Research 2006
A Living, Evolving Language
Liliane Rodriguez
Professor, Modern Languages & Literatures
The foundations of a language are embedded in a child’s vocabulary by the time he or she reaches the age of 12. At this age, language is still free of the jargon and trendy expressions that tend to contaminate language in adults. To Professor Liliane Rodriguez, Manitoba’s bilingual children are a living repository of historical French language.
Rodriguez studies the history, current use, and future of French language in Manitoba. She shares her research not only in the teaching classroom, but also in her books, Mots d’Hier, Mots d’Aujourd’hui and soon to be published, La Langue Francaise au Manitoba.
In Rodriguez’s field of research, known as lexicometry, she measures French vocabulary in bilingual children, aged 10 to 12 years. She has found that the Manitoba children share a vocabulary of about 20,000 words covering 16 fields, such as “clothing” or “electricity.” Twenty-thousand words is a respectable vocabulary, but children know more words in some fields than others.
“You can see strengths and gaps in their vocabulary,” says Rodriguez. “From my research I can tell the teachers, ‘Maybe you should have a little lesson to increase their vocabulary in a certain lexical field.’”
Rodriguez also compares the language she finds today with that in historical documents such as Hudson’s Bay records and archived letters. She traces unusual words to their origins, which are mainly in northern and western France. “What’s really exciting is that children are still using very old, beautiful French words that have disappeared in France,” says Rodriguez.
So, in Manitoba “vêtements” which is the modern French word for clothing, is still “habit,” an 18th century synonym. Some children still call their clothing “butin,” a medieval word that was lost from the language and dictionaries in France in the 17th century. “Carcajou,” which means “wolverine,” is a distinctly Canadian word and is found in the letters of early explorer La Verendrye.
“This is so powerful because you can see how a language lives and how it’s transmitted from generation to generation,” says Rodriguez. “So my research is also on the history of the language, to see that synonyms are not dying.”
Through her research, Rodriguez has found that the more French language synonyms a child knows, the less likely he or she will substitute with English words. A strong vocabulary keeps language alive.
“Language carries history and heritage,” says Rodriguez. “It should be cherished and passed down from one generation to the next.”
To learn more about her research on the French language, contact University of Winnipeg faculty member Liliane Rodriguez at l.rodriguez@uwinnipeg.ca