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Taped tales say French frozen up

Despite several claims to the contrary and a strong English influence, Canadian French really hasn't changed over the past century, an Ottawa University study concludes.

Prof. Shana Poplack headed the project that analyzed tapes discovered at Laval University, featuring about 50 French speakers born in the mid-1800s.

Poplack said her team from the university's sociolinguistic lab was thrilled to uncover the tapes, hoping they could finally shed light on the effect an overwhelmingly English population has had on spoken French.

The University of Ottawa professor said she was surprised by how little had changed.

"I was surprised at the extreme similarities," she said and referred to negative sentences as an example.

"We studied 71,000 negative sentences," she explained. "Today, one tenth of 1% of sentences use the word "ne." The percentage was virtually the same 150 years ago."

STRUCTURE STUDIED

The team studied grammatical structure to base its conclusions. It did not refer to accents or specific words. Poplack added that more studies and analysis will be conducted.

According to Poplack, grammar usually changes very slowly in all languages. Although some words can change and foreign words can be introduced into a language, grammar generally remains constant.

Poplack said there was some initial concern that the speakers, relating community folklore, might have made an extra effort to impress their interviewer but further study showed that concern was unfounded.

"A lot of people say French has changed because of its contact with English," noted Poplack. "But basic structure or grammar has not changed."