The "cul-cul miss" from cucumis :)

Hi everyone

I'm relatively new here on cucumis.org, more or less a fortnight.

I've already met some of you and friendships are beginning to blossom.

Those of you who have already met me probably know some of my "personal" story, my birth tumour, my multilingual support group project on the same theme... I hope that those I still have yet to meet will also wish to help with this project, which is so dear to my heart.

I must say, I joined you all at cucumis.org without knowing I would find such a cohesive and efficient system in such a friendly and sharing community atmosphere.

For those of you who don't speak the language of Molière the "cul-cul miss" in my title would best translate into English as "bum-bum girl".

It's telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, since it is on that particular part of my anatomy that my tumour was situated, and it's written in pure franglais, official language here in my Corsican household.
,
My husband and 16 yr old daughter are both fluent franglais speakers too. After 22 years of voluntary exile from. Britain, English and French are now inextricably entwined in my being. I dream, write poetry, and do cryptic crosswords with the same ease in either tongue.

What's more, I think it illustrates my strange sense of no-holds-barred, tongue in cheek humour.

When I’m not writing, I read, and when I’m not reading I write. When I’m doing neither, it means I’m either feeding my cows, planting my vegetable garden or maybe I’m simply asleep?

P.S. Don't waste your points translating this to french, JP, I'll write one too for the frenchie forum

I know you, Tantine, you are very active in these days.

I think, Every person on the earth will hsa the deserved blessings from the God.

As to Corsica, what's the official language? Frenglais, French + English?

But I thought it should be a mixed language between French and Italian, instead of English.

What's the truth?

Can you kindly enough show me some sentences in this language?

Hi Tantine, nice you like cucumis. Within a few days, you gave so many things to this community too. Thanks

Hello Pluiepoco

The "frenglais" is a joke language, and doesn't really exist, but Miles Kingston, an English author has written several silly books in frenglais.

We speak it in my house because it's fun making up sentences when a wife is English and a husband is French. It's a sort of lazy famileal bilingualism.

Whilst the official language in Corsica is French, the Corsican language itself is Corsican

- A lingua nustrale hè u Corsu

It is not linguistically "corrupted" yet by the French input as French has only existed on the island since the French bought the country from the Genovese 250 years ago.

It is very close to Toscan Italien and is perfectly understood by Sardinians who have a vey similar spoken language.

Corsu is the same word whether speaking of the country, the language or its inhabitants.

Here are one or two proverbs:

First a superstition:

L'olio ghjittatu hé segnu di disgrazia
Ma u vinu ghjè alegria

Spilt oil is a bad omen
But spilt wine means joy to come

and now a proverb:

Pè dì "Mamma" s'impiccianu e labbre duie volte

To say "Mummy" you have to close your lips twice
(Each time you say "Mummy" your mouth does two kisses).

Unfortunately I speak very little Corsican.

A dopù

Tantine

wiki is blocked by the Government in China. So Chinese users cannot access directly to wiki.

But I can see posts in other sites cited from wiki.

And I find Corsu is not mixed with French, it seems to be more akin to Italian, and I use Tantine's Corsu sentences to google for many special corsu sites, and I become to understand that, corsu is now under a nationalism campaign, and in the same development with Catala.

In my own opinion, nationalism and internationalism are two aspects of a coin.

Oh? I'm sorry, pluiepoco, I tought you could have all the informations from the link I provided above, so according to what you told above, you couldn't access to it?
I could copy-paste some of the informations , like for instance :

"Corsican (Corsu or Lingua Corsa) is a Romance language spoken on the island of Corsica (France), alongside French, which is the official language. A similar dialect to Corsican is also spoken to some extent in Sassari and in the Gallura area of Sardinia (Italy). It has strong similarities to Italian and in particular the dialects of Italian from Tuscany. Most linguists[attribution needed] consider it as a Tuscan dialect, the closest to modern Italian.

According to its UNESCO classification, the Corsican language is currently in danger of becoming extinct. In recent years, greater protection for the language has been discussed as part of proposals for the increased autonomy of the region of Corsica from France.

The language has several dialects including Northern Corsican, spoken in the Bastia and Corte area, and Southern Corsican, spoken around Sartene and Porto-Vecchio. The dialect of Ajaccio has been described as in transition. The dialects spoken at Calvi and Bonifacio are closer to the Genoa dialect, also known as Ligurian.

In the Sardinian region of Gallura, including the town of Tempio Pausania, and on the island of La Maddalena "Gallurese" is spoken. This is a transitional dialect with many similarities to Southern Corsican.

The Corsican language is a key vehicle for Corsican culture, which is notably rich in proverbs. Corsica also has a tradition of polyphonic singing that dates back to the 16th century and is thought to have evolved from similar traditions on the Italian mainland."

(Source : Corsican language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Hope it gives you a bit more details than what you succeeded to get through other sites, or at least a complement of it...

I would like to add some specification, being both Italian and Sardinian.
I know that Corsican comes from ancient Tuscan, and I quite understand it because anyway it's similar to Italian, but it sounds very diferent from today's Tuscan!!!
And Sardinian language is not similar to Corsican, only Gallurese and Sassrese dialects, that are not really Sardinian dialects, but mostly Italian-Corsican dialects with something Sardinian.

I forgot to add that u Corsu, is primorily an oral language.

It hase only a become a written language since about 150 years ago.

This oral tradition means that there are some big differences in spelling and vocabulary.

It does however have a structured grammar which confers to Corsican (u Corsu) the status of a true language and not a dialect.

As for pluiepoco's questions about the "nationalism" in Corsica, unfrotuantely, I do not think that cucumis is the right place to have this debate.

I will however make some little comments on the nature of this nationalism.

It is far from being similar to the Catalonian strain of nationalism. In Catalonia there is co-officiality of both Catalonian and Castillan.

In Catalonia, for exmple, I believe that official documents (from the state's adminisrations) and road signs, and such, are available in both tongues.

Here in Corsica, the more elderly generation has great difficulties in treating this type of affaire as they often need someone to translate the documents for them into corsu, before they can understand their rights and duties.

I will also add that this ageing generation, and the generation born between the two major world wars, were severely punished for using u corsu in school. (Punishments went from being sent to the "naugty corner" to being beaten on the knuckles with a metal rod, or exclusion from school).

Even in the playground, during recess, the same punishments were liberally distributed to children who dared use their true mother tongue.

Today u corsu is "taught" in school from the primary classes to University. This education is extremely anecdotal and is just an alibi to "show" that something is done.

My 16 year olddaughter has been following corsican lessons in school since her infant school. She is still not much further than "esse" and "ave" ("to be" and "to have" as Corsican is consdered as a waste of educational timetables and the 3 hours minimum a week intended for dispensing corsican are often "stolen" for math, science, spanish, (or any other) lessons and are not given at all.

This "alibi" goes even further since, during the lessons that do exist, school students are more likely to be asked to create a project in french, on a subject that has nothing to do with Corsica or u corsu (Disneyland, a favorite pop singer or their last skiing holiday...) than to attempt something similar in corsu.

As for the "increased autonomy" mentioned in Francky's post, I would just remark that, in order to increase something, it has to exist already.

Corsica does not have any more "autonommy" than any other Region of France, and is far from the situation of Alsace, which not only enjoys the co-officiality its tongue, also benefits from special laws covering State health insurance, unemployment allowances...

Very sad to hear that.

Among Chinese linguists, I say both academic and popular, linguistics as a science is regarded to be subject to politics, that means, linguistics is corrupted/raped by politics. And I can see that, this phenomenon is not only existant in China, but in the world. Linguistic distortion is an international problem.

To solve this language problem, I think, it's important to have a very standard written language which can be recognized by more people and by the Government.

In China, every dialects of Chinese is in fact a new language. In every province or even every county, languages can change, but we use the same offcial written language, that is:

We talk in different languages in real life, but write in one language.

I don't know why Roman empire can fall into different regions in many similar languages, especially in different written languages, this is horrible.

In China linguistic forum (www.zgyuyan.com) founded by someone including me, it's indicated that most nations of the world use letters indicating sounds (consonants and vowels) to record speaking, they don't know using external things to record speaking, and in their minds, language is centered by speaking, every evolution of language must follow speaking customs, speaking goes always before writing.

But in China, "language" (in English meaning) really has two aspects, one is for speaking, one is for writing, on this point, you could argue about oral language and written language, sorry, it's not one thing, if you really understand what functions "language" does have.

In your opinions, language is for recording the movement of our lingua.

in China, language is language, writing is another thing. the logics are different.

It has been accounted for the struggle for the future times. The arrangement of the factors and essay writers australia have bend one for the use of the elements and all subsided items for the people.