Sewing/Quilting - Margaret Monfils

Nouns and adjectives

French doesn't have the same word order as English.  In French most adjectives go after the noun.

An example is "cher," which is commonly part of a greeting.  If it's used before a noun, it means "dear" (ex: Chere Julie), whereas if it's after a noun, ex: "une robe chere", then it means in this case "expensive", "an expensive dress."

However in Walloon the opposite is true., so you'll find the adjectives first:

on foirt ome; ene blanke majhon (Walloon)

un homme fort; une maison blanche (French)

a strong man; a white house (English)

When it comes to speaking, Walloon's phonology includes sounds, such as 'tch' and 'dj', that do not exist in French. (Speaking of 'dj', and I have also seen 'cz', that seems more Slavic... French with Slavic and Norwegian influences)

The word "cow" is "vache" in French, and "vatche" in Walloon.

The word "leg" is "jambe" in French, and "djambe" in Walloon.

The word "yellow" is "jaune" in French, and "djaene" in Walloon. (think jaundice)

You'll notice that hyphens (-) and apostrophes (’) are used much more than in French. For a good overview of diacritic (accent) marks see this Merriam-Webster page that explains the markings above and below letters.

When it comes to investigating phrases you might have heard, using google translate and clicking the speaker icon so you can hear how it sounds is very helpful. You will come across words that don't translate to anything close to what you might have heard. At first you might attribute this to the differences between modern day French and Walloon. However many times you'll get really close to what you heard if you investigate synonyms for the word or words that don't seem to fit.

Let's look at a common mildly vulgar phrase that means "my god anyway." My first attempt to write this was "mon dieu po sa." You should notice that "dieu", would equate to deity or God. When you put the English "my god anyway" into translate you get "mon dieu en tout cas." So you know the word "anyway" is not right. Substitute the synonym "however" for "anyway" and you get "pourtant". Again click the speaker icon to hear it and you'll recognize this is right. (French words look funny to us English folks.)

Another is "kiss my ass". "Kiss" in French translates to "embrasser", where as the rest "my ass" is "ma cul" which sounded right when I had google say it. So I looked for synonyms. "Buss" is a synonym for kiss, and then you get closer to how its really spelled.. "buss ma cul".

Again all this gives you the modern day French spelling and sound when you use the speaker icon to hear it. This is not how it's spelled in Walloon nor necessarily how it's said, but for us English speakers this is likely as close as we can get. And if you write it this way, at least down the road should you forget what "mon dieu pourtant" means, at least you'll be able to figure it out. And that at the present time is what I am after. A way to write down what I heard in a way that I can later reference and figure it out. Eventually we will have Kelly Biers' Wisconsin Walloon orthography will focus on a standard way to write it for us English speakers that makes more sense to us.

The classic example is the term "booyah." This is one of the few Belgian words that seems to have an accepted English spelling. It appears to be a variant of "bouillon". It is thought to have derived from the Walloon language words for "boil" (bouillir) and "broth" (bouillon). The spelling with an H has been attributed to phonetic spelling by Wallonian immigrants from Belgium.

Wikitongues

 Interesting project I stumbled upon; 

Wikitongues is building a seedbank of linguistic diversity by crowdsourcing video oral histories, audio files, and lexicon documents. Read our archival policy to learn about our preservation methods, or submit your own video."  

Much to my surprise a young man, Thomas Thibaut submitted a video on the Walloon language.   

What we know

What follows is a short email that I slapped together to share with a couple of my cousins. They'd ask "how do you know that?".... Sadly I haven't been able to determine with Marcel died, so I never really put the finishing touches on what follows. 

What we know, and how. 

There are a few big names when it comes to what we know about our Belgian ancestors. What we know today is built on a lot of shoulders. Sometimes it's interesting to stop and research the researchers. Hopefully knowing a bit about them can inspire others. 

One of the earliest sources was Charles I. Martin (1857-1894), who wrote on the History of Door county in 1881. His book biographies of nearly seven hundred families, and mention of 4,000 persons. 

Mathias Tlachac Sr (1829-1924), Born in Bohemia, dying in Door County. His interest in genealogy and history later led him to write a series of 10 articles about The History of the Belgian settlements in Door, Kewaunee and Brown counties. They were printed after his death in 1973 by the Algoma Record-Herald. 

Hjalmar Rued Holand (1872-1963) A Norwegian-American historian and author of a number of books and numerous articles principally dealing with the history of Door County. ie. Wisconsin's Belgian Community in 1931. 

There are three big names of recent times that come to mind. 

The first was Mary Ann Defnet (1930-2016) of Green Bay. She was a founding member of the Bay Area Genealogical Society, Vice-President and Historian of the Peninsula Belgian-American Club, a member of the Brown County Historical Society, the Belgian Researchers, the Wallonie-Wisconsin Society, the Center for Belgian Culture, and was a 35 year member of the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society. 

She researched and wrote the entire Belgian section of the “Farewell to the homeland: European immigration to N.E. Wisconsin, 1840-1900” She spent countless days at the UWGB research center where all the delcations of intent and other documents are filed. She compiled a list of all the Belgian’s who settled in the area with their dates of arrival. 

Father Jean Ducat (1922-2016) of Biesme, Belgium is a gentleman from Belgium who compiled lists of Belgian passengers who left for America. He was a parish priest and later a professor of Catholic doctrine at the Gosselies State College. He was president of the Archeo-Paleonto-Historique de Charleroi and member of the Wallonie -Wisconsin Association. He worked with Mary. 

Marcel Lacourt of (1924-?) Vitrival, Belgium created a list of over 18,000 Belgians who left the country and came to the US. His spreadsheet denotes birth dates, origin, ship names, landing port, destination. (He died about 2010-12), I am still trying to find out) Marcel spent quite some time in Wisconsin doing local research. 

Previously mentioned the Peninsula Belgian-American Club. It was formed in the late 1960’s in Door County. They have been helping arrange trips back to Belgium, at regular intervals. This started in the early 70’s with hundreds of Belgian Americans going back to reconnect. The Wallonie-Wisconsin association, is the sister organization in Belgium, for those looking to reconnect and visit here. 

Also definitely worth mentioning is The Belgian Researchers. It was founded in 1976 by Micheline Gaudette and Ardiena Stegen. They publish Belgian Laces. This publication has the stories of Belgian immigrants, their role and contribution to the development of particular industries in the US as well as their stories of the trials and tribulations connected with starting a new life in a new country. A special feature of the magazine is the "Queries", in which members desiring information about a particular person or event can submit a query in the hope that someone will be able to help. 

There are many other people and sources, but these are just a few off the stop of my head. When looking into other ethnic backgrounds, similarly looking into who and what has been others have done is probably the most important piece of help you will have. Step one is always to visit the library of the area you are researching. Visit the local history / genealogy department and ask the librarian what they have that no one else has in their reference section.

Milking/Farm Work - Arlene Jadin

 

Wisconsin Walloon notes

 A recent (Jan 2021) paper from Kelly Biers titled "Notes From The Field: Wisconsin Walloon Documentation And Orthography" is worth a read.

The first thing I noticed and was pleased to see is that this paper has the Creative Commons license.

It always bugs me when obscure research papers are published and are basically inaccessible.  They get locked behind paywalls with someone other than the actual authors being the ones who profit.  And what is more disgusting is often time the research was funded by tax payer funded grants.

/End Rant.

What follows are some things I have highlighted from the paper:

Walloon is a threatened language in the langue d’oïl family spoken in southern Belgium. There are perhaps as few as 300,000 active speakers in Belgium, where the language is sometimes considered to be a French patois (Eberhard et al. 2020), although attitudes vary by region (cf. Hambye & Simon 2004). In Wisconsin’s southern Door Peninsula, a small, rural community of descendants of Belgian immigrants have spoken Walloon since the mid nineteenth century. There are fewer than 50 native speakers of this dialect today.

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No conventionalized writing system for Walloon was used in Belgium until after 1900, after the major mid-century waves of immigration had taken place. Many of the original settlers were illiterate, and those who were literate read and wrote in French. Walloon remained the preferred language in the home for several generations, while French proficiency declined within a generation.

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Some common words are consistently written for advertising events like Belgian Days. Contemporary Belgian Walloon orthographies are largely based on French spelling conventions, with spelling and diacritic marks that distinguish it from French, but few Wisconsin Walloon speakers have studied these writing systems....  Wautlet’s Phonetic Walloon for Belgian Americans (1983) and Petit Dictionaire de Wallon have heavy French influence, using diacritic marks and spelling conventions which many English literate community members have admitted to finding unclear.

..some spellings have evolved through usage. For instance, in Belgian Walloon, the aforementioned chicken stew is written as bouyon, but booyah has been used on menus in Wisconsin for years. A popular card game, couillon in Belgian Walloon, is advertised as cooyah.

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Languages spoken in immigrant communities in the United States tend to Anglicize over the course of three generations..

Walloon, however, maintained its status as a primary language in this community for nearly a century before the community began shifting to English. The last generation of native speakers of Wisconsin Walloon were born between approximately 1920 and 1945 mostly acquiring English when they began attending public school around the age of six. Predominantly, this generation did not acquire French in the home, even if one parent was bilingual in French and Walloon.

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Most children born after 1945 grew up bilingual in Walloon and English but preferred English in most contexts and established monolingual households (cf. Alba et al. 2002). This generation has varying degrees of fluency in Walloon. Some members of this generation remain fluent bilinguals who can communicate with their relatives in Belgium. Some adult children of native speakers are fluent second-language speakers of Walloon. That is, they see themselves as English speakers who later learned or acquired Walloon as a second language, rather than as native bilinguals. Others are passive speakers, or adult learners who comprehend spoken Walloon but have limited spoken fluency themselves, and some are developing adult learners, who grew up only knowing basic vocabulary but have recently volunteered to learn the language in classes and conversation clubs with native speakers.

After reading this paper, I began to think larger about language in general.  I begin to wonder how well people communicated years ago.  I think about how in 1952 the Wisconsin Belgians sought to communicate back home.  Context is key.  In 1950, many households in Wisconsin were maybe just starting to talk English as their primary language.  By this time most if not all of the 1st generation Belgian-American's who could write in French were gone.  Most people in Belgium didn't start learning English till about the late 70's.

By the 1950's the Walloon language in Belgium was being replaced by French.  This adoptation was gradual, actually starting shortly after many left to come to America.  But after WWII, school became manditory in Belgium, and French was taught.

The Wisconsin Belgians origionally sought two way contact via ham radio in 1952, but the sun spot numbers weren't in favor, so they ended up sending a recording to Radio-Namur.

Traveling By Horse Drawn Sleigh - Emily Dhuey