Brayons, also called Madawaskayens, are a francophone people inhabiting the area in and around Madawaska County,

New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...

, Canada, including some parts of northern Maine. In French, they are called or feminine as in ''Brayon culture'', or . Given their location in New Brunswick, and that most Brayons descend from Acadians who escaped the Deportation of the Acadians, they are considered by many to be Acadians. However, some residents relate more to Quebec and have strong roots and ancestral ties to Quebec. The Madawaska region used to be part of Quebec when it was called

Lower Canada The Province of Lower Canada (french: province du Bas-Canada) was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence (1791–1841). It covered the southern portion of the current Province of Quebec ...

. Brayons have a distinctive culture with a history and heritage linked to farming and forestry in the Madawaska area, unlike both the primarily maritime heritage of the modern Acadians and the St. Lawrence Valley history of the Québécois.

Dialect

Unlike Acadian French, for example, Brayon does not possess its own words or definitions. The primary difference consists in a simple denotation of certain words due to their pronunciation. Many gramamtical forms, such as masculine and feminine adjective endings or the past tenses of some verbs, are homophones in Brayon. Both Brayon and Acadian are considered dialects of French (as opposed to independent languages), but the definition of the terms "language" and "dialect" may also overlap and are often subject to debate. One basic distinctive trait of Brayon, however, is made in words such as ("stain") and ("task") in which the "a" tends to resemble an open back unrounded vowel , despite the circumflex. That in turn highlights the difference of pronouncing "a" in (3rd singular of the verb , "to have") and (pronoun "at"), which is already strong in Quebec unlike in France. The same rule also applies to in ("skinny") and ("vinegar"), which become , as in ("feast").

Etymology

The term Brayon is thought to have come to reference inhabitants of the Madawaska area as well as their variety of French through

malapropism A malapropism (also called a malaprop, acyrologia, or Dogberryism) is the mistaken use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, sometimes humorous utterance. An example is the statement attributed t ...

. "Brayon" used to be written as "Breillon".Yves Cormier, Dictionnaire du français acadien, Fides, 2009 (ISBN 978-2-7621-3010-2), p. 109. The origins of the word Brayon are not well known. It is hypothesized to have maybe been derived from the verb "Brayer" (to pull on a rope), the noun "Braie" ("old clothes" in certain dialects of the West of France), or the verb "Broyer" (to crush - the inhabitants of the region used to crush flax).

Geography

The border between New Brunswick and Quebec and to some extent

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and nor ...

traditionally did not matter much to the people of the area, which caused commonalities and close relationships between Brayons and Québécois and parts of northern Maine; likewise, Brayon French is not completely restricted to Madawaska County. This view of uniqueness led (at least jokingly) to the founding of the République du Madawaska during the Aroostook War, wherein some Brayons, disgusted with the actions of both British and

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

interlopers on their historical lands, declared themselves allied with neither and independent. Of course, the ''république'' was never formally recognized and was ultimately split by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty into American and Canadian parts.

Other uses

Brayon(ne) is also the name of the inhabitants of the Pays de Bray in northwestern

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

(Normandy, Seine-Maritime

département In the administrative divisions of France, the department (french: département, ) is one of the three levels of government under the national level (" territorial collectivities"), between the administrative regions and the communes. Ninety ...

and Picardy, Oise

Dialect

Etymology

Geography

Other uses

References

Further reading