Francophone to English soundex

Kelly Biers has been working for quite a while on an English like way to spell Walloon words. It's the result of a desire by the Belgian American people of Wisconsin to have a way to write things without really understanding written French.

The soundex system is an indexing system based on the way a name sounds rather than the way it's spelled used to find individuals in census records. However since soundex is based on English pronunciation, some European names may not soundex correctly. An example is the French name Roux - where the x is silent. While Rue (R000) is pronounced identically to Roux (R200), they will have different soundex codes. This could be true of any surname that does not use English pronunciation.

For the purpose of genealogy what Kelly has been working on has an application. He has laid the ground work for Francophone to English soundex mapping. But it would still take a software coder to make this into something that could be easily used by the masses.

This blog

I started blogging in 2003 when it was a fairly new thing for my ham radio hobby. A few years back I wanted to start publically documenting things related to the Walloon language. So I started this blog. In reality this day in age you are better off reaching people on social media than a blog. But the fine people of Belgium have established many social media channels to promote their language. Most however due to the limiations of the various platforms are not sharing much in the way of a recorded pronunciation. That sort of thing would be the most beneficial in my opinion to those outside of Belgium, such as myself.

So what you see frequently is written Walloon on the various social media channels. Even using a blog sharing recorded audio is not straight forward. Your best bet is to convert the audio to a video (add a still image), and use youtube or the like.

So while I do not post much here, I do post various things to the Wisconsin Walloon archive.org collection. 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 unclude 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.

practicealanguage.xyz

https://practicealanguage.xyz/ "Practice a language by having conversations about the topic of your choice." The reason I am pointing out this website even though it doesn't (yet) support Walloon is because it's open source. And thus, becomes a good example of free alternative to other language learning tools. It uses GPT-3.5 to have conversations and Whisper-1 (ASR). Those underlying components are where Walloon support is lacking. Whisper is a general-purpose speech recognition model. https://github.com/openai/whisper

The National Belgian Village

In the early 1960's there was a movement mostly headed by Hank Quartemont who was doing the public relations to rename Fairland back to Namur.

What's more was a plan to build a home For the elderly named the "Villa Madonna".. and possibly a future museum. George Baudhuin pledged $150,000. This would have been a very good thing as it would have brought jobs to the area. Sadly both of these gentlemen died earlier that they should have, and thus it never took off.

The reason I post this here is because retaining ones heritage is not easy. Though according to Professor Bill Laatsch, we've done a pretty impressive job. However it never hurts to look at where you've been to figure out where you are going. Since then, the museum part has transpired in the form of the Belgian Heritage Center. But again, some jobs in the area would do a lot of good. Perhaps that can still happen as a lot of jobs let one work from home these days.

I've been looking at other places where Belgian's settled and the Carolina's has a large number of more recent immigrants. And that seems to be related to The European American Chamber Of Commerce Carolinas. The odd part is while there are many Belgian business references in those areas, I can't seem to locate any Belgian clubs where they are settling.

Another interesting place is Louisiana. From what I am told, there’s been a constant influx of French speaking Belgians to Louisiana for the last 50 years because of the CoDoFil program.

"CODOFIL is the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana. Our mission as Louisiana's French agency is to support and grow Louisiana's francophone communities through scholarships, French immersion and various other community and language skill-building programs."

Interestingly enough, one resolutions of the early (formed in 1913) Belgian Club's in Green Bay 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.

Sadly we don't have much lure to Belgian's today. That would go a long way for keeping the heritage nice and strong. Of course the trips with the Wisconsin-Wallonie Club did play a part in Auguste Hayot immigrating when he met and fell in love in Emma who translated for him on his first visit.

Walloon words on wiktionary

I've noticed more recently a few Walloon words with English definitions on wiktionary.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nodidju

And don't forget about the IPA reader. Just remember to select the Mathieu [French] voice profile. Keep in mind this is not perfect. Walloon vowels are not always exactly the same as in French (some are a bit longer or more or less open) and they have more /h/ sounds (in the East they also have a /x/ sound like in German/Spanish/Russian).

Using AI (artificial intelligence) to preserve Wallloon?

The first question some may have is why? Anything like the development; of the internet for example, that can create an easier way for people to learn something is beneficial. It may get to the point in Belgium (and I hope it doesn't, but it plays to plan ahead), where the number of Walloon speakers are far apart. This makes the ability for the potential remaining minority to learn from, difficult. Such is the case here already in Wisconsin.

ASR (automatic speech recognition) such as the technology in Amazon's Alexa, and Google's Assistant, is the process of interpreting spoken words into written words. There are privacy conerns to some on a device with an open microphone. However being able to keep fluent with a such a virtual assistant, my asking what todays weather forecast is, and the latest sports scores can be beneficial. More-so when there are less oportunities to interact human to human.

Lucyin Mahin has had a clear vision that a common way to write in Walloon needs to be established. From what I gather its acceptance/use has been mixed. But even for the language to survive in a oral form, at the academic level there must be a standard written version. This day in the digital world, that is paramount.

I've been reading up on organizations behind linguistic policy. Its amazing to me that I never really thought about how American English words are put into dictionaries, etc. But American English is a bit weird in that reguard. Most languages have a country endorsement, and /or formal group behind the languages policy.

I recommend the formation of a organization representing Walloon. Something like how we created the Belgian Heritage Center organization. An entity with officers who can toot their horn, write letters and advocate for a synthetic model of standardized Walloon. This organization could act as a decision maker in terms of walloon spelling for the community.

Belgium has an impressive (to me anyway) collective group linguistics, media/content creators trying to save a language.. So I am thinking some bigger cental organzation to work with all the smaller groups? Since the rifondou isn't catching on, and that seems to be a key thing to its survival... I'd say the Walloons should identify who would benefit the most from a standard spelling... It seems to me anyone trying to publish books would be the first people I'd approach for donations to try and fund the organzation.

Then if the Walloons are interested in a modern syntheic model, the question is how get the big tech players to pay attention to basically a minority language?

When I see the reports of AI developers working to save Icelandic and other languages, I am not sure if there is money exchanged or if there is just a marketing incentive.

Once you have a organization formed then you can advertise or reach out to the AI companies. And if you think having the Belgian Heritage Center co-sign such a request will help, please let us know, as we gladly will.

As its sits Google's Bard, and OpenAI's chat-gpt are likely the most promising technolgy right now. While they do claim to self learn, my experence has been they also forget. I think for this to really be able to translate written Walloon well, it will take developer input to feed it training data.

I asked Bard if there was anyone of Belgian heritage working at google. "Bart De Smet is a Senior Software Engineer at Google AI. He is originally from Belgium and has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Leuven." So that is a plus! (However this conflicts with his Linked In profile which says he works at Microsoft)

The Belgian Settlements is Door and Kewaunee Counties (Sep 1858)

The Belgian Settlements is Door and Kewaunee Counties
Sep 1858- From the Green Bay Advocate.

It will surprise very many even of our own people when we state that Kewaunee county and the southern portion of Door county are as densely populated as any other section of the same extent in the State--that is, of strictly farming country. The people there are mostly Belgians, and are settled compactly together— each family upon a forty or eighty—rarely upon a larger tract. They are just beginning to hew openings enough among the trees to raise what they need for their own consumption. We can scarcely expect any surplus from them for some years, but it will come by and by; and we are confident that the Peninsula will be one of the gardens of Wisconsin.

Probably no other race on this continent could have gone into the woods and combatted the privations of forest life with the patience, industry, and success which these people have. They were poor, with few exceptions, reaching here with exhausted purses after running a gauntlet of emigrant swindles between New York and the West. The purchase of forty or eighty acres of land generally took all that was left— and after throwing up a rough block house, the first question which presented itself to the head of the family was, how to get food for his little ones until an opening could be made in the trees, and the season roll round with the fruits of the earth. Shingle making has generally been the resort in such cases ; but the hard times of last year and the general crash in everything reached even the shingle trade so that none but a Belgian pioneer could have faced the task of making a living for a family by manufacturing shingles at the ruling prices. It was done however.— The very best quality of shaved shingle shingles were made in large quantities and sold for one dollar per thousand, and even less.

Another thing. Some of them manufactured lumber by hand. The statement will hardly be credited, but it is no less a fact that the Belgians have, with a common "whip-saw," manufactured the best pine lumber at a less price than it could be made with all the appliances of steam engines, muley saws and the most improved styles of mills. As handsome lumber as we ever saw has been made by them and sold at $5,- 50 and $6 per 1000 feet! In such ways as this— by hard and persistent labor— they gathered together the means of obtaining their daily bread find little else they needed; for some dry bread and potatoes formed the bill of fare for six days in the week, and the seventh a little coffee, mixed with chickory, for economy's sake, made a sort of holiday of Sunday. Butter and milk and eggs, there were none, for there were no cows nor hens.

Last week we were in the mill which does the grinding for probably half the county. It is the rudest structure imaginable. An over-shot wheel turns one stone slowly, and the bolting apparatus is propelled by a woman. She stood there patiently the day long, turning the crank with one hand, and with the other supplying the screen with the unbolted flour. The mill was thronged with customers, men, women and children, who brought the grain on their heads, and waited for it to be ground. Some of them come five, six, and eight miles, bringing each a load of from fifty to an hundred pounds.— Among hundreds of families, there are but two or three pairs of oxen, and we did not hear of but one horse in the whole settlement. The roads, indeed, do not permit of the use of wheeled vehicles to any extent. They are nothing but trails.

We saw, in one clearing, a man and a boy hitched to a wooden drag, preparing the ground for next season's crops. Most of the tilling is done by means of a sort of grub hoe; though lately the more fortunate ones manage to get some plowing done.

We met a woman and her son on the way to Green Bay with a basket of chickens and some other little produce. They had already walked eight miles and had fourteen more to go—making twenty-two miles. Their marketing would bring them in town perhaps one dollar and a half.

At one house where we stopped in, the field hands were at dinner, a loaf of black bread and a kettle of coffee were all that we saw on the table. They dipped the bread in the coffee and seemed to be making a comfortable meal. At another house we found a man cutting up a pig. So marked an instance of extravagance surprised us, until we were told that a hear had killed it the night before, and they had rescued it from his clutches. The bears are very troublesome, carrying off pigs and calves. Some of them are killed occasionally.

We have already noticed the beginning of a town on the Bay shore— Dycksville- which is likely to be their principal post on the western side. Here are one or two taverns, or places where the travelers may find rest for the night—and a very good store kept by Mr. Van Dyck. His establishment embraces almost everything needed in a new country, from wooden shoes to sacks of flour. And not alone wooden shoes, for we noticed some fine shoes for women and boots for men. Mr. Van Dyck seems to be doing a paying business, and he ought to— for he is a pleasant and sociable gentleman.

Years hence, when another generation shall have grown up and taken the place of the present one, the solid and prosperous men of the Peninsula will remember the stories of their fathers' hardships in the new country with wonder. The "gentle slopes and groves between" will bloom and blossom with all the wealth of a rich country, and Kewaunee County will rank with the first in the State.