Sculpture
Gérard Demers
XXth century
Québec, Canada
Painted wood, metal
Collection: Musée de la civilisation, Quebec, Canada
1994-1104
Sculpture
Anonymous
XXth century
Québec, Canada
Painted wood
Collection: Musée de la civilisation, Québec, Canada
1993-1797
A meeting of two people, one in a shirt and tie, the other in a polka-dot shirt unbuttoned to the waist. In spite of their apparent differences, we have improvised a dialogue between these two folk art figures, a dialogue that both embodies and continues linguistic metissage. |
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These are the thumbnails and texts for this alcove. They can be printed.
Back in the dark ages of our collective memory, so far back we have no idea how to recall it, somebody stood up, made a first step, and began talking. Walking, talking—it’s all the same. Language and words appeared on Earth where there had been undifferentiated din, the noise of waves and wind, falling stones, groans. At first, just one language emerged. Then diversity. Languages are born, and they die, but most of all, they get married. They respect or detest each other, they either enrich each other or they kill each other.
The word totem belongs to the Algonkian family of aboriginal languages, but in the twentieth century the Indo-European family of languages borrowed it. Then there’s “OK”, two simple letters in a universal vocabulary that will probably never be complete.
Metissage - languages
Pure languages don’t exist, only hybrid languages. Human beings have always crossed linguistic divides in order to communicate.
There are 4000 or 5000 distinct languages on the planet, not counting dialects and Creoles, the latter being excellent examples of linguistic metissage.
Peoples’ linguistic ancestry may be connected to their genetic ancestry: a progressive metissage of human groups through contact and exchange.
A comparison of the roots of certain key words suggests there are eighteen linguistic families.
English, the most Latin of the Germanic languages, and French, the most Germanic of the Latin languages, have always lived in symbiosis. English borrowed much of its vocabulary from French, and now French is following its example.
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