Observations of 

Basic French Conversations

I & II, Lessons 1-8

It cost a pretty penny, but I was extremely grateful to have the opportunity to purchase one of precious few for-sale copies of Rosemary Hyde Thomas's textbook, a unique transcription of the Missouri French dialect. Because it intends to serve as an introduction to the language, it is often very deliberate in its phonetic description of pronunciation; on the other hand, it somewhat inexplicably lacks a glossary and leaves readers to assume from context the meanings of a variety of unique words and expressions (such as quia, an unidentifiable noun unique to Paw-Paw French that I still have yet to figure out). On the whole, however, Thomas does an excellent job of capturing the essence of Missouri French, a task aided by the variety of cultural anecdotes with which she supplements her lessons. Dennis Stroughmatt has stated in interviews that he expects the dialect to die out, but is hopeful that the unique touches that set it apart from all other offshoots of French can live on in the memories of future generations; with this mission in mind, I set out to a create a (not nearly exhaustive) catalog of the distinctly Missourian features of the dialect used in this textbook. I have roughly sorted them into two categories: "sound changes" (i.e. phonetic and phonological differences from Standard French) and "unique words and expressions" (which primarily deals with morphology and semantics, but also some syntax).

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The videos embedded below, a relic of Médard-Carrière's 1939 study of Missouri French helpfully uploaded to YouTube by Illinois Country French Preservation Inc., feature folktales of the region along with a distinctive, more antiquated spelling of the dialect. This system can be very telling in terms of sound changes, but it often conflicts with the more contemporary, typically more standard spellings offered by Thomas in her textbook. I will primarily rely on the latter while occasionally using the videos' transcriptions for insight.

Sound Changes

• One of the most famous and immediately noticeable sound changes is the rolled /r/ in Missouri French, so the alveolar trill [r] (henceforth, a bracketed phrase represents a rough International Phonetic Alphabet transcription) replaces a variety of uvular sounds such as [ʁ] in common phrases like the opening exhortation of the annual fête in Old Mines, Laissez les bons temps rouler! ("Let the good times roll!")

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• What Thomas refers to as "/ay/ sounds" are often merged in Missouri French. This encompasses IPA [e] and [ɛ], spelled in Standard French as é, è, e, ai, and ei. This change is also reflected in some instances of Missouri French orthography, which respells appelle ("calls") as appélle, reste ("stays") as réste, and so on.

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• The common Standard French combination [wa], as in moi ("me"), soir ("night"), and avoir ("to have"), is often modified in Missouri French. This may represent a convergence toward English, in which [wa] following a consonant is significantly less common. The unit is typically replaced by [we], which given the above merger can be spelled multiple ways in different contexts. The above words become moué, souère, and aouère, which might lead one to conclude that word-final [wa] becomes [we] while non-word-final [wa] becomes something closer to [wɛ], but voisin ("neighbor") shifting to vouésin contradicts this example. Some words, such as coin ("corner"), perhaps because of its final nasalized vowel, do not change at all. The data might be too few to infer a general rule.

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• Thomas includes English pronunciations of most of the French sentences for the first few lessons, and if these are to be believed, occurrences of Standard French [ə], [œ], and [ø] are supplemented by an "r" sound, forming something roughly akin to [ɹ̩]. Thomas converts vieux ("old) into "vyer" for her pronunciation guide.

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• In probably the most definitive example of anglicization present in the entire textbook, the [ɔ] of words like comme ("as") becomes a more American-friendly [oʊ] or [o].

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• Thomas's pronunciation guide also reveals an epenthesis of [s] between [t] and a high vowel, such as in tu ("you," [ty] -> [tsy] in IPA), which is also revealed by the archaic tsu spelling found in Carrière's gathered folktales. The same is true for the analogous process with [t]'s voiced equivalent, [d], to which [s] assimilates by taking the form of [z] in words like midi ("noon," phoneticized as "mee-dzee" by Thomas).

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• The somewhat superfluous deemphasized -le and -re endings of words like semble ("seems") and libre ("free") are deleted and replaced with apostrophes in Missouri French: semb' and lib'.​

Expressions and Words

• C'est replaces est-ce que as the language's all-purpose question-signaling phrase, insertable mid-sentence. Many question words are also quite different in Missouri French. So a Standard French sentence such as Où est-ce que vous restez ? ("Where are you staying?" or more literally, "Where is it that you stay?") would be expressed as Squé c'est vous réste? Note the use of squé [ske], a word for "where" not found in Standard French, as well as the reste -> réste shift noted in the previous section.

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• As you may have noted in the previous point, the Standard French second-person plural (or singular-formal) vous forms lose their word-final -z (which also deprives them of a word-final [e] sound) and thus look like third-person singular forms.

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• Missouri French bears something of a resemblance to its Québecois counterpart, and one of the words that displays a lexical similarity is pis ("and"), which sometimes replaces and sometimes appears alongside the Standard French et. Another Missouri French alteration, the addition of -tte to words such as ici ("here") and aussi ("also") to form icitte and aussitte, appears in Canada and Louisiana's variants of French, and to a certain extent in the faraway Haitian Creole.

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• The first-person singular je forms of verbs would more appropriately be described as j' forms in Missouri French, since that pronoun attaches itself to the verb following it. In this way je prends becomes j'prends, which according to Thomas is spoken like "shphra(n)" (this also implies a sort of devoicing of the [ʒ], but I digress from the overall purpose of this section, and that transformation is already found in Standard French anyway).

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• Other pronouns that change in Missouri French include elle -> alle ("her") and nous -> nous aut' (literally "we others"). Nous autres (lit. "We others") is found in Québecois French as the first-person plural and resembles Spanish nosotros.

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• The Standard French simple future tense is largely eschewed in favor of something resembling its futur proche ("near future"), i.e. a form of aller ("to go") + an infinitive. The only difference is that Missouri French adds a t'. So Standard French near-future Vous allez être bien reposé demain ("You are going to be well-rested tomorrow") plays the role of the Missouri French standard future tense as Vous va t'êt' ben reposé demain. Note the aforementioned shift in verb form and deletion of -re, plus the different spelling of bien.

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• Semantic broadening of common French words is fairly frequent in Paw-Paw French. So venir ("to come") encompasses the meaning of standard devenir ("to become"), à cet heure surpasses more common standard maintenant as the primary word for "now," and the rather specific neuf is generalized to include standard nouveau ("new").

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• As far as more specific lexical items are concerned, the Standard French expression to describe hair color is J'ai les cheveux __, (lit. "I have the __ hair") where __ is a plural adjective of hair color. In Missouri French, J'ai la tête __ (lit. "I have the __ head"), where __ is a singular adjective, is used instead. This is vaguely reminiscent English expressions like "redhead."

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• In general, English is the primary source of "unusual" words in Missouri French. For "factory," Missouri French has facterie rather than standard usine. For "game," we see gheme used in place of jeu. And in perhaps the most obvious example, Franco-Americans in Old Mines celebrate Christmisse, not Noël.

This is by no means exhaustive, but simply a summary of some of the most salient points about Missouri French that can be inferred from Rosemary Hyde Thomas's textbook. Unfortunately, precious few other documents in the dialect are widely available. To learn more about current relief efforts attempting to make knowledge of the dialect more widespread, click here.