The La hiérarchill singer, who is himself known for his flowery vocabulary, reveals the results of his extensive research on the podcast So be chill, out Friday on Radio-Canada OHdio. In five 20-minute episodes, with the help of specialists and supported by a collection of testimonials from all corners of the province and elsewhere in La Francophonie, he analyzes current language trends and expressions.
Jérôme 50 reached over the phone that a surprising trend had challenged him some time ago. It seems that in Quebec the younger generation no longer unites their Anglicisms. Unlike the verb “chiller,” a well-established English borrowing derived from the phrase “to chill,” “kampf,” meaning “to have trouble,” is not in the past tense in everyday speech. So we’re not saying that I “fought” but rather that I fought.
Jérôme 50 is a musician but also a linguistics student at the University of Laval.
Photo: Avanti Group / Karine Dufour
In Acadia, however, it’s the exact opposite. For example, young people in Moncton may have had “difficulties” during their exam.
Jérôme 50 had to investigate. Therefore, parallel to his singing career, he returned to school to study linguistics. It is important to document the development of the language, he believes. The younger generation has to take over this archiving work.
His master’s thesis also takes the form of a Chiller Dictionary, a collaborative effort of around 4,000 words and phrases that inspired the podcast. Don’t look for this mysterious collection in bookstores though: doesn’t it exist yet? – open to the general public. It has to remain a bit legendary, the musician murmurs as we listen to leafing through a sausage copy of his dictionary.
Can we talk about a new piece like Richard Desjardins, one of the sources of inspiration for Jérôme 50? “Joual, it has a negative connotation, and I have a bit of trouble with Joual coming off the horse,” he replies like a glove, breaking his usual calm. We are no longer the language of the horse at all!
Jérôme 50 presents his “Chilleur Dictionary” on the microphone of the show “It’s always better in the afternoon”.
Photo: Radio Canada / Anne-Sophie Roy
Young people at the microphone
Together with the director Catherine-Eve Gadoury, Jérôme 50 therefore set out to produce a direct podcast, that is to say a documentary work characterized by the down-to-earth and raw approach that director Pierre Perreault, pioneer of live cinema, presented. We went to parks, parking lots, parties, bars, apartment balconies, he enumerates. We really wanted to immerse ourselves in the natural environment of the “chillers”.
Her testimonies, which are the focus of the podcast, put into context phrases you may have heard over the past few years.
The encyclopedia of “chilleurs” and “chilleuses”, according to Jérôme 50:
vague : Confused in Haitian Creole. It can be interpreted as letting go. Vag about that for example.
weh : Word derived from wesh rak in Maghrebi Arabic which could be translated as “How are you?”. It is often used to address someone or as an exclamation. For example, Wesh mate!.
GB : Rare borrowing from Nouchi, an Ivory Coast-born slang meaning woman.
Keep in mind that linguistic borrowing is nothing new, as suggested in the podcast Guy Bertrand, first language consultant at Radio-Canada. Divan comes from Arabic, robot from Czech, ededon from Danish and liner from English (boat packed).
Over the course of the five episodes, Jérôme 50 also draws our attention to the emergence of a new Montreal accent, characterized by a particular pronunciation of the syllable “en”. Sections are also devoted to the use of verbal abbreviations, such as G for gangsta (pronounced in English), a word often associated with “my friend,” or to the differences between urban and regional expressions.
Linguistic creativity
No, Jérôme 50 is not worried about the future of French. Rather, he approaches his metamorphosis with serenity, brushing aside the conservatism of the language police toward the neologisms of young people.
He criticizes the Coalition avenir Québec’s controversial advertisement, which compares the peregrine falcon’s precarious status to that of French and suggests that Anglicisms such as “insane” and “sketch” corrupt the language of Michel Tremblay and Gabrielle Roy.
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This linguistic conservatism is of no use to anyone at a time when English has a big place in the world, says Jérôme 50. It’s like cycling through butter, because borrowings of this kind will happen anyway. .
On the contrary, Jérôme 50 was rather enthusiastic about the pride and creativity of young people in conversation with them, whom he describes as a chill sociolect.
They are proud of their French; a desire for self-determination or emancipation. And if we try to take that away from young people, for example with ads like that of the CAQ, we’ll only further divide a people that is already divided, he believes.
The aim of “Thus be chill” is to promote linguistic creativity, the musician continues. That is: Did you borrow the verb “chill”? Well, there are also many derivations: “chilitude”, “chilleur”. If we adopt all these derivatives, we will create something new and so we will be able to identify ourselves as francophone communities in a new way.