Le français en Amérique du Nord: État présent. Ed. by Albert Valdman, Julie Auger, and Deborah Piston-Hatlen. (Collection Langue française en Amérique du Nord.) Saint-Nicolas: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2005. Pp. 583. ISBN 2763782426. $45 (Hb).

Reviewed by Jan Holeš, Palacký University

The French language in North America has had a long history, lasting for four hundred years. It has always coexisted there with a number of Indo-European and indigenous Indian languages. This makes North America a fascinating linguistic laboratory, which can cast light on many questions about the history of French, the formation of creole languages, and some general problems related to the evolution of language. This collection of papers overall provides insight into these areas.

The book is divided into four main sections, containing twenty-six contributions written by renowned experts. The first part presents practically all French-speaking communities in North America, with the exception of the archipelago of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon where there is a variety of French that is quite similar to European French. The first group of papers gathered in this part describe the demographically most important communities (Quebec, Acadia, Ontario, New England, and Louisiana); the second group deals with lesser-known and peripheral communities, often ensconced in an English-speaking environment (Newfoundland, the Canadian West, isolated French-speaking communities in the US, and Saint-Barthélemy, a French island located in the Caribbean).

The second part contains six articles analyzing the phenomena of language contact and decline. Three articles focus on Louisiana French and deal with the history and the present state of Cajun French, its variation, and the problem of the demarcation of Louisiana language varieties. Two articles describe mixed languages used in Canada, namely the Chiac language (a vernacular French mixed with English used near Moncton in Acadia) and the Michif language (a French-Cree creole characterized especially by French nouns and Cree verbs). Another article is concerned with the role of linguistic and extralinguistic factors in the devernacularization of the language in minority French-speaking communities in Canada.

The third part examines the efforts toward the maintenance of French varieties outside Quebec, often menaced by extinction. The articles deal with the elaboration of language norms in Quebec, Acadia, and Louisiana; the revitalization of Louisiana Cajun French and French in the Canadian Maritime Provinces; and the roles of Creole and French in the cultural identity of the Haitian diaspora.

The last part turns to comparative and historical studies, investigating structural affinities and divergences of Acadian French in Canada and Louisiana, the origin and structures of French creoles in America, the hypothesis of a common origin of North-American French, correspondences and differences between the French used in Missouri and Canadian French, and the necessity of examining textual sources dating from the colonial period.

This book will become a precious resource for researchers in the fields of Francophony, creolistics, and demolinguistics. It will be useful for those who want to understand the present sociolinguistic situation in various parts of North America. Several articles present recent results of research carried out on the spot. It will become a basis for further descriptions of French on this continent.