| |
A Footnote on the French
Language in the Old Northwest
Robert L. Hall
[Printed with the permission of the author. All rights reserved]
It is impossible to
utilize French colonial documents as historical sources without
understanding the penchant of the French of the time to use nicknames
even in formal legal papers. Colonial Ste-Geneviève, now our St.
Genevieve, Missouri, was also known as Misère or "poverty," and
St. Louis itself was known to many as Paincourt, said to mean
"short on bread." The principle of homophony or sound resemblance can be
used to derive the French nickname Louis Constant for Prairie du Chien,
for many years a place of rendezvous for traders on the Mississippi just
above the mouth of the Wisconsin River. L'ouisconsin (The
Wisconsin) became Louisconstant or Louis Constant
(steadfast Louis).
Juliette Kinzie, author of the 1856 travel narrative
Waubun, wrote that in her day "...a peculiarity of the voyageurs
is their fancy for transforming the names of their bourgeois [employer]
into something funny, which resembles it in sound. Thus, Kinzie would be
called by one 'Quinze nez' (fifteen noses), by another
'Singé' (monkeyfied). Mr. Kercheval was denominated Mons.
Court-cheval (short horse), the Judge of Probate, 'le Juge Trop-
bête' (too foolish), etc." She then gave the following as an example
in point:
Mr.
Shaw, one of the agents of the Northwest Fur Company, had
passed many years on the frontier, and was by the voyageurs
called Monsieur Le Chat [Mr. Cat]. On quitting the Indian
country he married a Canadian lady and became the father of
several children. Some years after his return to Canada, his
old foreman, named Louis la Liberté, went to Montreal
to spend the winter. He had heard of his old bourgeois' mar
riage, and was anxious to see him.
Mr. Shaw
was walking in the Champ de Mars with a couple of officers,
when La Liberté espied him. He immediately ran up,
and, seizing him by both hands, accosted him,--
"Ah!
mon cher Monsieur le Chat; comment vous portez-vous?"
(My dear Mr. Cat, how do you do?)
"Très bien, Louizon."
"Et
comment se porte Madame la Chatte?" (How is the mother
cat?)
"Bien,
bien, Louizon; elle es très bien." (She is very well.)
"Et tous les petits Chatons?" (And all the kit
tens?)
This was
too much for Mr. Shaw. He answered shortly that thekittens
were all well, and turned away with his military friends,
leaving poor Louizon quite astonished at the abruptness of
his departure.
The principle of
homophony also lay behind the rendering of Butte des Morts (Hill
of the Dead) as "Betty More's," as one of Mrs. Kinzie's English-speaking
travel companions insisted on calling it. Quite a different principle
lay behind the pronunciations given by Indians to many French words.
Certain sounds of French are absent in American Indian languages like
that of the Menominee of eastern Wisconsin. Such differences resulted in
transformations such as Menominee poso (both "hello" and
"goodbye" as in Quebec French) for bonjour)and Sapatis for
French Jean-Baptiste, the French "zh" sound being replaced by an
"s" and vowel nasalization disappearing altogther. Because of the
absence of the "l" and "r" in Menominee these sounds were replaced by
the "n" as in Anemau for Allemand, Makenit for
Marguerite, Manih for Marie, and Nowis for Louise.
English speakers should not feel too smug about their language use,
however. It is we Americans who render Pierre (South Dakota) as Peer,
Versailles and La Salle (Illinois) as Versails and Lay Sal, and De Pere
(Wisconsin) as Deep Ear.
Robert Hall is Professor Emeritus of
Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Adjunct
Curator of Midwestern and Plains Archaeology at the Field Museum,
Chicago. He is an eighth generation native of Green Bay and a 1945
graduate of East High School. He received his doctorate in anthropology
from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1960. [Return to Top]
| |
