Cotentinais

The cotentinais is a variety of speaking Normand used in the Cotentin. It is connected with the Jersey and the Guernesiais.

Sub-groups dialectal

Heir to a long story, the Norman speech cotentinais, is not completely uniform. Result of a crumbling in a great number of local alternatives, one can however distinguish 5 sub-groups from language in Cotentin:

the language of La Hague, in the North-West of the Peninsula of Cotentin
the language of the Valley of Saire, in the North-East
the language of Coutançais of north, in the north of the line Coutances - Saint-Lo
the language of Coutançais of the south, in the north of the Line Joret
the baupteis , language of the Bauptois, between Carentan and $the Hague - of-Well

NB: the speech of Cherbourg belonged to the first sub-group haguais. It completely disappeared.

Each sub-group has some characteristics which made it possible to define them:

the language of La Hague is very guttural, in particular by the hard pronunciation of the H aspired Norman (La Hague is said). He pronounces the verbs of the first group with final in: chauntaer (to sing) is read/ʃaɔ̃tɑ/. He is the same for the conjugation with the last participle. Exception, in the two communes of the Cape of La Hague (Auderville and Saint-Germain-of-Be worth) where/ʃaɔ̃to/is pronounced.
the language of the Valley of Saire, pronounces in the same way finales of the verbs of the first group in: acataer (to buy) is read. With the past participle, even pronunciation, except with the female one: with a length. Example: Ole 'taé acataée sauns câotioun will say acata: sahan kâossiahon = (it was bought without guarantee)
the language of Coutançais of north and the south pronounces the verbs of the first group and their participle past in or: happaer (to catch) is thus said. Caught in happaée will result. The difference between these two group resides more on the pronunciation of the Norman one. Here, for qŭyin (dog), one will say, or (with final hardly audible). for comparison, let us recall that in Cauchois, one says.
the baupteis , language of the Bauptois, is close to the languages of Coutançais for the verbs to first group and it. On the other hand, it with the characteristic to pronounce cotentinais it in, which does not facilitate comprehension of it. This provision did not appear besides in the dialectal literature and thus almost disappeared. Where everywhere in Normandy one says câosaer (to discuss), marked kâozo, kâozaé, kâozaè, or kâozé according to the sub-groups precedents and in Normand Southerner, the language of the Bauptois will say or or seldom. Thus the câode iâo (warm water) will be said. Bâopteis decides there besides.

Literature cotentinaise

Each sub-group thus has also its authors of language Norman, who even if they used or contributed to work out an orthography coherent and unified, they wrote texts specific to each sub-groups, but readable by all. Thus, the rich person vocabulary of cotentinais was implemented by several Poète S and writer S at, in particular:

To speak about La Hague: Alphonse Allain, Côtis-Capel
To speak about the Valley of Saire: Alfred Christmas
Parler coutançais northern: Louis Beuve, François Énault, Marcel Dalarun
Parler coutançais southern: Louis Beuve
To speak about Bauptois: Pierre Guéroult

Alfred Rossel, precursor of the writing in Normand of Cotentin writes Norman “area of Cherbourg”, i.e. between this city and Valognes, which can be connected to the sub-groups of La Hague, the Valley of Saire and Bauptois.

Future

This variety of the Norman one that is it cotentinais, is still today préchie , but of small number, and the flame of the amateurs is maintained by some folk associations (songs, dances, reviews) and especially by the association Magène which aims to safeguard and to promote the Norman one by the means of the edition of discs and books.

There is not a doubt that the subdivisions of cotentinais are dedicated to disappear in first half of the 21e century to the profit of a dialect cotentinais common but weakened.

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