My mom’s side of the family is all Cajun, which means they came from France, went to Canada, and then settled in Louisiana (where I was born). Considering how long ago all this happened there is likely exactly zero documentation about this. What can I do?
I’ve taken french, spanish and latin. None of which would help me with much older English. I’m pretty good with figuring out context but I’d probably have a really hard time with anything older than 1400-1500. Canterbury tales for example in the original English is really hard to read and there’s a lot of words that make no sense to a modern only English speaker.
Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open yë,
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages):
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
(And palmers for to seken straunge strondes)
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.
There are quite a few sci-fi stories and short stories built on a similar concept. One of my favorites is an alien ship lands on a random farm in the US and (leaving a lot of details out, read the book!) it comes to light that the aliens normally live at insanely hot temperatures like 900F (480C) and consider Earth an “Ice World” (that’s also the name of the book). Anyway, one of the catches in the book is that farmer figures out the alien wants to trade (again skipping a lot of details) but all he has on him that he can give up is a cigarette (the farmer doesn’t know it’s super hot inside the ship). He does the trade and we later find out that most of the galaxy is INSANELY vulnerable to being 100% completely utterly addicted to nicotine. When the alien took in the cigarette it instantly vaporized and sent the nicotine into the air and they breathed it and became instantly addicted worse than any opiod addiction IRL.
I hadn’t actually considered that. That very likely makes me ineligible actually. Thinking about it like that, I doubt any of my ancestors were ever actually Canadian. I’d forgotten about the fact Canada wasn’t an independent country yet so they wouldn’t qualify and therefore I wouldn’t either.