and some villages of Northern France until the middle of the 20th century. It belongs to the langue d'oïl language family, whose most prominent member is the French language...

, Gaumais
Lorrain language
Lorrain is a language spoken by a minority of people in Lorraine in France and in Gaume in Belgium. It is one of the Langues d'oïl. It is classified as a regional language of France, and has the recognised status of a regional language of Wallonia...

(Lorraine

Lorraine (région)

Lorraine is one of the 27 régions of France. The administrative region has two cities of equal importance, Metz and Nancy. Metz is considered to be the official capital since that is where the regional parliament is situated...

), Champenois

Champenois

Champenois is a language spoken by a minority of people in Champagne in France and in Wallonia in Belgium. It is one of the langues d'oïl. It is classified as a regional language of France, and has the recognized status of a regional language of Wallonia....

(Champagne

Champagne, France

Champagne is a historic province in the northeast of France, now best known for the sparkling white wine that bears its name.Formerly ruled by the counts of Champagne, its western edge is about 100 miles east of Paris. The cities of Troyes, Reims, and Épernay are the commercial centers of the area...

) and German Frankish

Lorraine Franconian

Lorraine Franconian is a designation, in practice ambiguous, for dialects of West Central German , a group of High German dialects spoken in the Moselle département in the north-eastern French region of Lorraine.The term Lorraine Franconian has multiple denotations...

in its 1990 decree. The French government has not followed suit and recognised Picard as a regional language (this is in line with its policy of linguistic unity, which allows for only one official language in France), although some reports have recognized Picard as a language distinct from French.

The following is an extract from a report by Prof. Bernard Cerquiglini, the director of the National Institute of the French Language (l'Institut national de la langue française; a branch of the National Center of Scientific Research, CNRS) for the French Education, Research and Technology Minister and the French Culture and Communications Minister on the languages of France (April 1999):

The gap between French which is itself a dialect of langue d'oïl and the varieties of langues d'oïl, which today we would call "French dialects," has continued to widen; Franc-comtois, Walloon
Walloon language
Walloon is a Romance language which was spoken as a primary language in large portions of the Walloon Region of Belgium and some villages of Northern France until the middle of the 20th century. It belongs to the langue d'oïl language family, whose most prominent member is the French language...

, Picard, Norman
Norman language
Norman is a Romance language and one of the Oïl languages. Norman can be classified as one of the northern Oïl languages along with Picard and Walloon...

, Gallo
Gallo language
Gallo is a regional language of France. Gallo is a Romance language, one of the Oïl languages. It is the historic language of the region of Upper Brittany and some neighboring portions of Normandy, but today is spoken by only a small minority of the population, having been largely superseded by...

, Poitevin, Saintongeais
Saintongeais
Saintongeais is a dialect spoken halfway down the western coast of France in the former provinces of Saintonge, Aunis and Angoumois, all of which have been incorporated into the current départements of Charente and Charente-Maritime as well as in parts of their neighbouring départements of...

, Bourguignon-morvandiau
Burgundian language (Oïl)
The Burgundian language, also known by French names Bourguignon-morvandiau, Bourguignon, and Morvandiau, is an Oïl language spoken in Burgundy and particularly in the Morvan area of the region....

, Lorrain
Lorrain language
Lorrain is a language spoken by a minority of people in Lorraine in France and in Gaume in Belgium. It is one of the Langues d'oïl. It is classified as a regional language of France, and has the recognised status of a regional language of Wallonia...

must be accepted among the regional languages of France; by placing them on the list [of French regional languages], they will be known from then on as langues d'oïl.

Despite the fact it has no official status as a language in France, Picard, along with all the other languages spoken in France, benefits from any actions led by the Culture Minister's General Commission on the French Language and the Languages of France (la Délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues de France).

Origins and dialectic variations

Picard, like French, is one of the langues d'oïl and belongs to the Gallo

Gaul

Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...

-Roman

Romance languages

family of languages. It consists of all the varieties used for writing in the north of France from before the year 1000 (in the south of France at that time the Occitan language was used). Often the langues d'oïl are referred to simply as Old French

Old French

Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...

.

Picard is phonetically quite different from the central langues d'oïl, which evolved into the modern French language. Among the most notable traits, the evolution in Picard towards palatalization

Palatalization

In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....

is less marked than in the central langues d'oïl, in which languages it is particularly striking; /k/ or /ɡ/ before /j/, tonic /i/ and /e/, as well as in front of tonic /a/ and /ɔ/ (the open /o/ of the French porte) in central Old French, but not in Picard:

Picard keval ~ Old French cheval (horse; pronounced [tʃeval] rather than the modern [ʃəval]), from *kábal (vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...

cáballus): retaining the original /k/ in Picard before tonic /a/ and /ɔ/.
Picard gambe ~ Old French jambe (leg; pronounced [dʒambe] rather than the modern [ʒɑ̃b] – [ʒ] is the ge sound in beige), from *gámbe (vulgar Latin gámba): absence of palatalization of /ɡ/ in Picard before tonic /a/ and /ɔ/.
Picard kief ~ Old French chef (leader), from *káf (Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

cáput): less palatalization of /k/ in Picard
Picard cherf ~ Old French cerf (stag; pronounced [ʃerf] and [tserf] respectively), from *kárf (Latin cērvus): simple palatalization in Picard, palatalization then fronting in Old French

The effects of palatalization can be summarised as: and (tonic) /y/, /i/ or /e/: Picard /tʃ/ (written ch) ~ Old French /ts/ (written c) and /ɡ/ + tonic /a/ or /ɔ/: Picard /k/ and /ɡ/ ~ Old French /tʃ/ and /dʒ/.

This leads to striking differences, such as Picard cachier ('to hunt') ~ Old French chacier, which later took the modern French form of chasser.

Because of how near Paris is to the northernmost regions of France, French (that is, the languages that were spoken in and around Paris) greatly influenced Picard, and vice versa. The closeness between Picard and French is the reason why Picard is not always recognised as a language in its own right, as opposed to a "distortion of French" as it is often viewed.

The Picard language includes a variety of extremely closely related dialects. It is difficult to list them all accurately in the absence of specific studies on the dialectical variations, but we can probably provisionally distinguish between the following principal varieties: Amiénois, Vimeu-Ponthieu, Vermandois, Thiérache, Beauvaisis, "chtimi" (Bassin Minier, Lille

Lille

), dialects in other regions near Lille (Roubaix, Tourcoing, Mouscron, Comines), "rouchi" (Valenciennois

Valenciennes

) and Tournaisis, Borain, Artésien rural, Boulonnais. These varieties are defined by specific phonetic, morphological or lexical traits, and sometimes by a distinctive literary tradition.

Some words and phrases

Many patois words are very similar to French, but a large number of words are totally specific to Picard, principally terms relating to mining

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

.

Here are several typical northern phrases in Picard, accompanied by French and English translations:

Mi, à quatre heures, j'archine eune bonne tartine.

Moi, à quatre heures, je mange une bonne tartine.

"At four o'clock, I eat a good snack."

Quind un Ch'ti mi i'est'à l'agonie, savez vous bin che qui li rind la vie ? I bot un d'mi. (Les Capenoules (a music group))

Quand un Nordiste est à l'agonie, savez-vous bien ce qui lui rend la vie ? Il boit un demi.

"When a northerner is dying, do you know what revives him? He drinks a pint."

Chuque

sucre, bonbon

"sugar, a sweet"

Pindant l'briquet un galibot composot, assis sur un bos,

L'air d'eune musique qu'i sifflotot

Ch'étot tellemint bin fabriqué, qu'les mineurs lâchant leurs briquets

Comminssotent à's'mette à'l'danser (Edmond Tanière - La polka du mineur)

Pendant le casse-croûte un jeune mineur composa, assis sur un bout de bois

L'air d'une musique qu'il sifflota

C'était tellement bien fait que les mineurs lâchant leurs casse-croûte

Commencèrent à danser.

"During lunch a young miner composed, seated on a piece of wood

"The melody of a tune that he whistled

"It was so well done that the miners, leaving their sandwiches,

"Started to dance to it" (Edmond Tanière - La polka du mineur, "The Miner's Polka")

Brayou

pleurnichard

"crybaby"

I'n'faut pas qu'ches glaines is cantent pus fort que'ch'co.

Il ne faut pas que les poules chantent plus fort que le coq.

"Hens must not sing louder than the rooster" (n.b. this saying really refers to men and women rather than poultry)

Moqueu d'gins

railleur, persifleur (lit. moqueur des gens)

"someone who mocks or jeers at people" (compare gens, which is French for "people")

Ramaseu d'sous

personne âpre au gain (lit. ramasseur de sous)

"a greedy person"

Use

Picard is not taught in French

France

schools (apart from a few one-off and isolated courses) and is generally only spoken among friends or family members. It has nevertheless been the object of university research in Lille

Lille

and Amiens

Amiens

Amiens is a city and commune in northern France, north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme department in Picardy...

. Since people are nowadays able to move around France more easily than in past centuries, the different varieties of Picard are converging and becoming more similar. In its daily use, Picard is tending to lose its distinctive features and may be confused with regional French. At the same time, even though most Northerners can understand Picard today, fewer and fewer are able to speak it, and people who speak Picard as their first language

First language

A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...

are increasingly rare, particularly under age 50.

The 2008 film Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis
Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis
Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis is a 2008 French comedy film starring Kad Merad, Dany Boon and Zoé Félix.The film has broken nearly every box office record in France: it debuted as the top film with US$31.67 million at 793 sites. As of 28 February 2010, the film had been seen by 20.5 million people in...

, starring comedian Dany Boon

Dany Boon

Dany Boon is a French comedian who has acted both on the stage and the screen. He takes his stage name from the television show Daniel Boone.-Life and career:...

, deals with Ch'ti language and culture and the perceptions of the region by outsiders.

Written Picard

Today Picard is primarily a spoken language. This was not the case originally; indeed, from the medieval period there is a wealth of literary texts in Picard. However, Picard was not able to compete with the inter-regional literary language, which French became, and was slowly reduced to the status of a "regional language."

A more recent body of Picard literature, written during the last two centuries, also exists. Modern written Picard is generally a transcription of the spoken language. For that reason, words are often spelled in a variety of different ways (in the same way that English and French were before they were standardised). One system of spelling for Picard words is very similar to that of French. This is undoubtedly the easiest for French speakers to understand, but can also contribute the stereotype that Picard is only a corruption of French rather than a language in its own right. Various spelling methods have been proposed since the 1960s to offset this disadvantage, and to give Picard a visual identity that is distinct from French. At the present time, there is a consensus, at least between universities, in favor of the written form known as Feller-Carton (based on the Walloon

Walloon language

spelling system – which was developed by Jules Feller

Jules Feller

Jules Feller was a Belgian academician and Walloon militant.-Biography:Jules Feller created the 'Feller system' of spelling for the Walloon language...

– and adapted for Picard by Prof. Fernand Carton).

Learning Picard

Picard, although it is primarily a spoken language, does also have a body of written literature: poetry, songs ("P'tit quinquin

P'tit quinquin

"P'tit quinquin" is a song by Alexandre Desrousseaux which was written in 1853 in Picard language. Picard language is closely related to French, and is spoken in two regions in the north of France – Nord-Pas-de-Calais and in parts of the Belgian region Wallonia.This simple lullaby marks the...

" for example), comic books etc.

A certain number of dictionaries and patois guides also exist (for French speakers):

René Debrie, Le cours de picard pour tous - Eche pikar, bèl é rade (le Picard vite et bien). Parlers de l'Amiénois. Paris, Omnivox, 1983 (+ 2 cassettes), 208p.
Alain Dawson, Le picard de poche. Paris : Assimil, 2003, 192p.
Alain Dawson, Le "chtimi" de poche, parler du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais. Paris : Assimil, 2002, 194p.
Armel Depoilly (A.D. d'Dérgny), Contes éd no forni, et pi Ramintuvries (avec lexique picard-français). Abbeville : Ch'Lanchron, 1998, 150p.
Jacques Dulphy, Ches diseux d'achteure : diries 1989. Amiens : Picardies d'Achteure, 1992, 71p. + cassette
Gaston Vasseur, Dictionnaire des parlers picards du Vimeu (Somme), avec index français-picard (par l'équipe de Ch'Lanchron d'Abbeville). Fontenay-sous-Bois : SIDES, 1998 (rééd. augmentée), 816p. (11.800 termes)
Gaston Vasseur, Grammaire des parlers picards du Vimeu (Somme) - morphologie, syntaxe, anthropologie et toponymie. 1996, 144p.

Linguistic studies of Picard

Auger, Julie. 2010. Picard et français; La grammaire de la différence. Mario Barra-Jover (ed.), Langue française 168,4:19-34.
Auger, Julie. 2008. (with Anne-José Villeneuve) Ne deletion in Picard and in regional French: Evidence for distinct grammars. Miriam Meyerhoff & Naomi Nagy (eds.), Social Lives in Language – Sociolinguistics and multilingual speech communities. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 223–247.
Auger, Julie. 2005. (with Brian José). “Geminates and Picard pronominal clitic allomorphy”. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 4:127-154.
Auger, Julie. 2004 (with Brian José). “(Final) nasalization as an alternative to (final) devoicing: The case of Vimeu Picard”. In Brian José and Kenneth de Jong (eds.). Indiana University Linguistics Club Working Papers Online 4. http://www.indiana.edu/~iulcwp/ .
Auger, Julie. 2003 “Le redoublement des sujets en picard”. Journal of French Language Studies 13,3:381-404.
Auger, Julie. 2003. “Les pronoms clitiques sujets en picard: une analyse au confluent de la phonologie, de la morphologie et de la syntaxe”. Journal of French Language Studies 13,1:1-22.
Auger, Julie. 2003. “The development of a literary standard: The case of Picard in Vimeu-Ponthieu, France”. In When Languages Collide: Perspectives on Language Conflict, Language Competition, and Language Coexistence, B.D. Joseph et al., editors. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. pp. 141–164.5
Auger, Julie. 2003. “Pronominal clitics in Picard revisited”. In Rafael Núñez-Cedeño, Luís López, & Richard Cameron (eds.), Language Knowledge and Language Use: Selected Papers from LSRL 31. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 3–20.
Auger, Julie. 2003. “Picard parlé, picard écrit: comment s’influencent-ils l’un l’autre?”. In Jacques Landrecies & André Petit (eds.), Le picard d’hier et d’aujourd’hui, special issue of Bien dire et bien Aprandre, 21, Centre d'Études médiévales et Dialectales, Lille 3, pp. 17–32.
Auger, Julie. 2002. (with Jeffrey Steele) “A constraint-based analysis of intraspeaker variation: Vocalic epenthesis in Vimeu Picard”. In Current Issues in Linguistic Theory: Selected Papers from the XXIXth Linguistic Symposium on the Romance Languages (LSRL), Ann Arbor 8–11 April 1999, ed. by T. Satterfield, C. Tortora, & D, Cresti. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 306–324.
Auger, Julie. 2002. “Picard parlé, picard écrit: dans quelle mesure l’écrit représente-t-il l’oral?”. In Claus Pusch & Wolfgang Raible (eds.), Romanistische Korpuslinguistik. Korpora und gesprochene Sprache / Romance Corpus Linguistics. Corpora and Spoken Language. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. pp. 267–280. (ScriptOralia Series)
Auger, Julie. 2001 “Phonological variation and Optimality Theory: Evidence from word-initial vowel epenthesis in Picard”. Language Variation and Change 13,3:253-303.
Auger, Julie. 2000 “Phonology, variation, and prosodic structure: Word-final epenthesis in Vimeu Picard”. In J. M. Fontana et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the First International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE). Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra. pp. 14–24.

External links

Ethnologue report for Picard
The Princess & Picard - an essay about Picard from Indiana University, USA
Qu'est-ce que le Picard? (in French) - history of Picard
Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (in French)- a comedy about differences between northerner and southerner people in France.

Audio

http://ches.diseux.free.fr/sons/d85.mp3

http://ches.diseux.free.fr/diri/dir85.htm

Centre de Ressources pour la Description de l'Oral (CRDO) ( http://www.language-archives.org/language/pcd )

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Recognition

Origins and dialectic variations

Some words and phrases

Use

Written Picard

Learning Picard

See also

Linguistic studies of Picard

External links

Audio