Talk:Marchande

Stalwart111 The article appears to use the French 'la' incorrectly, based on page 254 of Valdman 2006. This reference is not directly relevant to the article as it is discussing Guadeloupe Creole, rather than Louisiana Creole. It would be useful to discuss the word marchande in Loisiana French and Louisiana Creole if sources can be found.

"“In Creole [=Guadeloupe Creole (GuaCr)] there is no masculine or feminine gender; 'le' (masc.) et 'la' (fem.) are always expressed by 'la' (det.) after the noun: machann -la 'la marchande = the (female) merchant' et van-la 'le vent = the wind'” (Poullet & Telchid 1990:1) [Editors' translation]."^[1]

In the sentence above, la marchande and le vent are examples of standard French.

Page 254 also goes on to say "overt gender marking and agreement phenomena are much more frequent in LouCr and Reunion Creole (ReuCr)",^[1] confirming that the first sentence does not apply to Louisiana Creole. TSventon (talk) 09:50, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

• Yeah, that needs to be fixed then. Let's discuss it once the AfD has been concluded. St★lwart¹¹¹ 10:30, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

• Stalwart111 I have done a quick fix. The previous version was confusing and a distraction for the AfD. TSventon (talk) 10:55, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

• Way to be WP:BOLD. Nicely done. St★lwart¹¹¹ 10:58, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

DavidDelaune do you have a reference confirming that marchande was "a creolized description"? The first Valdman 2006 quote above uses "la marchande" as an example of standard French. TSventon (talk) 19:38, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

TSventon I do not have an opinion about the gender determiner. I like the change you invoked and the current article lead is much better in my opinion. Louisiana creolized french has always been unstable so I can say that there isn't a clear answer to the gender issue simply because most creolized languages do not have a stable set of rules. But can you tell me why a Kouri-Vini word would not be described as "a creolized description"? Keep in mind these people are speaking Kouri-Vini. Are you making the argument that these colonists and slaves spoke a pure French dialect? DavidDelaune (talk) 20:45, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Hey, I wanted to share a doctoral thesis I found today with you guys. Apparently there was a computational morphosyntactic study of the Louisiana creolized languages, it was a super interesting read. It shows the instability of the languages that the colonists and slaves spoke. It covers both creolized French and Spanish in the early Louisiana colonies.^[1] DavidDelaune (talk) 20:55, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

DavidDelaune, I was asking if you could add a reference to help me and other editors working on the article, as well as readers. I have some basic French, but no knowledge of the variants in Louisiana. The references to the word marchande which I saw quoted in the AfD discussion all seemed to be in the context of English or French, so the Louisiana Creole version(s) of the word could well be different. I agree the thesis is interesting and look forward to learning more about Louisiana Creole. TSventon (talk) 22:15, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

DavidDelaune I have removed "a creolized description" as it was still unreferenced. TSventon (talk) 14:51, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

TSventon It's all good, I've been on vacation so haven't been on wikipedia in about two weeks. I like the change you have made, it appears more neutral. But I must tell you that calling a person in New Orleans a 'Marchande' is absolutely a "a creolized description". In case you haven't noticed the article is in the Louisiana Creole culture category and the word represents a Kouri-Vini definition. There are Louisiana Creole dictionaries that contain the word Marchande, unfortunately they are not free dictionaries. So I will refrain from challenging your edit and simply assert that Marchande in the context of this article is absolutely a creolized noun and consequently can be described as "a creolized description". My position on this topic has not changed, I am simply accepting your edit because it's a good edit. DavidDelaune (talk) 02:58, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

DavidDelaune I hope you had a good break. My belief is that marchande is a word in both Louisiana Creole (LC), Louisiana French (LF) and standard French (SF), however the spelling in LC could be different. Louisiana Creole people have always spoken a variety of languages, including LC, LF and SF. I am doubtful about the phrase "a creolized description" as it suggests to me that marchande is a LC word and not a LF or SF word. Mayeux 2019 says "defining the hard-and-fast line between LC and LF remains an unsolved— possibly unsolvable— problem" (p. 99) and "The near-identical lexica of LC and LF make this a remarkable case, even amongst French-lexifier creoles" (p. 203).^[1]

I think that as Wikipedia categories are assigned (or not assigned) by individual editors, they are not reliable as evidence. However Louisiana Creole dictionaries could be, whether freely accessible or not. TSventon (talk) 11:25, 22 August 2021 (UTC)