Letter from Normandy!

[Royal_Dragoon_Guard]

Hi folks, I've lived in Normandy for 2 years now, and I've been looking around the place with an eye to CMBO! First thing is the term "Bocage", to the French this word describes a type of terrain found anywhere in France, not just Normandy. It occurs all over France in pockets, similar I guess to "Moorland" in the UK. I live in a house set in an original sized bocage field, believe me those banks and hedges are tough! They are rough too, with all manner of bushes/shrubs and trees - not hedges in my book. Bocage existed on both the American and British/Canadian sectors, but the best survives here in the US sector today.

[flamingknives]

I'm going to have to step in here, as moorland is about as different as you can get to Bocage, moorland being characterised by large hills and open terrain, either gorse, heather, ferns or similar low level plants. Grazing is the principle agriculture.

The UK doesn have plenty of terrain that would fit the description (tall hedge/trees along large earth bank plus sunken lanes) but these days it's rarely as severe as all that. It doesn't really have a name, though one might call it hedgerow country.

[Andreas]

You get a bit of that around the North Downs, just south of London.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Royal_Dragoon_Guard:

Hi folks, I've lived in Normandy for 2 years now, and I've been looking around the place with an eye to CMBO! First thing is the term "Bocage", to the French this word describes a type of terrain found anywhere in France, not just Normandy. [snips]

Not quite "anywhere", I think (unless you use it as a poetic and antiquated word roughly equivalent to the English "bosky"). The Normandy and Vendee Bocages (the first inhabited by "bocains", the latter by "bocagers", should M. Picky enquire) are the only ones my Dictionnaire Bordas bothers to mention. And the word is Norman in origin.

All the best,

John.

[junk2drive]

is that where cajuns come from?

[Royal_Dragoon_Guard]

I know, when I re-read it, it came across that way too, didn't mean it to!! What I really meant was that "Bocage" means a TYPE of terrain NOT a specific area, hence the equation with "Moorland" in the UK, get it? You get both in more than one area. Whereas the North Downs are the only North Downs right?

Consequently if you are talking about the type of terrain Bocage is, then it is found in pockets all over France. For example I have just come back from a holiday in the Auvergne, and guess what - French information boards there refer to areas of Bocage, and not a Sherman in sight! Bocage is a local name given to terrain of small, enclosed fields bordered by banks 1-2 metres high topped with rough hedges/trees. The Normans were the first to construct this type of terrain (very much man-made), and so the name derives from them. But it is NOT unique to Normandy.

Some recent writers have tried to say that Bocage is unique to Normandy, some even going as far as to say it only occurred around St Lo in the western sector of the Normandy beaches!

[flamingknives]

A-ha, with you now. The North Downs are a specific area, although it is very similar to terrain described as bocage.

[Philippe]

Originally posted by junk2drive:

is that where cajuns come from?

I thought that the Cajuns included at least two different groups, one of which consisted of refugees from Acadia in Canada (pace Longfellow's Evangeline). The English do not bear the entire responsability for this ugly little bit of 18th century ethnic cleansing, in that they were apparently egged on by land-hungry colonists in New England (and New York ?).

[junk2drive]

that was my question. i dont know where we get the word cajun from acadians, or canadians, or quebecois, or ???

i probably read about it but dont remember.

cajun from bocajers made sense though.

[Philippe]

Originally posted by junk2drive:

that was my question. i dont know where we get the word cajun from acadians, or canadians, or quebecois, or ???

i probably read about it but dont remember.

cajun from bocajers made sense though.

Can't say that I know the etymology of the word with any certainty, either. I suspect it gets a little tricky because you have to take creole sounds into account. I had assumed it was a mispronunciation of "acadien", dropping the initial sound and slurring the rest. But I don't really know.

Having said that, given the way some words in Haitian creole come out when they're spoken (often sounding a bit like West African French), nothing would surprise me. The linguistic gumbo in Louisiana is just as complicated (fossilized 18th century provincial French, French, Creole, Spanish, English). The one connection that I'm pretty sure is missing is Normandy.

[Philippe]

I just glanced at an on-line etymological dictionary. While I'm still not totally convinced, the party line seems to be that "cajun" is a corruption of "acadian".

One source that I looked at went on to say that "Acadia" was itself a corruption of Verrazano's "Arcadia". I don't know if I believe that either, but I always wondered about it.

I would be thrilled if someone could convince me that cajun doesn't come from acadian, and that Acadia isn't a corruption of Arcadia. Both those answers seem a little too easy.

[Agua]

Originally posted by Philippe:

I just glanced at an on-line etymological dictionary. While I'm still not totally convinced, the party line seems to be that "cajun" is a corruption of "acadian".

I would be thrilled if someone could convince me that cajun doesn't come from acadian, and that Acadia isn't a corruption of Arcadia. Both those answers seem a little too easy.

That is the origin as popularly understood amongst the present day cajuns themselves.

[junk2drive]

ahh kay jeane shortened to kay-jean ??

[Kobal2]

@junk2drive : if I'm not mistaken, cajun (and Acadians for that matter) speak French/are descended from French immigrants, right ? Cause that shortening makes sense, in French.

"un acadien" (pronouced as if there's no space between the two words - it's called a "liaison", it's done in French when a word that ends with a consonnant precedes a word that starts with a vowel) can quickly become "un 'cadien" when spoken fast, and to elude the liaison (many occurences of such shortenings in Quebequese French, people in Quebec regard liaisons as prissy and precious).

Add a little bit of "Englishman trying to sound French but failing miserably" and it becomes "unh cadjune" - and there we are.

[junk2drive]

if you ever get noor lens, one word, for new orleans, and see and hear all the dialects and nuances of language, it makes even more semse.

dont blame the english speakers for this one, lol

no offense to any cajuns, but my observation of the original acadiens, i one of lesser educated outcasts who had to escape the french canadians. therefore some words could be misspoken and changed as time went by.

please correct me if wrong.

i miss crawlers and chickory coffee in the qtr.

but i can get crawdads at the orleans buffett in vegas.

[Locksley]

There certainly seem to be plenty of hedgerows and sunken lanes around near me (Devon) not quite on the scale of Normandy I don’t think but they are still pretty damn large. As far as I can see they are pretty much impenetrable with trees bushes and other plants all intertwined. From my own experience this is the case in many parts of Britain, but again I say I don't think they are quite on the scale of those described and those I have seen in Normandy.

[Royal_Dragoon_Guard]

Yes, the lanes in the Normandy Bocage are very similar to those in Devon. Perhaps the allies should have spent more time training in those specific places to learn how to "bust the bocage"? One differance though, I would say the hedgerows here are much more dense and difficult to traverse, although I guess that depends on the local farmers in some ways. Here they occasionally go mad and cut the whole lot down until it sprouts again next spring, but usually they are so dense that they look like the edge of a wood rather than a hedge.