Brayon

Brayon
Brayon, Brayonne

Regions with significant populations
Canada, concentrated in the Madawaska region of New Brunswick.
Languages
French (maternal language), English (as a second language)
Religion
Primarily Roman Catholic
Related ethnic groups
French, Québécois, Acadians, Cajun, French-speaking Quebecer, Franco-Ontarian, Franco-Manitoban, French American

Brayons, also called Madawaskayens, are a francophone people inhabiting the area in and around Edmundston, New Brunswick, Canada, including some parts of northern Maine. In French, they are called les Brayons or feminine les Brayonnes as in Brayon culture, or la culture brayonne.

Given their location in New Brunswick, and that most Brayons descend from Acadians who escaped the Deportation of the Acadians, they are considered by many to be Acadians. However, some residents relate more to Quebec and have strong roots and ancestral ties to Quebec. The Madawaska region used to be part of Quebec when it was called Lower Canada. Brayons have a distinctive culture with a history and heritage linked to farming and forestry in the Madawaska area, unlike both the primarily maritime heritage of the modern Acadians and the St. Lawrence Valley history of the Québécois.

Dialect

Unlike Acadian French, for example, Brayon does not possess its own words or definitions. The primary difference consists in a simple denotation of certain words due to their pronunciation. Many gramamtical forms, such as masculine and feminine adjective endings or the past tenses of some verbs, are homophones in Brayon. Both Brayon and Acadian are considered dialects of French (as opposed to independent languages), but the definition of the terms "language" and "dialect" may also overlap and are often subject to debate.

One basic distinctive trait of Brayon, however, is made in words such as tache ("stain") and tâche ("task") in which the "a" tends to resemble an open back unrounded vowel /ɑ/, despite the circumflex. That in turn highlights the difference of pronouncing "a" in a (3rd singular of the verb avoir, "to have") and à (pronoun "at"), which is already strong in Quebec unlike in France. The same rule also applies to /ɛ/ in maigre ("skinny") and vinaigre ("vinegar"), which become /ɛː/, as in fête ("feast").

Etymology

The term Brayon is thought to have come to reference inhabitants of the Madawaska area as well as their variety of French through malapropism. "Brayon" used to be written as "Breillon".

The origins of the word Brayon are not well known. It is hypothesized to have maybe been derived from the verb "Brayer" (to pull on a rope), the noun "Braie" ("old clothes" in certain dialects of the West of France), or the verb "Broyer" (to crush - the inhabitants of the region used to crush flax).

Geography

The border between New Brunswick and Quebec and to some extent Maine traditionally did not matter much to the people of the area, which caused commonalities and close relationships between Brayons and Québécois and parts of northern Maine; likewise, Brayon French is not completely restricted to Madawaska County.

This view of uniqueness led (at least jokingly) to the founding of the République du Madawaska during the Aroostook War, wherein some Brayons, disgusted with the actions of both British and American interlopers on their historical lands, declared themselves allied with neither and independent. Of course, the république was never formally recognized and was ultimately split by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty into American and Canadian parts.

Other uses

Brayon(ne) is also the name of the inhabitants of the Pays de Bray in northwestern France (Normandy, Seine-Maritime département and Picardy, Oise département).

Further reading

• Couturier, Jacques Paul (2002). "La République du Madawaska et l'Acadie. La construction identitaire d'une région néo-brunswickoise au xxe siècle". Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française (in French). 56 (2): 153–184.
• Volpé, Philippe (2015). "La brayonnité, la brayonnité ?!?: référence madawaskayenne en chantier, 1785-2014". Acadiensis (in French). 44 (1): 64–90.