Comment by eesmith | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eesmith | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

In 6th grade, so back in 1982, I read the French SF novel "Malevil".

I was astounded (speaking as a US kid here), to learn that French people born and raised in France didn't natively speak French, but instead learned their regional language.

Here is an example, from https://archive.org/details/malevilmerl00merl/page/150/mode/... :

> And besides, Thomas was already quite isolated enough as it was: by his youth, by his city origins, by his cast of thought, by his character, and by his ignorance of our patois. I had to ask La Menou and Peyssou not to overdo the use of their first language — since neither of them had learned much French till they went to school — because at mealtimes, if they began a conversation in patois, then everyone else, little by little, would begin to drop into patois too, and after a while Thomas was made to feel a stranger in our life.

Two minutes ago I learned that "patois" has a distinct meaning in France: "patois refers to any sociolect associated with uneducated rural classes, in contrast with the dominant prestige language (Standard French)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patois

I am very ill-informed on the history of the topic, including the national language policies of France and Italy. I do know that Sardinian is not a dialect of Italian, but my knowledge isn't much deeper than that. ;)

IIRC in the early 1900s, coercive methods were used to stop children speaking their native regional languages, a lot of it in school.

In my region of Brittany (France) the most famous example that was on posters detailing good manners would say : "Il est interdit de parler breton et de cracher par terre" meaning "It's forbidden to speak Breton and to spit on the ground", placing both on the same level.

Stamping out minority languages and dialects was (and often still is) unfortunately common in most countries. I'm Russian, and my native regional dialect has some minor differences from standard Russian that make it sound a bit more like Belarusian. I remember how in school we had a teacher making fun of our manner of pronouncing words as "kolkhoznik speech" (implying that only the uneducated speak like that). This was in 1990s.

I am afraid this quote is an urban legend. It never existed.

> I was astounded (speaking as a US kid here), to learn that French people born and raised in France didn't natively speak French, but instead learned their regional language.

As a French person born before 1982, I find this sentence questionable.

If you mean "there were some people who learned a local dialect", then sure, you could dig some up.

If you mean "many regions had dialects that were learned before French", then I believe you misunderstood (or were misled).

Finding anyone who even spoke a regional dialect would've been a novelty, let alone one who grew up speaking it before French.

FWIW, the book was written in 1972.

I mean "there were some people", not all people - Thomas, in the quote, came from Paris and spoke French. He did not learn a regional language.

I don't mean 'many regions' because the only example I had was one region. The fact that there was at least one region where local French people, in a region which had been part of France seemingly since at least the Middle Ages, did not speak French as their mother tongue, astonished me.

FWIW, the French Wikipedia page says:

> Ainsi Malevil serait partiellement inspiré du site de Commarques (sa grotte, son abri troglodyte et son château)[2], tandis que le village de la Roque serait partiellement inspiré de la Roque Saint-Christophe, forteresse troglodyte voisine du château de Commarque. ...

and the location,

> La vallée des Rhunes : inspirée de la vallée des Beunes, et plus précisément la grande Beune.

so the author's fictional location was supposed to suggest the department of Dordogne in south west France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limousin_dialect tells me

> Limousin ... is a dialect of the Occitan language, spoken in the three departments of Limousin, parts of Charente and the Dordogne in the southwest of France. ... Limousin is used primarily by people over age 50 in rural communities. All speakers speak French as a first or second language. Due to the French single language policy, it is not recognised by the government and therefore considered endangered by the linguistic community.

Those people over age of 50 would likely have been children in a book written 53 years ago, with Limousin as a much more common language amongst the local adults.

"Over 50 in rural communities" in one of the more sparsely populated areas of France makes for a very small slice of the population even in that area, and even then, as pointed out, French is spoken by everyone.

On top of that, it is more "anyone who speaks limousin is likely over 50, and in a rural community", than "anyone over 50 in rural communities in that area likely speaks Limousin".

There are 10k speakers of Limousin today (according to Wikipedia), out of about 1.2M residents in Dordogne and Limousin combined. That's less than 1% just for that area.

To me, it is more of a local curiosity than a mind-blowing fact, but I suppose I grew up learning about the various dialects in France, so I have a different take.

> and even then, as pointed out, French is spoken by everyone.

Yes, as even the Malevil quote I gave pointed out. (At least by school age.)

> On top of that, it is more

The book was written over 50 years ago, so the Wikipedia article about present day use of Limousin isn't all that indicative of what it was like for the adult characters in the book, who would have been born before 1950.

> There are 10k speakers of Limousin

Why are you being so nit-picky? Look, this is a fictional place and the specific local language is never stated. I just today read the Wikipedia entry which give info about the location.

I specifically picked out Limousin, yes, because it fit the area, and because I could quote how the Limousin language was more widely spoken when the book was written than now.

But as the text I quoted says "Limousin ... is a dialect of the Occitan language". Wikipedia says there are about 200,000 speakers of Occitan, so that's the more relevant comparison, and "Though it was still an everyday language for most of the rural population of southern France well into the 20th century, the language is now declining in every region where it was spoken." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occitan_language

It seems to me that when Malevil was written, Occitan was still widely spoken as a first language in the area. Wikipedia says the author was living in the area when he wrote the book, so he should know.

The only reason I mentioned it was because you wrote "Finding anyone who even spoke a regional dialect would've been a novelty, let alone one who grew up speaking it before French." while the book, written by the French novelist Robert Merle - Wikipedia informs me he was "a household name in France, with the author repeatedly called the Alexandre Dumas of the 20th century" - comes across that speaking in patois was not a novelty but simply something expected, and which effectively all locals spoke.

I simply cannot reconcile your surprise with my reading and limited understanding except by assuming it's from before your time, from a mostly forgotten era.

> I suppose I grew up learning about the various dialects in France

That's .. kinda the issue, isn't? In Malevil the local language patois is not seen as a dialect of French, as I quoted, it was a language learned in school.

Wikipedia says it's more related to Catalan than French.

Why do you describe it as dialect of French?

> Why do you describe it as dialect of French?

Did I? I mentioned dialects in France, not of French, IIRC.

I'm nitpicking because, TBH, I quite likely just read too much into your use of "astounded" in your original comment. It seemed to me that you were overestimating how prevalent or significant these languages were.

By the mid-20th century, they were already quite less popular and even less so by the time Malevil took place (1977, I take it, even though it was written a few years earlier), especially when it came to being taught before French.

At the same time, I guess I was maybe as surprised to learn that Louisiana French is still a thing as you were about these areas in France. :)

When is something a dialect in France and when is it a language in France?

> It seemed to me that you were overestimating how prevalent or significant these languages were.

I said I was in sixth grade, a kid living in the US.

I didn't even know then there was more than one Romance language in Italy - as I alluded to in my original comment.

Yes, I now, decades later, know more. But I was sharing my childhood misapprehension and how I learned the world was more complicated than 11 year old me thought as something meant for others to smile at and enjoy, not to be nitpicked as if my comment was any profound statement about all of France.

My interpretation was not "questionable" - the story clearly was supposed to take place in a part of France where many of those in the countryside still learned a Romance language other than French as their mother tongue. That matches the real history for that supposed area that the author drew from. Yes, it's certainly something that's a lot less common now, some 50 years later. But then just say that things have changed.

My bad for nitpicking. Sorry.

it remains true to this day. gascon[0] is still spoken in south of france, by both young and old. i know because i've heard it spoken. the idea that the french speak french, italians italian, is very modern. european nations weren't as properly integrated as modern history will have us believe. iirc the integration sped up post-ww2. cf seeing like a state[1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gascon_dialect

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State

I studied Anglo-Norman French (circa 1300s), and found it strikingly useful speaking with a woman who worked in the Breton region of France.

See also: Jamaican Patois aka speakyspoke

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaican_Patois

Reply on news.ycombinator.com