French Blog

Courtesy of our guest blogger, Jeremy.

I’ve always wondered about French-based créole. How did it develop and how has it evolved? Where is it spoken and what similarities does it share with normal French?

Of course, this French blog won’t be able to cover exhaustive answers to such open-ended questions, but it can provide you with some lesser-known yet salient facts. For example, did you know there are multiple varieties of French-based creole languages? After the earthquake that rattled Haiti around the country’s epicenter and capital, Port-au-Prince, more became aware that Haitian Creole is the most widely spoken French-derived language in the world with 13 million speakers.

Creole contains a vocabulary with cognates rooting themselves in parent languages. This is why the grammar and pronunciation of Haitian creole appears to be peppered with multiple phonetic parallels and similar semantic flavorings of modern-day French. Creole is therefore a pidgin language because it was born in a simplified context as a means of communication between groups forced to speak disparate dialects or linguistic patterns. The French have actually employed the term patois (Old French for “to handle clumsily, to paw at) to describe pidgin languages like creole because it appears that its speakers were quite awkward in edifying their new linguistic fabric.

French creole sprouted from French colonial soil, which is why it is the most widespread of all creoles. As they built harbors to support trade triangle traffic and new communities, native inhabitants as well as imported slaves were forced to “clumsily handle” spoken interactions. This is why Haitian creole has woven French, African, and Amerindian substrates together with several English and Spanish ingredients. It is no wonder that French Guiana Creole, Reúnion Creole, Seychellois Creole, Rodriguan Creole, Antillean Creole, Karipúna Creole, Mauritian Creole, Agalega Creole, Chagossian Creole, and other African- and Indian Ocean-bred permutations of creole have conformed to strikingly similar patterns.

How difficult is it to speak? Well, you can decide for yourself by taking a look at Haitian Creole colors here:

How else can I entertain your appetite? Well, apparently French-based creole is also spoken throughout southern Louisiana. It just seems like the French were everywhere just a few short centuries ago!

Courtesy of our guest French blogger, Dasha:

April Fools Day is almost here, so start planning your pranks! Have you actually wondered how the tradition started? It is hard to tell where April Fools day was first celebrated because no records about the custom were ever recorded until the eighteenth century. The custom is said to originate from Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth century in Great Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands. The most popular theory about the origin of April Fool’s day came from France.

According to the Julian Calendar, January 1 is the first day of the year, but as Christianity spread throughout Europe it was changed to Christmas or Easter because it represented greater theological significance. By the 1500′s the European Calendar system was a mess. Not only were countries running on different calendars but also they had to change new year’s day every year since Easter is tied to the lunar calendar.  The French still celebrated New Year by exchanged gifts on January 1 following the old calendar, and Easter was primarily used for legal and administrative purposes.

Quickly people saw the huge inconvenience in starting the year on Easter, so they started to switch back to January 1. It is common to see both forms of dating listed in the early sixteenth-century French books. In 1563 King Charles IX declared January 1 to be the first day of the year, aligning legal convention with what had become a popular practice. Eighteen year later, Pope Gregory issued a calendar reform throughout Europe which encouraged to start the year in January and creating a leap-year system.

So how does the calendar have anything to do with April Fools day? Once France began using January as the start if the year, many people refused to comply and continued to use the Easter day. Some citizens simply had no idea that the law had changed since they lived in remote villages. Those who were stubborn to use the new system had jokes played on them. Pranksters would stick paper fish to their backs, thus the victims of the prank were called “Poisson d’Avril”, or April Fish. To this day this term is used for April Fools-and so the tradition was born.

There are a few theories to why fish is associated with April Fools Day in France. During the month of April the French streams and rivers are abundant with young fish that had just hatched. These fish are easy to fool with a hook and lure, therefore “Poisson d’Avril”. Other believe the correlation originated from the zodiac sign of Pisces, which falls near April.

No matter how the tradition came about, France is very dedicated to celebrating “Poisson d’Avril”.  Many pâtisseries (bakery shops) sell special poisson (fish) shaped creations out of dough or chocolate. The custom is especially enjoyed by kids who create their own paper fish to fool others and savor the sweet treats.

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He who lives without folly isn’t so wise as he thinks. – François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld