Picard language

Picard (, also , ) is a '' langue d'oïl'' of the Romance language family spoken in the northernmost part of France and Hainaut province in Belgium. Administratively, this area is divided between the French Hauts-de-France region and the Belgian Wallonia along the border between both countries due to its traditional core being the districts of Tournai and Mons ( Walloon Picardy).

Picard is referred to by different names as residents of Picardy simply call it , but it is more commonly known as or in the more populated ( Romance Flanders around the metropolis of Lille and Douai, and northeast Artois around Béthune and Lens). It is also named around Valenciennes, around Roubaix, or simply in general.

In 1998, Picard native speakers amounted to 700,000 individuals, the vast majority of which were elderly people (aged 65 and over). Since its daily use had drastically declined, Picard was declared by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) a "severely endangered language".

Recognition

Belgium's French Community gave full official recognition to Picard as a regional language along with Walloon, ( Lorraine), ( Champagne) and Lorraine German in its 1990 decree. The French government has not followed suit and has not recognized Picard as an official regional language (in line with its policy of linguistic unity, which allows for only one official language in France), but some reports have recognized Picard as a language distinct from French.

A 1999 report by Bernard Cerquiglini, the director of the (National Institute of the French Language) stated:

The gap has continued to widen between French and the varieties of , which today we would call "French dialects"; , Walloon, Picard, Norman, Gallo, , , , Lorrain must be accepted among the regional languages of France; by placing them on the list f French regional languages they will be known from then on as .

Even if it has no official status as a language in France, Picard, along with all the other languages spoken in France, benefits from actions led by the Culture Minister's General Delegation for the French language and the languages of France ().

Origins

Picard, like French, is one of the '' langues d'oïl'' and belongs to the Gallo- Roman family of languages. It consists of all the varieties used for writing ( la, scriptae) in the north of France from before 1000 (in the south of France at that time the Occitan language was used). Often, the ''langues d'oïl'' are referred to simply as Old French.
Picard is phonetically quite different from the North-central ''langues d'oïl'', which evolved into modern French. Among the most notable traits, the evolution in Picard towards palatalization is less marked than in the central ''langues d'oïl'' in which it is particularly striking; or before , tonic and , as well as in front of tonic and (from earlier ''*au''; the open of the French ''porte'') in central Old French but not in Picard:
* Picard ''keval'' ~ Old French ''cheval'' (horse; pronounced rather than the modern ), from ''*kabal'' (vulgar Latin ''caballus''): retaining the original in Picard before tonic and .
* Picard ''gambe'' ~ Old French ''jambe'' (leg; pronounced rather than the modern – is the ''ge'' sound in beige), from ''*gambe'' (vulgar Latin ''gamba''): absence of palatalization of in Picard before tonic and .
* Picard ''kief'' ~ Old French ''chef'' (leader), from ''*kaf'' (Latin ''caput''): less palatalization of in Picard
* Picard ''cherf'' ~ Old French ''cerf'' (stag; pronounced and respectively), from ''*kerf'' (Latin ''cervus''): simple palatalization in Picard, palatalization then fronting in Old French
The effects of palatalization can be summarised as this:
* and (tonic) , or : Picard (written ''ch'') ~ Old French (written ''c'')
* and + tonic or : Picard and ~ Old French and .
There are striking differences, such as Picard ''cachier'' ('to hunt') ~ Old French ''chacier'', which later took the modern French form of ''chasser''.
Because of the proximity of Paris to the northernmost regions of France, French (that is, the languages that were spoken in and around Paris) greatly influenced Picard and vice versa. The closeness between Picard and French causes the former to not always be recognised as a language in its own right, but rather a "distortion of French" as it is often viewed.

Dialectal variations

Despite being geographically and syntactically affiliated according to some linguists due to their inter-comprehensible morphosyntactic features, Picard in Picardy, Ch'timi and Rouchi still intrinsically maintain conspicuous discrepancies.
Picard includes a variety of very closely related dialects. It is difficult to list them all accurately in the absence of specific studies on the dialectal variations, but these varieties can probably ''provisionally'' be distinguished:
Amiénois, Vimeu-Ponthieu, Vermandois, Thiérache, Beauvaisis, "chtimi" (Bassin Minier, Lille), dialects in other regions near Lille (Roubaix, Tourcoing, Mouscron, Comines), "rouchi" (Valenciennois) and Tournaisis, Borain, Artésien rural, Boulonnais. The varieties are defined by specific phonetic, morphological and lexical traits and sometimes by a distinctive literary tradition.

The Ch'ti language was re-popularised by the 2008 French comedy film '' Welcome to the Sticks'' (French: ''Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis''; French pronunciation: jɛ̃vny ʃe le ʃti which broke nearly every box office record in France and earned over $245,000,000 worldwide on an 11 million euro budget.

Verbs and tenses

The first person plural often appears in spoken Picard in the form of the neutral third person ''in''; however, the written form prioritizes ''os'' (as in French, where ''on'' is used for ''nous''). On the other hand, the spelling of conjugated verbs will depend on the pronunciation, which varies within the Picard domain. For instance southern Picard would read ''il étoait / étoét'' while northern Picard would read ''il étot''. This is noted as variants in the following:

Vocabulary

The majority of Picard words derive from Vulgar Latin.

Some phrases

Many words are very similar to French, but a large number are unique to Picard—principally terms relating to mining or farming.

Here are several typical phrases in Picard, accompanied by French and English translations:

:J'ai prins min louchet por mi aler fouir min gardin.
::''J'ai pris ma bêche pour aller bêcher mon jardin.''
:::"I took my spade to go dig my garden."
:Mi, à quate heures, j'archine eune bonne tartine.
::''Moi, à quatre heures, je mange une bonne tartine.''
:::"At four o'clock, I eat a good snack."
:Quind un Ch'ti mi i'est à l'agonie, savez vous bin che qui li rind la vie ? I bot un d'mi. (''Les Capenoules'' (a music group))
::''Quand un gars du Nord est à l'agonie, savez-vous bien ce qui lui rend la vie ? Il boit un demi.''
:::"When a northerner is dying, do you know what revives him? He drinks a pint."
:Pindant l'briquet un galibot composot, assis sur un bos,
:L'air d'eune musique qu'i sifflotot
:Ch'étot tellemint bin fabriqué, qu'les mineurs lâchant leurs briquets
:Comminssotent à's'mette à'l'danser (Edmond Tanière - ''La polka du mineur'')
::''Pendant le casse-croûte un jeune mineur composa, assis sur un bout de bois''
::''L'air d'une musique qu'il sifflota''
::''C'était tellement bien fait que les mineurs, lâchant leurs casse-croûte''
::''Commencèrent à danser.''
:::"During lunch a young miner composed, seated on a piece of wood
:::"The melody of a tune that he whistled
:::"It was so well done that the miners, leaving their sandwiches,
:::"Started to dance to it" (Edmond Tanière - ''La polka du mineur'', "The Miner's Polka")
:I n'faut pas qu'ches glaines is cantent pus fort que ch'co.
::''Il ne faut pas que les poules chantent plus fort que le coq.''
:::"Hens must not sing louder than the rooster" (n. b. this saying really refers to men and women rather than poultry)
:J' m'in vo à chlofe, lo qu'i n'passe poin d'caroche.
::''Je vais au lit, là où il ne passe pas de carrosse.''
:::"I go to bed where no car is running."
:Moqueu d'gins
::''railleur'', ''persifleur'' (lit. ''moqueur des gens'')
:::"someone who mocks or jeers at people" (compare ''gens'', which is French for "people")
:Ramaseu d'sous
::''personne âpre au gain'' (lit. ''ramasseur de sous'')
::: "a greedy person"

Numerals

Cardinal numbers in Picard from 1 to 20 are as follows:

* One: ''un'' (m) / ''eune'' (f)
* Two: ''deus''
* Three: ''troés''
* Four: ''quate''
* Five: ''chonc''
* Six: ''sis''
* Seven: ''sèt''
* Eight: ''uit''
* Nine: ''neu''
* Ten: ''dis''
* Eleven: ''onze''
* Twelve: ''dousse''
* Thirteen: ''trèsse''
* Fourteen: ''quatore''
* Fifteen: ''tchinse''
* Sixteen: ''sèse''
* Seventeen: ''dis-sèt''
* Eighteen: ''dis-uit''
* Nineteen: ''dis-neu''
* Twenty: ''vint''

Use