Wesh. Stife. vag. What if the words and expressions of young Quebecers contributed to the richness of French instead of jeopardizing it, as the Legault government believes? This is the idea defended by the singer Jérôme 50, who has been working for a few years on a dictionary devoted to their language and who is releasing a podcast on Friday documenting his approach.
“It’s not new that young people are accused of speaking badly, but that ignores the linguistic genius they show. We must welcome this change with a good eye, even highlight it, rather than denying it, refusing it or criticizing it. It’s the only way to ensure the sustainability of French in Quebec,” says the young singer-songwriter of the popular song Tokebakicitte.
Passionate about words, the man who in recent years has started a master’s degree in linguistics at Université Laval finds it hard to understand the terrifying fear that the political class feeds vis-à-vis the way of speaking of the younger generations, who embellish their French of words borrowed from English and other languages.
He takes as an example the controversial advertisement of the Legault government, launched last March, to challenge the public about the decline of French. The advertisement took the form of a parody of a wildlife report using numerous anglicisms. Opposition parties and a fringe of society quickly deplored that the Coalition avenir Québec unfairly attacks young people, although the party has defended itself from specifically targeting this generation.
“This kind of message repels young people. It is a moralizing and uninviting awareness,” comments Jérôme 50.
Especially since these lexical borrowings are not dangerous, he explains. “There is no study that proves that when two lexical items are in competition, it can cause the disappearance of one of the two terms. For example: parking and parking, both are still in use in Quebec, they cohabit. »
The tapped slang
This is also a subject he discusses in more detail in his podcast. So be chillavailable Friday on OHdio, where he explores the different phenomena that shape the linguistic identity of young people today.
The project is an audio extension of its collaborative dictionary The little chiller, on which he has been working for three years, as a master’s thesis. Through the episodes, he directly gives voice to the young people he meets in the field, but also to linguistic experts to analyze and contextualize his observations.
In So be chillthe artist is particularly interested in slang Montrealers, with different accents, new offensive words or verlan. He begins the series by looking at the conjugation of verbs borrowed from English. If, traditionally, they are granted like the verbs in French of the first group (in ER), young people tend to drop the ending “é” to get closer to the original model. They are thus going to say “I chill”, rather than “I chilled”; “I have a bad trip”, instead of “bad tripé”.
We must welcome this change with a good eye, even highlight it, rather than denying it, refusing it or criticizing it. This is the only way to ensure the survival of French in Quebec.
Jérôme 50 also goes back to the origins of these new popular words like “patnais” (friend), “vag” (let it go), “wesh” (hello), or even “stife” (girl), which are in fact borrowings from other languages, mainly Haitian Creole and Arabic.
We also learn that this phenomenon is as old as the world and has forged the French language for a long time. For example, the word “couch” comes from Arabic, “robot” from Czech, “quilt” from Danish and “liner” from English.
“It proves all the lexical creativity of young people today, who continue in this tradition. But it is a phenomenon in which we are unfortunately not very interested, except to criticize it, ”deplores Jérôme 50.
This is what prompted him to create a dictionary of young people’s speech, and the podcast by extension. “I hope it will help open the eyes of politicians, teachers and many others to the contribution of young people to the preservation of our language. […] We have to relearn to love our French language, with these changes. »