Talk:Onion Johnny

Sole note with citation needed

Hi,

As a French I wondered in WP:FR village pump about the note, which seemed IMHO questionable.

Here is the translation of another wikipedian's answer to my doubts :

I remind a trial concerning a breton poilu sentenced to death penalty in the context of the French Army Mutinies (1917), on the basis he could not explain why he was found behind the frontline, since he didn't express himself in proper French language. Other soldiers of this conflict who left written traces stated that among the troops breton people were speaking in Lower Brittany dialect. Which leads to the hypothesis that French was taught at that time in elementary schools in Bretagne, to pupils from which the whole family environment spoke the local dialect.

The guy mentioned above was executed for that silly matter ; actually, watching Paths of Glory one may wonder if any reason was worth.

(in French) Trace of the related conversation lies here.

There again, this is in no way a proper citation in Wikipedia, yet it sets the tone in favor of the sentence (which was not my primary opinion) : if this was the situation in 1917, then this is accurate earlier.

Ultrogothe (talk) 20:18, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Welsh and Breton

User:PatGallacher recently changed the footnote relating to the use of Welsh by Jonnies in this edit with the edit summary "correct myth", from this:

• Which is quite a contradiction, because they (at least those born before World War II) could not really speak French well or only with difficulty (Breton being a Celtic language related to Cornish and Welsh), so that in Wales they often used Breton to converse with Welsh speakers.

to this:

• Many of them were Breton rather than French. However it is a myth that they could make themselves understood in Wales, since Welsh and Breton, although both Celtic languages, are not mutually intelligible.

The new text is incorrect because a Breton identity does not exclude a French identity. Also, it has removed the information that, at least in earlier periods, many Johnnies did not speak French fluently. This is supported by the Breton language article, which says: "At the beginning of the 20th century, half of the population of Lower Brittany knew only Breton; the other half were bilingual." A source is cited for this.

Welsh and Breton are Brittonic Celtic languages, and have similarities of grammar and vocabulary. Although they are not mutually intelligible, a speaker of one language might have some idea of what is being said in the other language. This has been discussed in Talk:Welsh language/Archive 1#Breton and Cornish. Breton speakers would have been able to learn Welsh more easily than English, and it is likely that some Johnnies communicated with Welsh-speaking customers in broken Welsh.

Because of this, PatGallacher's footnote is too dogmatic. It is probably not "a myth that they could make themselves understood in Wales", but they may have done so by speaking broken Welsh rather than Breton.

I will change the footnote to:

• Up to the middle of the twentieth century many Johnnies were Breton-speakers. Breton is a Celtic language related to Welsh, and this may have helped some Johnnies to communicate with their Welsh-speaking customers.

I think that the Wales-Brittany relationship extended beyond the linguistic connection, and that many Welsh people saw the Johnnies as being from a related cultural group with which they felt some solidarity. However, I won't add this unless I find a source. Verbcatcher (talk) 00:11, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

I have added a paragraph on these lines to the History section, and have removed the footnote. Verbcatcher (talk) 00:18, 26 April 2017 (UTC)