Chiac is an Acadian French vernacular mixed with English, spoken in the south-east New Brunswick, Canada, especially among youth near Moncton, Memramcook and Shediac. With generations of contact with the dominant Anglophone community in the area, the local French dialect has been heavily influenced by English.

Chiac is a mixture of Acadian French (which includes words from Old French) and English. Chiac uses primarily French syntax with French-English vocabulary and phrase forms. An example: Ej vas driver mon truck à soir pis ça va êt'e right la fun.

Chiac is often deprecated by both French and English speakers as an impure hybrid -- either "bad" French or "bad" English. However, Chiac has been reclaimed in recent years by some Acadian groups as a living and evolving language, and part of their collective culture. A number of Acadian artists write literature and music in Chiac.

It is believed that the word Chiac originates from the town of Shediac. Some have also suggested that it is a derivative of the French word chier, meaning "to shit".

External links

• Et si on parlait chiac ? (And if we spoke Chiac?)
• Je suis acadien - an example of Chiac
• The Chiac verb particle construction - A linguistics paper (pdf format) examining certain features of Chiac grammar