Henry Raymond
Fairfax News => Current News & Events => Topic started by: Henry on February 16, 2009, 09:22:34 AM
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Yesterday I happend to run across a name that brought back memories of Fairfield and its residents. I am descended from two French Families in which out of my 4 grandparents, only one, my mother's father, was able to read and write. All four however, spoke two languages, French & English. There were a number of words that they used in both languages, that I would be hard pressed to find in the dictionary and some of those that I could find, today I have a little trouble understanding what they really met.
The word that came to mind for me yesterday was the word Yankee. Grandma divided the town up into three categories of people, French, Irish and Yankee. The French, well, they were just French, The Irish, well they were just Irish and both of those were Catholic. The rest of the people in town she lumped into one category, Yankee, and they were all non-Catholic.
I looked in the dictionary and I guess the only thing I could come up with is that inhabitants of New England are called Yankees, thus the term Yankee Ingenuity was derived. Now, so that I don't upset anybody, Grandma was not trying to be derogatory in calling someone a Yankee, it is just that she certainly was not well versed in World Geography as her travels, especially in her younger days were limited to horse & carriage to surrounding towns. I suspect she would have no idea where England, Germany, Australia or any of those countries were. She most likely knew the Irish came from Ireland, but didn't really know where that was and to her, the French came from Canada.
If Grandma was alive today, you could easily know how she would identify you, French, Irish or Yankee.
Now if you speak with me, you will know why I never use any big words and also if you do, I will sometimes ask you what you mean by that, as my personal vocabulary is very small.