Berdelaedjes

[Scribus electronicus]

Bondjoû mes djins,

Sereut i possibe d' emantchî on novea limero po l' ortografeye do walon do Wisconsene? Djans WW ?

[lucyin]

Dji n' so nén trop foirt ladsu, mins dji sereu dacoird. Li drapea sereut wa + US (come po l' arabe marokin u l' amazir marokin).

Gn a toplin des mots dins les documints rashonnés pa Steve Lempereur. Li rujhe, c' est k' i gn a k' ene u deus djins ki scrijhèt, et tchaeke fwait a s' môde.

E minme tins, motoit onk pol walipicård (mots aiwdirotchmint "bikeboks" come capia, tchapiô, kindjî, kerdjî.

Si nouk nel fwait, dji vou bén sayî après l' Rantoele 111.
_________________
Li ci ki n' a k' on toû n' vike k' on djoû.

[slampereur]

[Scribus electronicus]

Hello,

If you take a glimpse on the wiccionaire or on the DTW, you will see some information about the dictionaries which contain this word with the orthography.

For example, for "ouxh" (door), you have :
ouxh [R13]; ouh [E1,E203,G204]; ouf [E1,G204]; ou [G204]; ouhy [G204]; ouch [G204]; uhy [G204]; uch [C13,O4,S0,S17,S117]; uche [C8,C9]; huche [S109]; huch' [S109]; euche [S104]; ëch [C65]; hëche [S25]; éch [G204]; ouxhe [E212]

Each letter refers to a region (E eastern dialect, S southern dialect, O western dialect, C central dialect G general R rifondou wallon) and each letter with a number to a diccionnary or an article.
The most famous dictionaries are :
E1 dictionnaire liégeois de Jean Haust
E34 Dictionnaire du wallon de Verviers de Jean Wisimus
E203 dictionnaire liégeois de Henri Forir
C9 dictionnaire Pirsoul de Namur
O4 dictionnaire de Nivelles
S0 dictionnaire de Bastogne (by the way this city became famous during the Second World War thanks to a battle between Americans and Germans)

What I would like to see, it is a new code specifycly for the Wisconsin Walloon. Let's say W.
W1 woud refer to one study of the professor Biers
W2 to another studie
W3 from a study of another searcher
...

So we can write where the word is from without with two letters and not a whole quote.

Is it a little more clear now?

Greetings
_________________
Araedjî waloneu prete a rvindjî si mancî lingaedje

[slampereur]

Okay now I get it, and you are referring to this handy reference site I assume: https://dtw.walon.org/

There is no published dictionary nor is there plans for one from Biers, which make his work less useful in my opinion.

If you can figure out English like (Biers) spellings for the words you have in your dictionary database from his white paper that I linked to, you are smarter than I, and or have more time than I do. Anyone willing to do that however deserves a generous applause as it's a great idea to an already great resource.

I'd like to see our recorded word and sentence list written in the Biers way, but there is a shortage of people here to do that. There is really only 2 or three of us working on this right now.

Everyone else stresses the word list should more importantly also be represented by IPA transcriptions.

In my honest opinion, I'd like to see what we are doing be more open and collaborative, specifically with you guys as I see this being more useful to you than us. But there are some differing opinions on all that. They stem from the woman who conceived the recording idea.

If you fell the way I do, I'd recommend reaching out to the Belgian Heritage Center here and maybe you can sway their opinion on that.

Steve

[Scribus electronicus]

I already called the Belgian Hertitage a week ago which answered me and gave me the adress of the professor Biers.

Indeed there is no published dictionnary in Wisconsin Walloon. However, on the wiccionary and, to a lesser extent on the DTW, references to a specific autor can be used. Typically, the first letter of the first name with a capital letter and than the three first letters of the surname with the first one with a capital letter.

Examples:
Jospeph Vrindts JVri
Chantal Denis CDen
Camille Gaspard CGas
Joseph Mignolet JMign
Laurent Hendschel LH
Paul-Henri Thomsin PHT

It is especially used in case of alternative forms that do not appear in dictionnary or for old papers to note that the word existed already at this time.

==== {{H|ortografeyes}} ====
{{Orto
| håyner = R9,R10:334
| hågn'ner = E170
| augner = C9
| auyener = C9
| auyenè = C1
| ay'ner = O0,O2
| augni = C13
| augnler = C9
| agn'ler = O0
| hâgnné = E203
| hågnî = ASou,MLej,JVri
|- = C8,R13
}}

==== {{H|ortografeyes}} ====
{{Orto
| plat de piere = [!d1900] (1717: inventaire de meubles tombés en Herstoux)
| platt-pîre = E203
}}

We can thus easely create new codes with Wisconsin speakers with Bier's orthografy like :
==== {{H|ortografeyes}} ====
{{Orto
| cafè = C1,C8, E1,E34, O0,O4, R9,R10,R13, S0
| cafeu = O4
| cafeh = SLam
}}

I think I should contact the professor to adress this issue with him.

As you explain it

[slampereur]

I am well aware of the video with Ivan Draize (he married a Lampereur) and the map, as it was me that collected the audio for the map.

I guess I should give my background. I am 45 years old, and my uncle spoke the language well as he had no issues visiting Belgium with his friend Harry Chaudoir 12 times. Sadly they are no longer with us. I took over the president position that Harry held for a long time of the Peninsula Belgian American club just over a year ago. This club was the incubator for the Helgian Heritage Center, as it started in the late 60's and organized the larger trips to and from Belgium in coordination with the Wisconsin Wallonie club over there.

I have been adding various things here:

https://archive.org/details/wisconsin_walloon

It becomes a mix of things that I find or feel are obscure and realted to the language that need to be put in a centralized place. Some of it will not be easily understood by those in Wisconsin. They are being added for the the benefit of those in Belgium. And then there are supplementary things I add to help people here in Wisconsin better understand their identity.

I have to use my best judgement on what I post, and whenever possible I include a source URL for what I am reposting. I try by best to research who has the rights, but the people are largely unreachable. So if there are content issues on what I have added to the collection please reach out to me. Please also reach out to me if you spot content (especially vidoes), that would help people learn the language.

I'll argue more on the openness of the 3000 words and 3000 sentences with the powers that be after I have completed breaking them apart. I don't want any kind of discouragement as I work on it. I am sure they will factor in my time commitment when I point blank tell them it will be hell or high water that we don't freely share this is the Belgians.

Feel free to reach out to me by email if you'd like more background on well really anything.

[Scribus electronicus]

Thank you for your response,

Concerning the learning of the Walloon language, there is three options for Wisconsin Walloons, about the variant tho choose :

1°) Normalizing the Wisconsin Walloon
It woud be, on certain way, logic to use the local variant of the language with its own specificities to teach the young generation. Although, for practical reasons, I think it is the less realistic option. Indeed, in order to spark the interest of the yout people, you need bags of pedagogical tools, books, other speakers and cetera. It already lacks among us, and it would demand an so big amount of work to do it with the very scattered ressources of Wisconsin Walloon that exists that it seems praticly impossible to achieve.

2°) Using the dialect of Namur
https://relis-namurwes.be/
The two great advantages of this option is that, fisrstly, it is very close to the Wisconsin Walloon and that it the most living variant in Wallonia. Indeed, after World War II, the Eastern Walloon (the mine with the united one) after centuries of domination declined and associations of the Central Walloon toke over.
However, you will be hindered by the fact that all the pedagogical material is aimed for French speaking people and that within these associations French is sometimes more spoken than Walloon.

3°) Using the rifondou Walloon or the united Walloon.
There is two great advantages to it. Firstly, it is, from far, the most present kind of Walloon on the Internet.
-The forum berdelaedjes for debates and discussions.
-The DTW and the wa.wiktionary.org (by the way, the dialectal wiktionary which provides the most complete pages in the world with many examples from litterature and dictionaries and very rich information about the dialectal variation)
-Wikisourd (wikisource in walloon) with about eight hundred avalaible texts https://wa.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisourd:Mwaisse_p%C3%A5dje . A great part of them is written in local variants.
-L' aberteke, also a collection of Walloon textes. https://rifondou.walon.org/rif-txt.html
Secundly, if you do not know French, the rifondou Walloon will help you to overcome this obstacle. Especially on the wiktionnary, it is very easy to add an English translation https://wa.wiktionary.org/wiki/tchetoere. In some cases, like here, there is even a picture.
In fact with its writing system that lets the speaker pronounce following its own variant, rifondou Walloon remains very close to the central dialect.

The rifondou Walloon remains very controversial. Some people consider that it's an artificial language that threatens the Walloon language. However, if you look abroad, you will see that the regional languages which chose a normalised survive better than other.
In fact, with it or not, with the shrinking number of its speakers and their greater mobility, the differences between the varieties Walloon language will irremediably decrease. The contacts between speakers of different linguistic areas is already growing, despite what the defensors of the regiolectal purism may think.

I' ve tried here to present the advantages and inconvenients of each variant. If you want to search more deeply, you can ask me or other people for more information. That has always been a subject of great debates.
_________________
Araedjî waloneu prete a rvindjî si mancî lingaedje

[slampereur]

I've done a fair amount of reading on the topic. I can't see how trying to maintain multiple regional spellings is sustainable. I look at how the French speakers of Canada do use the standard French spelling system, but they speak quite a bit different than what is spoken in Paris. They have a few times commented that at times they understand our Walloon better than people from Paris.

You may find it interesting that we discovered that an early Belgian club here that formed in 1913 tried to get the schools to teach French. I don't think many here could write, but those that could wrote in French as when they left there was no way to write in Walloon. Anyway I think my 1913 they realised they were at the end of anyone wrote could write in French. This clubs early meeting minutes were in French, later they switched to English.

So it was one of their resolutions was to have the French language added to the curriculum of the Green Bay schools. Unfortunately, the goal was not achieved in the grade schools, but high schools did give French as a language choice.

[slampereur]

I've done a fair amount of reading on the topic. I can't see how trying to maintain multiple regional spellings is sustainable. I look at how the French speakers of Canada do use the standard French spelling system, but they speak quite a bit different than what is spoken in Paris. They have a few times commented that at times they understand our Walloon better than people from Paris.

You may find it interesting that we discovered that an early Belgian club here that formed in 1913 tried to get the schools to teach French. I don't think many here could write, but those that could wrote in French as when they left there was no way to write in Walloon. Anyway I think by 1913 they realised they were at the end of anyone wrote could write in French. This clubs early meeting minutes were in French, later they switched to English.

So it was one of their resolutions was to have the French language added to the curriculum of the Green Bay schools. Unfortunately, the goal was not achieved in the grade schools, but high schools did give French as a language choice.

[Scribus electronicus]

Next these three options I raised, there is of course the possibility of studying the French language.

My former English teacher once lived in Louisiana where he gave French lessons. There he participated to a meeting of people interested about conserving the Cajun French, a local variant of the French language. They where first motivated to teach the local variant of the language, but they must come to terms with the lack of documentation and written traces of these variant. Dispite everything, they succeeded to create a kind of united Cajun French but finally, they had to switch to standard French for two reasons. The first one was the lack of local teachers while the French teachers from Europe or Quebec didn't know the local variant. The second one is that the student where not really interested by speaking it in their everyday life, but prefered the use standard French for practical reasons.

Dispite of this, I reckon nevertheless that there remains good reasons to not embrace the French language

A) At the contrary of the descendants of French speakers in Quebec or in Louisiana who identify themselfes as French descendants, Wisconsin Walloons define systematicly themselfes as Belgians, or at a pinch, as Walloons. The Wiconsin Walloon descendants are therefore more interested by reconnecting themselfes with their Belgian/Walloon roots than to the French culture which is foreign to them. When Wisconsin Walloon return to their origins, their are not interested by French, but more by what remains from they ancesters, and especially their common language.

B) While French colonisators of the 16th, 17th and 18th century spoke a popular variant of French at their arrival, almost all the Walloon settlers of the 19th spoke Walloon between them. Some of them had some knowledge about the French language, but it seems that it got lost after the First World War.
The gap between French and this variants is also much narrower than between Walloon and French.

C) From all the modern oil languages, the Walloon one is the only who boosts a large litterature sprawled on four centuries with hundreds of writers. Only on the Walloon Wikipedia, there are not less than 659 writers who are mentioned. https://wa.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categoreye:Sicrijheus_e_walon
I don't think that the Walloon settlers who came mostly before the fundation of the Société de Langue et Littérature Wallones and the blow of Walloon litterature in 1856 where aware that there was a written Walloon tradition worthy of the name at the other part of the Ocean when they decided to teach the French language.

As an example, some writers like Joseph Mignolet or Émile Gillard wrote something about fourty books in this language.
In total, there are about 30 000 books dedicated to the Walloon language in the Bibliothèque des dialectes de Wallonie
At the contrary the only samples of Wisconsin Walloon I've seen are scattered court songs or interviews.

In any case, whathever the option you woud chose, their will certainly be a Wisconsin print] on the Walloon variant chosen.
I would also be very surprised if the number of Wisconsin Walloons ready to relearn their ancestor's language deeply enough to speak it proprely woud exceed ten our twenty people.
_________________
Araedjî waloneu prete a rvindjî si mancî lingaedje

[slampereur]

I wasn't really suggesting just using French. I just wanted to point out that since there wasn't really a way to write Wallloon at the time that the ones who emigrated knew about, this was their plan. Little did they know about that time the Feller method was becoming a thing back home.

There were a fair number of people from my parents generation that took French classes in high school since this was the closest thing to what their parents and grandparents were speaking. Now with the current imigration to the USA, most people here are studying Spanish for economic/work reasons.

I too sadly don't think there will be many here who will attempt to learn Walloon. So like I mentioned I fell our project will have a greater benefit to you guys. We don't know what the future holds, but it would be foolish to not leave some resources for them. Thats how I look at it.