The language or dialect is referred to by different names, as residents ofPicardy call it simplyPicard, but in the more populated region ofNord-Pas-de-Calais it is calledCh'ti orCh'timi (sometimes written asChti orChtimi). This is the area that makes upRomance Flanders, around the metropolis ofLille andDouai, and northeastArtois aroundBéthune andLens.Picard is also namedRouchi aroundValenciennes,Roubaignot aroundRoubaix, or simplypatois in general French.
In 1998, Picard native speakers amounted to 700,000 individuals, the vast majority of whom were elderly people (aged 65 and over).[7] Since its daily use had drastically declined, Picard was declared by theUnited Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) a "severelyendangered language".[8] However, as of 2023, the Picard language was listed as "vulnerable" by UNESCO.[9]
The wordch'ti,chtimi orch'timi to designate the Picard language was invented during theFirst World War byPoilus from non-Picard speaking areas to refer to their brothers in arms fromPicardy andNord-Pas-de-Calais. It is an onomatopoeia created based on the frequent use of the /ʃ/ (ch-) phoneme and of the /ʃti/ (chti) sound in Picard: "ch'ti" meansthe one, as in the sentence "ch'est chti qui a fait cha" ( he is the one who has done that), for instance.[10]
Belgium's French Community gave full official recognition to Picard as a regional language along withWalloon,Gaumais (Lorraine),Champenois (Champagne) andLorraine German in its 1990 decree.[citation needed] The French government has not followed suit and has not recognized Picard as an official regional language (in line with its policy of linguistic unity, which allows for only one official language in France, as per theFrench Constitution), but some reports have recognized Picard as a language distinct from French.[citation needed]
A 1999 report by Bernard Cerquiglini, the director of theInstitut national de la langue française (National Institute of the French Language) stated:
Even if it has no official status as a language in France, Picard, along with all the other languages spoken in France, benefits from actions led by the Culture Minister'sGeneral Delegation for the French language and the languages of France (la Délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues de France).
Picard, like French, is one of thelangues d'oïl and belongs to theGallo-Roman family of languages.[citation needed] It consists of all the varieties used for writing (Latin:scriptae) in the north of France from before 1000 (in the south of France at that time theOccitan language was used).[citation needed] Often, thelangues d'oïl are referred to simply asOld French.Picard is phonetically quite different from the North-centrallangues d'oïl, which evolved into modern French. Among the most notable traits, the evolution in Picard towardspalatalization is less marked than in the centrallangues d'oïl in which it is particularly striking;/k/ or/ɡ/ before/j/, tonic/i/ and/e/, as well as in front of tonic/a/ and/ɔ/ (from earlier*au; the open/o/ of the Frenchporte) in central Old French but not in Picard:
Picardkeval ~ Old Frenchcheval (horse; pronounced in Old French[tʃəˈval] rather than the modern[ʃəˈval]), from*kabal (vulgar Latincaballus): retaining the original/k/ in Picard before tonic/a/ and/ɔ/.
Picardgambe ~ Old Frenchjambe (leg; pronounced in Old French[ˈdʒãmbə] rather than the modern[ʒɑ̃b] –[ʒ] is thege sound in beige), from*gambe (vulgar Latingamba): absence of palatalization of/ɡ/ in Picard before tonic/a/ and/ɔ/.
Picardkief ~ Old Frenchchef (leader), from*kaf (Latincaput): less palatalization of/k/ in Picard
Picardcherf ~ Old Frenchcerf (stag; pronounced[tʃerf] and[tserf] respectively), from*kerf (Latincervus): simple palatalization in Picard, palatalization then fronting in Old French[citation needed]
The effects of palatalization can be summarised as this:
/k/ and (tonic)/y/,/i/ or/e/: Picard/tʃ/ (writtench) ~ Old French/ts/ (writtenc)
There are striking differences, such as Picardcachier ('to hunt') ~ Old Frenchchacier, which later took the modern French form ofchasser.Because of the proximity ofParis to the northernmost regions of France, French (that is, the languages that were spoken in and around Paris) greatly influenced Picard and vice versa. The closeness between Picard and French causes the former to not always be recognised as a language in its own right, but rather a "distortion of French" as it is often viewed.[citation needed]
Despite being geographically and syntactically affiliated according to somelinguists due to their inter-comprehensible morphosyntactic features, Picard in Picardy, Ch'timi and Rouchi still intrinsically maintain conspicuous discrepancies. Picard includes a variety of very closely related dialects. It is difficult to list them all accurately in the absence of specific studies on the dialectal variations, but these varieties can probablyprovisionally be distinguished:[citation needed] Amiénois, Vimeu-Ponthieu, Vermandois, Thiérache, Beauvaisis, "chtimi" (Bassin Minier,Lille), dialects in other regions near Lille (Roubaix, Tourcoing, Mouscron, Comines), "rouchi" (Valenciennois) and Tournaisis, Borain, Artésien rural, Boulonnais. The varieties are defined by specific phonetic, morphological and lexical traits and sometimes by a distinctive literary tradition.
The Ch'ti language was re-popularised by the 2008 Frenchcomedy filmWelcome to the Sticks (French:Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis;French pronunciation:[bjɛ̃vny ʃe le ʃti]) which broke nearly everybox office record in France and earned over $245,000,000 worldwide on an 11 million euro budget.[12]
The first person plural often appears in spoken Picard in the form of the neutral third personin; however, the written form prioritizesos (as in French, whereon is used fornous). On the other hand, the spelling of conjugated verbs will depend on the pronunciation, which varies within the Picard domain. For instance southern Picard would readil étoait / étoét while northern Picard would readil étot. This is noted as variants in the following:
Picard is not taught inFrench schools (apart from a few one-off and isolated courses) and is generally only spoken among friends or family members. It has nevertheless been the object of scholarly research at universities inLille andAmiens, as well as atIndiana University.[13] Since people are now able to move around France more easily than in past centuries, the different varieties of Picard are converging and becoming more similar. In its daily use, Picard is tending to lose its distinctive features and may be confused with regional French. At the same time, even though most Northerners can understand Picard today, fewer and fewer are able to speak it, and people who speak Picard as theirfirst language are increasingly rare, particularly under 50.[14]
The 2008 filmWelcome to the Sticks, starring comedianDany Boon, deals with Ch'ti language and culture and the perceptions of the region by outsiders, and it was the highest-grossing French film of all time at thebox office in France[15] until it was surpassed byThe Intouchables.
Today Picard is primarily a spoken language, but in themedieval period, there is a wealth of literary texts in Picard. However, Picard was not able to compete with French and was slowly reduced to the status of a regional language.
A more recent body of Picard literature, written during the last two centuries, also exists. Modern written Picard is generally a transcription of the spoken language. For that reason, words are often spelled in a variety of different ways (in the same way that English and French were before they were standardized).
One system of spelling for Picard words is similar to that of French. It is undoubtedly the easiest for French speakers to understand but can also contribute the stereotype that Picard is only a corruption of French rather than a language in its own right.
Various spelling methods have been proposed since the 1960s to offset the disadvantage and to give Picard a visual identity that is distinct from French. There is now a consensus, at least between universities, in favor of the written form known asFeller-Carton (based on theWalloon spelling system, which was developed byJules Feller, and adapted for Picard by ProfessorFernand Carton).
Picard, although primarily a spoken language, has a body of written literature: poetry, songs ("P'tit quinquin" for example), comic books, etc.
A number of dictionaries andpatois guides also exist (for French speakers):
René Debrie,Le cours de picard pour tous - Eche pikar, bèl é rade (le Picard vite et bien). Parlers de l'Amiénois. Paris, Omnivox, 1983 (+ 2 cassettes), 208p.
Alain Dawson,Le picard de poche. Paris : Assimil, 2003, 192p.
Alain Dawson,Le "chtimi" de poche, parler du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais. Paris : Assimil, 2002, 194p.
Armel Depoilly (A. D. d'Dérgny),Contes éd no forni, et pi Ramintuvries (avec lexique picard-français). Abbeville : Ch'Lanchron, 1998, 150p.
Gaston Vasseur,Dictionnaire des parlers picards du Vimeu (Somme), avec index français-picard (par l'équipe de Ch'Lanchron d'Abbeville). Fontenay-sous-Bois : SIDES, 1998 (rééd. augmentée), 816p. (11.800 termes)
Gaston Vasseur,Grammaire des parlers picards du Vimeu (Somme) - morphologie, syntaxe, anthropologie et toponymie. 1996, 144p.
^Auger, Julie (14–17 February 2003).Issues of authenticity, purity, and autonomy in minority languages: What is 'real' Picard, and who is an 'authentic' speaker?. Congress Minority and Diasporic Languages of Europe. Berkeley, US:Indiana University. inNowak, Pawel; Yoquelet, Corey (eds.).Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS 29). * - in France: c. 500 000 speakers[fr][1] - in Belgium: a rough approximation is about 12% to 15% of people in province of Hainaut, i.e. c. 150 000 to 200 000 speakers.
^"Nos langues régionales".Région Hauts-de-France (in French). 24 November 2015. Retrieved20 December 2023.
^Bernard Cerquiglini,The Languages of France, Report to the Minister of National Education, Research and Technology, and the Minister of Culture and Communication, April 1999
Villeneuve, Anne-José. 2013. (with Julie Auger)"'Chtileu qu'i m'freumereu m'bouque i n'est point coér au monne': Grammatical variation and diglossia in Picardie".Journal of French Language Studies 23,1:109-133.
Auger, Julie. 2010. "Picard et français; La grammaire de la différence". Mario Barra-Jover (ed.),Langue française 168,4:19-34.
Auger, Julie. 2008. (with Anne-José Villeneuve).Ne deletion in Picard and in regional French: Evidence for distinct grammars. Miriam Meyerhoff & Naomi Nagy (eds.),Social Lives in Language – Sociolinguistics and multilingual speech communities. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 223–247.
Auger, Julie. 2005. (with Brian José). "Geminates and Picard pronominal clitic allomorphy".Catalan Journal of Linguistics 4:127-154.
Auger, Julie. 2003. "Le redoublement des sujets en picard".Journal of French Language Studies 13,3:381-404.
Auger, Julie. 2003. "Les pronoms clitiques sujets en picard: une analyse au confluent de la phonologie, de la morphologie et de la syntaxe".Journal of French Language Studies 13,1:1-22.
Auger, Julie. 2003. "The development of a literary standard: The case of Picard in Vimeu-Ponthieu, France". In Brian D. Joseph et al. (eds.),When Languages Collide: Perspectives on Language Conflict, Language Competition, and Language Coexistence, . Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. pp. 141–164.5
Auger, Julie. 2003. "Pronominal clitics in Picard revisited". In Rafael Núñez-Cedeño, Luís López, & Richard Cameron (eds.),Language Knowledge and Language Use: Selected Papers from LSRL 31. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 3–20.
Auger, Julie. 2003. "Picard parlé, picard écrit: comment s'influencent-ils l'un l'autre?". In Jacques Landrecies & André Petit (eds.), "Le picard d'hier et d'aujourd'hui", special issue ofBien dire et bien Aprandre, 21, Centre d'Études médiévales et Dialectales, Lille 3, pp. 17–32.
Auger, Julie. 2002. (with Jeffrey Steele) "A constraint-based analysis of intraspeaker variation: Vocalic epenthesis in Vimeu Picard". In Teresa Satterfield, Christina Tortora, & Diana Cresti (eds.),Current Issues in Linguistic Theory: Selected Papers from the XXIXth Linguistic Symposium on the Romance Languages (LSRL), Ann Arbor 8–11 April 1999. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 306–324.
Auger, Julie. 2002. "Picard parlé, picard écrit: dans quelle mesure l'écrit représente-t-il l'oral?". In Claus Pusch & Wolfgang Raible (eds.),Romanistische Korpuslinguistik. Korpora und gesprochene Sprache / Romance Corpus Linguistics. Corpora and Spoken Language. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. pp. 267–280. (ScriptOralia Series)
Auger, Julie. 2001. "Phonological variation and Optimality Theory: Evidence from word-initial vowel epenthesis in Picard".Language Variation and Change 13,3:253-303.
Auger, Julie. 2000. "Phonology, variation, and prosodic structure: Word-final epenthesis in Vimeu Picard". In Josep M. Fontana et al. (eds.),Proceedings of the First International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE). Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra. pp. 14–24.
