Saturday, August 15, 2020

Genealogy

I had hoped to learn a bit more Walloon by now, but apparently this work of Kelly Biers takes time.

I did stumble into another resource.  In the book "Our Marchant Relatives" written by  Jeanne & Les Rentmeester, there is a section (6 pages) on the Walloon language, showing some commonly used words in English, Walloon and French.

The authors note the original source is from Mary Ann Defnet who sent them a small Walloon dictionary that was published in Namur in 1981.  The introduction to the dictionary has a short resume of work in Belgium to study the Wallon dialect, e.g., a chair at the University of Liege, Wallon homage at the Brussels University Library, a center at the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve, etc.

Anyway since learning Walloon has been slow, and there is this COVID thing going on, I have found it a great time to work on genealogy.

I like familysearch better than ancestry, since its free, and more importantly its wiki style (a collaborative approach) with one big tree, vs ancestry where everyone creates their own tree.  (which often times seems to lead to replication of incorrect info).

For me its's about helping the next person. In ways it's much like how our ancestors would work together to harest the crops. I also think of it as a time capsule. Sooner or later someone else will stumble into it and appreciate it. I also view it as a good way to honor our ancestors.