Glossaire du patois normand

Step into the living tapestry of Normandy’s everyday speech through this meticulously assembled glossary. Using a simple set of abbreviations, the work maps each term to the towns—Alençon, Bayeux, Cherbourg, and beyond—where it was captured, letting listeners hear the subtle shifts that separate one village from the next. The entries balance concise definitions with illustrative examples, revealing how the region’s history, landscape and belief‑systems shape its language.

The editor’s preface offers a candid glimpse into the painstaking effort behind the pages. He recounts the scholar Louis Du Bois’s decades‑long devotion, his rivalry with earlier dictionaries, and the bittersweet revision that added two‑thirds more material just before publication. The narrative conveys both the scholarly rigor and the human passion that drive such an ambitious undertaking, inviting the audience to appreciate the fragile, ever‑changing nature of a spoken tradition.

Beyond a mere reference, this glossary becomes a portable window onto 19th‑century Norman life. Listeners discover how pronunciation quirks, local customs, and even climate leave fingerprints on words, underscoring the rich, mutable character of regional speech that continues to echo through the countryside today.