English & French census phonics

[chinakay]

Just been looking at a truly fascinating article about French-speaking census takers recording English names on censuses, and vice-versa, and some of the results. A must if you are researching family in Quebec or the Maritimes.

http://simmons.b2b2c.ca/NAMES.HTM

Cheers,
China

[J.J.]

Hi em nat shoer wot chew meen, China!   

Okay...I lied...I know what you mean...Thanks for the link...but it wasn't just the Quebec censuses...
We have run across lots of crazy misspellings of names....Creative census taking...What's the point? 
My grandparents had an h in their Italian name and it was left out almost all the time....Every single
one of his brothers gave up and used the new Canadian version of the spelling!


There are also complaints about the databases transcriptions of the census...just yesterday there was an "N" mistaken for an "H" ....and  "LL" mistaken for a "W". Myself, I can't put down the free transcribers. They were volunteering their time...But I suggest using a combination of resources...and I'll refer people to this link when stumped!
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re: phonetics...here's a little cartoon I did years back...you may recognize the character in the drawing...
http://members.shaw.ca/jeany/JW_images/BioPage/Schwarzenegger_cartoon.gif

[chinakay]

Ha! LOL! You got him just right...that's a good one. Of course I had to translate it before I got it...

Cheers,
C

[Erato]

Thankyou, very useful in the Cajun country of Louisiana, as well.

[J.J.]

Just noticed your cat posed for a new avatar... J.J.

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I'll point the resource for Que to this link as well....so everyone can find it, as well.

[LoneyBones]

I just got home from shopping, there was a popular children's character who's name starts with Do- and ends in -ra. Her bedtime pillow is called her bugga bugga pillow. I have no idea what bugga bugga means in Spanish but here in Aus I wouldn't put my 5 year old to bed with a bugga.     
Not even the big brown one who falls down behind Holden utes.
Leonie.

[Gene-ee-us]

Great reminder to think in our "ancestral voice."  With our modern neutral accents produced by education, television, etc., it can be hard to remember that our ancestors didn't talk the way we do.

The enumerator didn't have to speak a different language from his neighbours to record weirdness, though it may have helped My two favourites are both from Cape Breton (home to both Acadian French and Scots Gaelic accents). The first time I saw O'Coine in a census, it took me a while to figure out that the name's owner would have spelled it Aucoin. My other "favourite" was just odd: all the "Mc" names were recorded with the second part of the name first, as in Kay, Mc, Donald, and Intosh, Mc, Hector. Luckily I saw this on the microfilm of the original pages. I would never have found them in an index.

[chinakay]

Hi Gen

I think the dropping the Mc etc and listing names by the back part first is an old library system of cataloguing, from before the Library of Congress (LC) method came into use...I don't think it was the Cutter system, but when I worked at McGill there were a few really old ones we had to figger out

Good to bump this thread back up

Cheers,
China

[Gene-ee-us]

Hi China,
I never knew that about the library stuff. Seems odd that the census would be written that way, unless maybe the enumerator was a "scholar" of some sort.

Anyway, I never looked at the date of the last post on this thread - just saw an interesting topic and thought I'd put in my two cents' worth. Guess I should be paying more attention.

Gen