Chiac; An acadian dialect originating from the Sud East of New-Brunswick; majorly a mix of french & english within one sentence. Mainly spoken by bilingual people, effortlessly able to speak in both languages at the same time. Unlike what you might think, we aren’t thinking about how we’re gonna speak it; the sprinkle of english words is coming naturally.
Being a french Canadian, my province of New-Brunswick have about three different dialect, depending on your region:
→ « Brayon » on the North Ouest, aswell as “old french/acadian” in North East– both so similar to the Quebec’s neighbor within our mix of french, english, aswell as old french/acadian words.. however the pronounciation of some words are a bit different on the Brayons side.
→ Lastly, because of everything being mostly english surrounding them, « Chiac » in the Sud East. I’s say this is the most outstanding out of the three, being originally from the North East myself, it took me quite a while to get used to how they spoke here x3
Although we all know that i’ve been reading in french only for quite a good while before I could expend to reading in english only a few years go, I didn’t read french books from my province. I would actually mostly pick up “made in Quebec” books instead, or Europe French. (we’re not counting translations from english novels)
The main reason for that being that I was under the impression that authors from here only wrote either children books or historical fiction. While iknow I need to expend my reading for more middle grade, I wanna point out here that I do mean children books way above middle grade.. which ain’t quite my jam. As for historical fiction.. this is a big nope for me, even if they mostly all includes our ancestor’s deportation in 1755.
I found this book while browsing the apple book catalog section.. which really only attracted me because of the name, to begin with 🤣 translating to “Dick pics under the stars” – after laughing about that quite alot, I didn’t bought it.. only to cross it in our bookstore and I just had to take it.
It’s the story of a Gay man moving back to his hometown (Moncton) after studying in Quebec to pay back his loans by working in a call center. Leaving a “no-title relationship” behind, moving in with his sister & two nephews. Staying in touch, he remains unsure of what their relationship means.. nor of what he should do about his life.
I was so happy to have found this !! Not only is it such a nice feeling to *know* what the town looks like, as it’s mine aswell, it’s also hilarious and surprising to see our chiac being actually written in a novel.
Absolutely makes me wanna explore more novels from my province; as i’m now aware of how wrong I was.. we do have something more than children’s book & historical fiction, I just need to find them! Starting by this author’s other books- I quite like his writting & humor in this one.
Do you read books from your local authors?
I don’t read from local authors very often because for me they are either historical books or crime books, which don’t really interest me. The only author I can name from my city writes non-fiction books for children, which I’m definitely too old for now. Hopefully I can find some local books that interest me in the future 🙂
Yep- about the same struggle as me then 😅 yeaj, if it were middle grade with a good story (like the thing with jellyfish per exemple), it wouldnt be too bad.. but children’s book is a bit too childish, yeah.. and especially if you don’t have any children 🙊
Sure hope you can find some good ones in the future like it happened to me xx