“Pain au chocolat or chocolatine?” This was the title of the conference proposed by Mathieu Avanzi, linguist and lecturer at the Sorbonne, this Sunday, during the last day of the Philosophia festival, organized in Saint-Emilion, whose theme this year was language. He sketched a linguistic geography of some particularities of French in the South-West.
Some regional markers
“Boudu, for good heavens, you say it if you are proud to live in the southwest,” says Mathieu Avanzi at the time of focusing on the language of Gascony. He reviews a few expressions that are popular with the land, such as “A bisto de nas, à vue de nez”, “an Occitan expression that is fairly directly reused as it is in French”, he explains. He asks the room if they know the meaning of “Tcharer” without getting many answers. It must be said that this verb which means to speak, to discuss, is especially used in the Pyrenees. The “funny” or the “funny” to speak of children are, on the other hand, well known. Within Gascony itself, there are therefore quite a few disparities. Does that sound hopeful to you? (amazes). What shocked the linguist the most, from Savoy, was the use of the verb debaucher to quit his job. “Elsewhere, when we are going to poach, we are going to invite you to bad activities, it is only in the west that you say that!” He jokes.
He returned to the origins of the word chocolatine, (pain au chocolat for almost all of France outside the southwest) specifying that in 1840-1880, we find the word but it refers to fruits coated with chocolate, sugared almonds or cocoa powders. It is only between the years 1950 to 1960 that one finds a first reference, in a magazine of the southwest.
A region under influence
“Bordeaux does not really have a linguistic personality,” says the specialist. She is a little stuck between two tendencies, there are Occitan words, never yours and truly Picto Charentais words, but again never yours. »The Bordeaux region takes certain markers from the south, such as the pronunciation of e silent or s less (10 to 15% of the inhabitants of Bordeaux pronounce it). And, under the influence of Poitou-Charentes, where pronunciation peculiarities hardly exist, it also recovers words from Old French such as debaucher, hire or benaise (to be well off). Result: it is at the crossroads of several influences which ultimately make it a region rich in local expressions. This situation also explains why there are inhabitants with “accents to cut with a knife”, according to the linguist and others very light.
What fate for local expressions?
Chocolatine, which has become an iconic word, will not be easy to disseminate outside the borders of the southwest, however, believes the linguist, precisely because it has a strong identity. What about the term “gavé” (very) Bordeaux-Bordeaux? “These intensifiers are strongly marked from a generational point of view, in the sense that they coincide with slang or young words,” comments Mathieu Avanzi. “Gavé” has been used for a while, even by old people and mentioned in the press, but we don’t really know what will happen. »Will Gavé be outdated by the next generation? Regional expressions are conveyed within the family, school etc. by a process of mimicry, the effects of which are difficult to predict.
Author of an Atlas of the expressions of our regions, Mathieu Avanzi launches in ten days an application “the French of our regions” which will allow in particular via recordings to get down to a sound atlas, which promises to be singing and colorful .