"Patois" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my wife for the sake of her son!' In his insane fury he jumbled together indiscriminately the abusive patois of his native hillside, 'Ah la garso! Ah li bongri!' with the classical exclamations of Harpagon bewailing his casket, Justice, justice du ciel!' and other select extracts often recited to his pupils. It was as light as day in the bright ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... be over forty," Hugh told himself, "and her voice is young. So was his always." It was also very natural and moving and not untinged by what Miss Fowler called the Southern patois. "And ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... his woe in a quivering voice, shifting from a Bengal patois to Mandarin, and again to ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... on the mass, a red glow would blush from it, throwing out considerable heat. Over this fire, they cooked a little soup for me. I remained in the hut until morning, stretching out on the floor for a little rest, while they stood about, speaking their mountain patois which I could not understand. I left them early in the morning, passing through wild mountain scenery and seeing no signs of habitation. No railroad or telegraph lines cross the river until near Lisbon ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... people, had escaped mutilation. I entered into conversation, to ascertain whether true German was not possible to them, since they must needs read and write the language; but, although they understood me, they could only partly, and with evident difficulty, lay aside their own patois. I found this to be the case everywhere throughout the Canton. It is a circumstance so unusual, that, in spite of myself, associating a rude dialect with ignorance, I was always astonished when those who spoke it showed culture ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... family, were barely able to understand the language of their guests, whom they persisted in generalizing as "cannie Soothrons;" while the guests, on their part, could not altogether arrive at the meaning of observations that were couched in the most incomprehensible patois that was ever invented. It was "neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring," although it was flavoured with the Northumbrian burr, and mixed with a species of Scotch; and the historian of these pages would feel almost as much difficulty in setting down this north-Northumbrian ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... said the cardinal, smiling, "and I fear that my English is open to some criticism. I picked it up in the University of Oxford. My friends in the Vatican tell me that it is a patois." ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... budget for that year amounted to L63,000, which works thus out at a cost of L8 6s. 1d. per head for the Boer children. Dr. Mansveldt, Head of the Education Department of the Transvaal, a Hollander, seems to have but one aim: to enforce the use of the taal, the Boer patois—a language spoken by no one else—the use of which keeps them in isolated ignorance. The English language ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... created with them, often lost or missed through diverse reincarnations; but sooner or later found again and known as soon as found to both. No wooing is necessary in such a case—they meet, they look, they love, and naturally and immediately take up their old, but unforgotten love patois. They do not need to learn its sweet, broken syllables, its hand clasps and sighs, its glances and kisses; they are more natural to them than was the grammared language they learned through years ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... through every stratum, can at any moment place an inflectional on a level with an isolating and a combinatory language. Acompound such as the Sanskrit go-duh, cow-milking, differs little, if at all, from the Chinese nieou-jou, vacc lac, or in the patois of Canton, ngau , cow-milk, before it takes the terminations of the nominative, which is, of course, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... Confound it! He's illegible enough in French, but if he takes it into his head to go off in Italian, and that Corsican patois to boot! I thought I only ran the risk of going crazy, but then I should become stupid, too. Well, you've got it," and he read the whole sentence consecutively: "'The Nile, from Assouan to a distance of twelve miles ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... said the man, speaking in that species of Portuguese patois which is so common in ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the Swiss die for their native valleys! I would if I were they. I asked him about education. He said his children went to a school kept by Catholic sisters, who taught reading, writing, and Latin. The dialect of Chamouni is a patois, composed of French and Latin. He said that provision was very scarce in the winter. I asked how they made their living when there were no travellers to be guided up Mont Blanc. He had a trade at which he wrought in winter months, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... It is singular enough that some important and authentic facts should be found in a Life of Quintianus, composed in rhyme in the old Patois of Rouergue, (Dubos, Hist. Critique, &c., tom. ii. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... had been reading it? That is to use words with unjustifiable looseness; rather should I say that I have been in part reading and in part guessing at it; for it is written in the Angevin patois, which is far beyond my linguistic capacity. Not that Captain Leclerc is a rustic; on the contrary, he is a man of culture and the author of several books, chiefly on and about Anjou, one of which has illustrations from ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... to enter," the chief said, speaking a patois of Latin which Malchus found it difficult to understand. "We will then discuss the matters concerning ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... be dearer to Hannah than I am, and she is such a bundle of contradictions, of sweet impulses and rebelliousness, that I'm heartily glad of all the help I can get in bringing her up. There's my car. Do try to come home to luncheon. I'll be missing my lively children and their German-English patois!" ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... it was not exactly London slang, but a patois or dialect, learned partly from her husband, partly from her companions, and partly brought ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... the temple how much they valued the profit they had received under his tuition, and satisfy him accordingly—my pedagogues would find themselves sorely gravelled, if they were to be judged by the affidavits of my experience. My Perigordin patois very pleasantly calls these pretenders to learning, 'lettre-ferits', as a man should say, letter-marked—men on whom letters have been stamped by the blow of a mallet. And, in truth, for the most part, they appear to be deprived even of common sense; for ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... party had to do was plain, i.e. separate, and endeavour, in ones and twos, to pass the rebel lines and enter the Fort. Fortunately they could all speak the curious patois of English, French, and Cree that the enemy used, and therefore they had no need to be at a loss. Moreover, with beaver-skin caps, and long fur coats down to their heels, with the addition of a sash round their waists, they were in no way different from hundreds of others. Dorothy ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... nurses, but which will not be much of a marvel to you if you have read medical philosophy much. It is this: his lost memory returns to him when he is delirious, and goes away again when he is himself-just as old Canada Joe used to talk the French patois of his boyhood in the delirium of typhus fever, though he could not do it when his mind was clear. Now this poor gentleman's memory has always broken down before he reached the explosion of the steamer; he could only remember starting up the river with his wife and child, and he had an idea that ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... the best passages of his Noctes eidolon. Some of the adventures described as having happened to him are historically known as having happened to Wilson himself, and his sentiments are much more the writer's than the speaker's. At the same time the admirably imitated patois and the subtle rendering of Hogg's very well known foibles—his inordinate and stupendous vanity, his proneness to take liberties with his betters, his irritable temper, and the rest—give a false air of identity which is very noteworthy. The third portrait ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... officers, there a knot of soldiers stood talking and laughing. The greater part of the civilians appeared to be Spaniards, but there was a large sprinkling of Jews in the dress of those of Barbary, and here and there a turbaned Moor. There were gangs of sailors likewise, Genoese, judging from the patois which they were speaking, though I occasionally distinguished the sound of "tou logou sas," by which I knew there were Greeks at hand, and twice or thrice caught a glimpse of the red cap and blue silken petticoats of the mariner from the Romaic isles. On still I hurried, till I arrived at a well ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... of the rooineks," he said in his Dutch patois; "or some of our horses left from that ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... judging from the frequency with which it is met with in all parts of Bavaria, represents a peasant in a balcony waving her kerchief to her lover, departing in a little skiff, on an intensely blue sea. Beneath, in patois, is the doggerel: ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... river, and Fiddlin' Jack was always ready to make a boat for him, or help him catch minnows in the mill-dam. The child had a taste for music, too, and learned some of the old Canadian songs, which he sang in a curious broken patois, while his delighted teacher accompanied him on the violin. But it was a great day when he was eight years old, and Jacques brought out a small fiddle, for which he had secretly sent to Albany, and presented it to ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... and lightning and blazes! Haid homa gfresa beim Herr Doll. Das is a deutscha Compositor, und a browa Mo. [Footnote: "Today we dined with Herr Doll, he is a good composer and a worthy man" [Vienna Patois]] Now I begin to describe my course of life.—Alle 9 ore, qualche volta anche alle dieci mi svelgio, e poi andiamo fuor di casa, e poi pranziamo da un trattore, e dopo pranzo scriviamo, e poi sortiamo, e indi ceniamo, ma che cosa? Al giorno di grasso, un mezzo pollo ovvero ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... retorted Grosvenor; "never was more serious in my life. Listen! Yes, I feel sure I was not mistaken; it is a sort of Hebrew patois that he is speaking, Hebrew, mixed up, it is true, with a number of words that I can make nothing of. Still, I can understand enough of what he is saying to make out that he is giving his fellows orders to drive in our oxen and yoke them to ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... powerful influence of his life. The young wife recognized the great genius of her husband, and speedily persuaded him to retire from such a narrow sphere. Lablache devoted a year to the serious study of singing, and to emancipating himself from the Neapolitan patois which up to this time had clung to him, after which he became primo basso at the Palermitan opera. He was now twenty, and his voice had become developed into that suave and richly toned organ, such as was never bestowed ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... PATOIS.—G. The great impediment to popular instruction in France, is the multiplicity of patois, and the tenacity of the peasantry for them. The same objection exists to the use of so many Indian dialects ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... woodman here," he answered in his patois, "under the forester, all my days; so has my father before me, and so on, as many generations as I can count up. I could show you the very house in the village here, in which ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in a language I did not understand, and my father made no answer. Then he began a kind of Anglo-French, worse than the patois we used at St. Regis when we did not speak Iroquois. I made out the talk between the two, understanding each ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... hills, and under his guidance we saw many strange things. More than once, he spoke of the existence of a glaciere at no great distance, and talked of taking us to see it; but we were sceptical on the subject, imagining that glaciere was his patois for glacier, and knowing that anything of the glacier kind was out of the question. At last, however, on a hot day in August, we set off with him, armed, at his request, with candles; and, after two or three hours of ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... I know a little Italian, and my Gascon patois is something like Spanish: perhaps I may understand Latin without ever ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... thee, Melchior, my brave man," said old Andregg, in his rough patois; "and I shall be glad to see thee give up this wild mountain life and become a quiet ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... we took the Champlain and St. Lawrence line, opened two days ago, and at Isle aux Noix passed into British-American territory, and heard the old French patois of the 'habitans' of that locality, from the mouths of a crowd of curious people awaiting the arrival of the train. At La Prairie we joined the ferry boat, an immense vessel as usual, and dropped down the St. Lawrence for nine miles, to Montreal, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... like a sprite, drawing her cap over her face. Ah, the familiar ways and sights, the stores here, the booths shut, for the outdoors trade was mostly over, the mingled French and English, the patois, the shouts to the horses and dogs and to the pedestrians to get out of the way. She glanced up St. Anne's street, she passed the barrack, where some soldiers sat in the sunshine cleaning up their accouterments. Children were playing games, as the space was wider here. The door of the cottage ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... administrative details Smollett shows himself the expert compiler and statistician a London journalist in large practice credits himself with becoming by the mere exercise of his vocation. In dealing with the patois of the country he reveals the curiosity of the trained scholar and linguist. Climate had always been one of his hobbies, and on learning that none of the local practitioners was in a position to exact a larger fee than ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... over the Brenner and looked down into Italy; made an excursion to those singular golden-tinted mountains, the Dolomites, among which live a race of men who speak neither German nor Italian, nor other language known among the hundred dialects of Europe, but a patois left to them from the ancient Latins; they wandered through the valleys of the Inn and its tributaries and wondered at the odd way of living which still prevails in their picturesque ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... Milan; and in August, the observant traveller might recognise them once more under the disguise of Karl and Heinrich, laying the table d'hote in the long and narrow old-fashioned dining-room of the Englischer Hof at Pontresina. Though their native tongue was the patois of the Canton Ticino, they spoke all the civilised languages of the world, 'and also German,' with perfect fluency, and without the slightest attempt at either grammar or idiomatic accuracy. And they ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... about to set forth on pilgrimages, some bound for the neighboring glaciers and cascades, and others preparing for more distant and more hardy enterprises. It was a perfect Babel of voices—French, Scotch, German, Italian, and English; with notes of every sort of patois—above which the strident bass of the mules soared triumphantly at intervals. There are not many busier spots than Chamouni at early morning in ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... than he heard a whoa! and a man's face peered around the buggy wing, not at James, but at his medicine-case. James could just discern the face, bearded and shadowy in the gathering gloom. Then a voice came. It shouted, one word, the expressive patois of the countryside, that word which may be at once a question and a salute, may express almost any emotion. "Halloo!" ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... and sabots, well-worn woollen petticoat, black stuff jacket, headgear of an old black silk handkerchief, would have suggested anything but the truth to the uninitiated. Here also the unwary stranger might have fumbled for a spare coin. She had a kindly, intelligent face, and spoke volubly in patois, having very little command of French. It was, indeed, necessary for me to converse by the medium of an interpreter. On approaching the village we were overtaken by a slight, handsome youth conducting a muck-wagon. This was her younger son, and his easy, well-bred ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... are the main theme of every verse. The Muse Normande of David Ferrand is a collection of such fragments of many "Concours des Palinods" from its beginning till his death in 1660. They are chiefly written in that "langue purinique ou gros normand" which was the distinctive patois of the working classes, and especially of those "purins" or "ouvriers de la draperie" who dwelt in the parishes of Martainville, of St. Vivien, and St. Nicaise in the city. You may hear it to this day in the villages ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... altogether horrible, they wore leather aprons, which were sprinkled all over with blood, they had large horse pistols in their belts, and a dirk and sabre by their sides. Their looks were full of ferocity, and they spoke a harsh dissonant patois language. Over their cups, they talked about the bloody business of that day's occupation, in the course of which they drew out their dirks, and wiped from their handles, clots of blood and hair. Madame O—— sat with them, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... in finding a civil reception at the Palais Royal, the first inn on entering the town. We met with no adventures to-day of any kind. The language of the people has now become completely unintelligible; it is a Patois of the most horrible nature. Many of the better sort of people among the peasants, are able to speak French with you, but where they have only their own dialect, you are completely at a loss. I had conceived, that ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... polished gentleman of his race, was the son of a mulatto slave of Emilier Caramouche. He was born in 1850, but appears vigorous. Light skinned, with blue eyes and a genial expression, he gave the story of his life in the French patois spoken by Louisiana French Negroes, which has been translated ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... herder seemed in no way surprised to see a young rider dismount and approach cautiously—for Andy had entered into the spirit of the thing. He paused to glance apprehensively back and survey the western horizon. Andy greeted the Indian, who grunted his acknowledgment in the patois of the plains. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... pleasure, "They do run after me. There must be something in me. Good. I'd be done for if there wasn't." For six years he turned up the earth of Wiltshire, and read books for the sake of his mind, and talked to gentlemen for the sake of their patois, and each year he rode to Cadover to take off his hat to Mrs. Elliot, and, perhaps, to speak to her about the crops. Mr. Failing was generally present, and it struck neither man that those dull little visits were so many words ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... Fosse stood babbling around me, but I paid no heed either to Castelroux's patois or to La Fosse's misquotations of classic authors. The combat had been protracted, and the methods I had pursued had been of a very exhausting nature. I leaned now against the porte-cochere, and mopped myself vigorously. ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... there is something innately vulgar in the Yankee dialect. M. Sainte-Beuve says, with his usual neatness: 'Je definis un patois une ancienne langue qui a eu des malheurs, ou encore une langue toute jeune st qui n'a pas fait fortune.' The first part of his definition applies to a dialect like the Provencal, the last to the Tuscan before Dante had lifted it into a classic, and neither, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... she, talking in her own patois; and she scraped a spoonful of soot from the chimney, and putting it into a cup, was about pouring hot water on it for an emetic, when he could stand it no longer, but rushing out of the door, put to flight a flock of geese that were awaiting their usual meal, and ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Meantime there had been preparation for its renewal. While in Rome and Constantinople, and in the districts under their immediate influence, this Roman art of pure descent was practised in all its refinement, an impure form of it—a patois of Romanesque—was carried by inferior workmen into distant provinces; and still ruder imitations of this patois were executed by the barbarous nations on the skirts of the empire. But these barbarous nations were in the strength of ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... was thus the poet of the poor, anxious, cheerful, working humanity, so had he the language of low life. He grew up in a rural district, speaking a patois unintelligible to all but natives, and he has made that Lowland Scotch a Doric dialect of fame. It is the only example in history of a language made classic by the genius of a single man. But more than this. He had that secret of genius to draw from the bottom of society ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... conceive (said the Captain, swearing a great oath) how devout and how learned I was in those days; I talked Latin faster than my own beautiful patois of Alsacian French; I could utterly overthrow in argument every Protestant (heretics we called them) parson in the neighborhood, and there was a confounded sprinkling of these unbelievers in our part of the country. I prayed half a dozen times a day; I fasted thrice ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... educational ideas into practice at Yannina and Constantinople, and contributed to the great achievement of his contemporary, the Khiot Adhamandios Korais, who settled in Paris and there evolved a literary adaptation of the Romaic patois to supersede the lifeless travesty of Attic style traditionally affected by ecclesiastical penmen. But the renaissance was not confined to Greeks abroad. The school on Athos failed, but others established ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... separate race, with its own patois, in Monaco. You would never spot it in the somewhat Teutonic cosmopolitanism of the Condamine and Monte Carlo tradesmen and hotel servants. It is not apparent in the impassive croupiers of the Casino. But within a few hundred yards, in half a dozen streets and lanes, the ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... They were as African as the Congo, and as strange in this setting as Eskimos on Broadway. They felt their importance, for they were of the few good cooks of French dishes here. They spoke a French patois, and guffawed loudly when one dropped her basket of supplies from her head. They were servants of the procureur de la Republique, who had brought them from the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... person. There was nothing so high or so low, in heaven or earth or in the human body, but a woman of this neighbourhood would whip out the name of it, fair and square, by way of conversational adornment. My landlady, who was pretty and young, dressed like a lady and avoided patois like a weakness, commonly addressed her child in the language of a drunken bully. And of all the swearers that I ever heard, commend me to an old lady in Gondet, a village of the Loire. I was making a sketch, and her curse was not yet ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... through beautiful Lombardy and came to Domo d'Ossola, where a strange German-Italian patois was spoken. It was in the middle of April, and we were warned that it would be very dangerous to cross the Simplon, but we went on all night in a carriage on sleigh-runners, through intervals of snowstorm. Now and then ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... interrupted the flow of eloquence, though the woman was really interesting with her straightforward confidences, her rather picturesque patois, and her ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... A dirty little launch full of uniforms was coming alongside. Until the yellow flag—a polite symbol in that port—should be hauled down Simpson would be left alone. The uniforms had climbed to the deck and were chattering in a bastard patois behind him; now and then the smell of the town struck across the smells of the sea and the bush like the flick of a snake's tail. Simpson covered his eyes for a moment, and immediately the vision of the island as he had seen it at dawn swam ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... silently but dexterously putting to order the large upper room, which served Pere Francis Xavier as study and dormitory, she paused before his collection of agates and minerals, and stroking the stones, said in her soft French and Indian patois, "Pretty, pretty." Father Xavier was seated at the great open window, looking over the top of his book away across the breezy lake. He heard the words, and knew that she was looking at him from the corner of her eye, but ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... should have seen how the disdainful curve of his nose was accentuated at every glance in his direction—Garrigou the singer, a countryman of Jansoulet, distinguished as a ventriloquist, who sang Figaro in the patois of the South and had not his like for imitating animals. A little farther on, Cabassu, another fellow-countryman, a short, thick-set man, with a bull-neck, a biceps worthy of Michel Angelo, who resembled equally a Marseillais hair-dresser and the Hercules at a country fair, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... to Tom, although the excitement and peril made travelling a delight. Moreover, the people were kind and friendly, although they spoke such a barbarous patois that it was difficult to hold communication ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... return,—we have jolly little breakfasts together in the salon. They consist of coffee and rolls, and are served by a droll, snappish little garcon with no teeth, and an Italian-French patois which is very hard to understand when he sputters. He told me the other day that he had been a garcon for forty-six years, which ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... the Soiree Suisse, which takes place annually in London, where pretty Helvetian damsels brew the most fragrant coffee and hand round delicious little cakes, arrayed as they are in their killing national costume and chattering in a dozen different patois. I had a notion that tea at Kensal New Town would be very much less eligible, so I stopped away. Perhaps I was prejudiced. The tea might have been different from what I expected. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... themselves often spoke it after a fashion. At any rate, it was the habit of Henri Marais, who was excessively religious, to read his chapter of the Bible (which it is, or was, the custom of the Boers to spell out every morning, should their learning allow them to do so), not in the "taal" or patois Dutch, but in good old French. I have the very book from which he used to read now, for, curiously enough, in after years, when all these events had long been gathered to the past, I chanced to buy it among a parcel of other works at the weekly auction ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... free trader between Italy and Switzerland, should have been destroyed by the slaves in the government vessels beneath, and Jenny nodded and strove to understand. She was making progress in Italian, though Assunta's swift tongue and local patois were as yet beyond her comprehension. But she knew that her dead smuggler husband was the subject on Assunta's ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... by the existence of the German-speaking cantons, more numerous than the French. "Of course," he said, "we have our private sympathies, which incline us one way or the other, and there is the language tie—though here we are greatly attached to our Bernese patois—but I would have you believe the Swiss are essentially just and impartial, they ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... manufactured by a squaw out of smoked buckskin. Our muleteer, Delorier, brought up the rear with his cart, waddling ankle-deep in the mud, alternately puffing at his pipe, and ejaculating in his prairie patois: "Sacre enfant de garce!" as one of the mules would seem to recoil before some abyss of unusual profundity. The cart was of the kind that one may see by scores around the market-place in Montreal, and had a white covering to protect the articles within. These were our provisions and a tent, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Frenchman came to the hospital every day with the English papers, and looked in to leave me the Mirror, for which he would never accept any payment. He had very few teeth and talked in an indistinct sort of patois and insisted on holding long conversations in consequence! He told me he would be enchante to bring me some novels bien choisis par ma femme (well chosen by my wife) one day, and in due course they arrived—the 1 franc ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... point all goes well, perhaps; but once his mouth opens, the tale is told; instantly Prejudice does her office, unknowingly almost, and unless actual need exist, Paddy may apply elsewhere, again and again to meet the same rebuff. Lancashire, Somersetshire, Yorkshire, may revel in their patois without raising a doubtful feeling or a smile, but the brogue of Ireland does the work at once, and the unhappy being from whom it issues slinks back into himself degraded, as he hears the certain laugh which answers his fewest words, and the almost certain refusal to admit him ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... street and the chauffeur was tooting in vain, trying to persuade a half-dozen soldiers carrying bales of bay on their backs, to make room for us to get by. With much evident reluctance the first man drew a bit to the right, the second vociferated something in a picturesque patois, and just as we passed the third, I leaned forward and grabbed the driver by ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... and suitably dressed, were getting in their hay or minding their flocks and herds, with that look of cheerful independence imparted by the responsibilities of property. Many greeted us in the friendliest manner, but as we could not understand their patois, a chat was impossible. They laughed, ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... it, the man comes from some remote part of the country, and speaks a villainous patois that even an educated person of his own land can scarcely make out. He is very ignorant, and slow ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... leaning or standing at a small bar, were talking excitedly in the Creole patois. They made frequent anxious, yet amusedly defiant, mention of a certain Pointe Canadienne. It was a portion of the Mississippi River "coast" not far above New Orleans, where the merchants of the city met the smugglers who came up from ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... however, one of them was hit by an enemy sniper and mortally wounded. Then it was discovered that they were not Germans at all. The man who had been hit said a few incoherent things about his wife and children in the Walloon patois as he lay in the trench, and trying to point to his companion, uttered the one word "Anglais"—that, everyone swears to—and died. No papers were found on either of them, and when the other man was questioned, he merely shook his head, with ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... companionway, accompanied by the same clatter of sabots and splashing of water. There was no time to reach the bed, and it was equally evident that I could not vault out and throw myself against the door. So I simply ducked down, held on, and shouted, in French, Normandy patois, English:— ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... man, somewhat bent, with the mournful air of a consumptive. He took them to their room, a cheerless room of bare stone, but handsome for this country, where all elegance is ignored. He expressed in his language—the Corsican patois, a jumble of French and Italian—his pleasure at welcoming them, when a shrill voice interrupted him. A little swarthy woman, with large black eyes, a skin warmed by the sun, a slender waist, teeth always showing in a perpetual smile, darted forward, kissed Jeanne, shook Julien's ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... forced a mug of punch upon him; then he turned for the door, ordering the dog drivers to follow. But the warmth and promise of rest were too tempting, and they objected strenuously. The Kid was conversant with their French patois, ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... Mouci,"[5] said the poor Nabob, trying to jest, and resorting to the sabir patois to remind his old chum of all the pleasant reminiscences they had overhauled the day before. "Our visit to Le Merquier still holds. The picture we were going to offer him, you know. ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... precipice, and Nikky's fierce lip, and other things, had got in their work. The man on the ground stopped muttering in his patois, and turned on Nikky eyes full ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... language, sir," he said. "A dialect, a patois. Partly Turkish, partly Slavonic, with ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... destination, that he desired to know my name; and this I told him with all the injunction of secrecy I could convey; but he could no more pronounce it than I could speak his name. It occurred to me that perhaps he spoke a French patois, and I asked him; but he only shook his head. He would own neither to German nor Irish. The happy thought came to me of inquiring if he knew English. But he shook his head ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the moustache. His collar was incredibly tall and shiny, with turn-down points; he wore a red tie; his thick brown clothes might have been bought ready made in the Edgeware Road; evidently he had honoured the occasion with his Sunday best. While his comrades jabbered together, in patois which flung in a French word now and then, like a sop to Cerberus, he spoke not a word; yet I saw his lips tighten, as he laid his arm over the neck of a small but well-built mule of a colour which matched its master's clothing. The animal rubbed a brown velvet head against the brown waistcoat ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... traveller, who was now within a dozen yards, were already exchanging words in a patois not unlike the Limousin dialect, of which Conyngham ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... prisoners interviewed their distressed relations. There were not exactly bars, but two large mesh nets of steel separated the visitor from the patient under observation. After a time a nun brought in the gardener's wife, a tall, gaunt woman, who was a native of Marseilles, and spoke the confusing patois of that city with great rapidity. It was some time before Lydia could accustom her ear to ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... it is not like a nobody dangling after a public singer; that is common enough. We are all run after by idle men; even Signorina Zubetta, who has not much voice, nor appearance, and speaks a Genoese patois when she is not delivering a libretto. But for a gentleman of position, with a heart of gold and the soul of an emperor, that he should waste his time and his feelings so, on a woman who can never be anything to him, it ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... to that district of country where my German fashion of speaking French would excite least observation. I thought that Amante herself had something peculiar in her accent, which I had heard M. de la Tourelle sneer at as Norman patois; but I said not a word beyond agreeing to her proposal that we should bend our steps towards Germany. Once there, we should, I thought, be safe. Alas! I forgot the unruly time that was overspreading all Europe, overturning all law, and all the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... life. At this time he was about twenty-five years of age, and for the last two years had been absent from Vernet—for reasons which will shortly be made to appear. He had been sent to Paris to see something of the world, and learn to talk French instead of the patois of his valley; and having left Paris had come down south into Languedoc, and remained there picking up some agricultural lore which it was thought might prove useful in the valley farms of Vernet. He was now expected home again very speedily, much ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... ourselves with providing a scrap, here and there, to the reader—despairing, as we utterly do, to gather from memory a full description of a performance so perfectly unique in its singular compound of lofty vein, with the patois and vulgar contractions of his native, and those ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Latin any more than the abbot understood Greek, and the situation became awkward, for the pitch of Martin's voice made it evident that he was not a person to be trifled with. The old man therefore tried what the Romance patois, which he had picked up from foreign residents in the city, could do to establish intelligible intercourse with the rough visitor. Fortunately the crusader also knew something of that patois, and made the purpose of his visit ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... these people could only speak the patois of the mountains, but some were refugees from the resorts in the valleys below, and among these were two English tourists who had been caught among the mountains by the sudden rising of the flood. ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... I saw regiment after regiment entraining—men from the southern provinces speaking the patois of the south, men from the eastern departments whom I had seen a month before, at the beginning of the war, at Chalons, and Epernay and Nancy, and men from the southwest and centre of France in the garrisons ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... my way of putting it," Thad went on to say; "I meant that as near as I could guess they seem to be Canadian half-breeds, for some of their talk was in a French patois I couldn't just understand. And I've always heard that those kind of men are mighty hard to handle, because, like Italians they get furiously excited, and let their imaginations run away with them, like some other fellows ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... to the refectory and served her with a dainty breakfast, disposed on exquisite "individual" dishes, and oddly enough, bearing the initial "D." Dolly lifted a cup and stared at it, wondering while Anita glibly explained in her patois of Spanish-English, that yes, indeed, it was the ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... dropping into patois. "There is much noise, but we Turcos are here in Morsbronn, and we have seen ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... &c. &c. Bayley is anxious to treat for a course of lessons in the purest Irish. None but such as will conceal a West Indian patois will be of the slightest use. For particulars, and cards to view, apply to Mr. Catnach, Music and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... with Indian wordlessness, handed the net to him. Whereupon, with his flabby mouth wide and his large gray eyes gleaming, he proceeded to miss four easy ones in succession. And with that Josef, in a gibberish which is French-Canadian patois of the inner circles, addressed the Tin Lizzie and took away the net from him, asking no orders from me. The Lizzie, pipe in mouth as always, smiled just as pleasantly under this punishment as in the hour of his opportunities. He would have been a very handsome boy, with his ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... a number of his plays peasants of the cunning, calculating, Norman type, who speak a Norman patois, which may be a souvenir ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... a lovely, magnificent, fully developed woman, splendidly attired, walking in the Regent's Park, He did not recognise her, but was looking at her with longing eyes, when suddenly she seized him by the arm, and exclaimed in the patois of Piedmont, "Ces tu si! Buzaron." (Is that thou thyself, Buzaron). This latter word is a familiar expression of carnal affection, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... grand-master of the Knights of Malta. He sent copies of this work to several distinguished personages, and notably to Louisa of Savoy, mother of Francis I. But she not understanding, so thinks Harrisse, the very learned author of the Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, the kind of patois used by Pigafetta, and which resembles a mixture of Italian, Venetian, and Spanish, employed a certain Jacques Antoine Fabre to translate it into French. Instead of giving a faithful translation, Fabre ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... prunes naturalism of all its boldness of subject matter and diction in order to fit it for the drawing-room, and the decadent, which gets completely off the ground and raves incoherently in a telegraphic patois intended to represent the language of the soul—intended rather to divert the reader's attention from the author's utter lack of ideas. As for the right wing verists, I can only laugh at the frantic puerilities ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... they've left us," yelled some of the drivers, in their Spanish patois. "Forward, or ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... journey to the north. They had consulted with Rosalie how they were to proceed, and they thought with her that they might make their way dressed as country lads from some place in the south of France where a patois was spoken scarcely known in the north; that he, Paul, was to act as spokesman, and that O'Grady was to pretend to be deaf and dumb. As a reason for their journey, Paul was to state that their father was a sailor, and that they had heard he was lying wounded at ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... she once thought to reign supreme, France has been able to leave a permanent impress. But this impress is not in the valley of the Mississippi. It is true that a number of French still live on the banks of the great river, that many a little village where a French {436} patois is spoken lies hidden in the sequestered bayous of the South, and that no part of the old city of New Orleans possesses so much interest for the European stranger as the French or Creole quarter, with its quaint balconied houses and luxuriant gardens; but despite ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... Southern India. He was most capital company, rolling out perpetual jokes and calembour, and bubbling over with exuberant joie de vivre. I think M. Bayol took a fancy to me on account of my understanding his Provencale patois, for, as a boy, I had learnt ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... man-monster who was their master. Bram spoke to them entirely in Eskimo—and the sound of it was like the rapid CLACK—CLACK—CLACK of dry bones striking together. It was weirdly different from the thick and guttural tones Bram used in speaking Chippewyan and the half-breed patois. ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... Henry IV., with an inscription in Latin and in patois, is on the esplanade; the armor is finished so perfectly that it might make an armorer jealous. But why does the king wear so sad an air? His neck is ill at ease on his shoulders; his features are small and full of care; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... leading that fat ball, Phoebe, and Robin frisking in triumph beside her. Henceforth a great friendship arose between the children. Phoebe soon lost all dread of those who petted her, and favoured them with broad smiles and an incomprehensible patois. Owen made very much of her, and pursued and imitated Robert with the devotion of a small boy to a larger one. Lucilla devoted herself to him for want of better game, and moreover he plainly told her that ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he might elect to accompany her to Cavloccio. She would willingly have paid him for loss of time. Her ear was becoming better tuned each moment to his strange patois. Though he often gave a soft Italian inflection to the harsh German syllables, she grasped his meaning quite literally. She had read so much about Switzerland that she knew how Michel Croz was killed while descending the Matterhorn after having made the first ascent. That historic accident happened ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... the native patois, and Roldan could gather little of his meaning beyond what his gestures conveyed. He shook his fist in the direction of the Mission, snapped his fingers in scorn, pointed toward the mountains, then made the motion of speeding an arrow from the bow, ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... to him because he almost immediately perceived that he was the subject of conversation. It seemed odd to stand so near them and not understand a word they said. He heard enough now to know the language they were speaking was the patois that, in those parts, is the descendant of the Jersey French. These men, then, were Acadians—the boy also, for he gabbled freely to them. Either they had sinister designs on him, or he was an obstruction to some purpose that they wished to accomplish. This was ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... Sanskrit; et de meme pour d'autres idiomes. Max Mueller differe des philologues anciens en ceci que tandis qu'ils etudiaient seulement les langues classiques, lui trouve la lumiere et le materiel partout, meme dans le Patois: ainsi le Provencal lui a ete indispensable et bien d'autres langues encore que les ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al |
