4 ms·

The traditional languages of France are basically an infinite fractal to the extent that many of the forms are basically unheard of outside of the areas in whic

The traditional languages of France are basically an infinite fractal to the extent that many of the forms are basically unheard of outside of the areas in which they're spoken. I lived in a (largely rural) department of France called Mayenne for a year. Old people there universally believe that they grew up speaking something called "patois mayennais" (let's translate this as "Mayennese dialect") before they had to learn French to get jobs in the city. However, I can find very little reliable information about this Mayennese dialect on the internet, in French or English. There are a few "local color" type newspaper articles that reference it, but that's about it. French dialect maps I've seen don't mention Mayennese dialect at all, and claim that Mayenne spoke either Gallo or Angevin.

schoen 10y ago
French Wikipedia seems to have an article about it https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayennais https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayennais including some purported vocabulary, plus a few books that discuss it! Some of them discuss it as "bas-mainiot" or "patois du Bas-Maine", of which Wikipedia says "Il [Département de la Mayenne] correspond essentiellement au Bas-Maine, qui formait la moitié occidentale de la province du Maine"... I guess you're probably very familiar with these geographical designations, but I'm definitely not! Google has a scan of a 1975 reprint of an 1899 book about "les parlers du Bas-Maine" which includes tons of references to speakers and lexical items observed in Mayenne. https://books.google.fr/books?id=mcykCmekgioC https://books.google.fr/books?id=mcykCmekgioC (It's sad that some pages are missing from the preview... maybe Google algorithmically concluded that the book might still be in copyright because it was "published" in 1975.) But it's true that a Wikipedia article isn't the same thing as finding a thriving language community online.
- umanwizard 10y ago
  Not sure how I missed that Wikipedia article... thanks for digging up those references!

schoen 10y ago

French Wikipedia seems to have an article about it https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayennais https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayennais including some purported vocabulary, plus a few books that discuss it! Some of them discuss it as "bas-mainiot" or "patois du Bas-Maine", of which Wikipedia says "Il [Département de la Mayenne] correspond essentiellement au Bas-Maine, qui formait la moitié occidentale de la province du Maine"... I guess you're probably very familiar with these geographical designations, but I'm definitely not! Google has a scan of a 1975 reprint of an 1899 book about "les parlers du Bas-Maine" which includes tons of references to speakers and lexical items observed in Mayenne. https://books.google.fr/books?id=mcykCmekgioC https://books.google.fr/books?id=mcykCmekgioC (It's sad that some pages are missing from the preview... maybe Google algorithmically concluded that the book might still be in copyright because it was "published" in 1975.) But it's true that a Wikipedia article isn't the same thing as finding a thriving language community online.

umanwizard 10y ago
Not sure how I missed that Wikipedia article... thanks for digging up those references!