Growing up, Villmer lived with French-speaking parents and a French-speaking grandfather. But the language didn’t get passed down, largely because of the stigma attached to Francophones in this region. Her father grew up in a time when French-speaking children were starting to go to English-speaking schools without knowledge of that language, and interacting with other non-French speakers.

Speaking paw-paw French became associated with being ignorant, uneducated and backward.

“As a little kid, that made an impression on him,” Villmer said. “He wasn’t too keen on us learning French.”

So like many of Natalie’s generation in Old Mines, she never did learn paw-paw French, save for a few phrases and songs. That’s why it’s so hard to find anyone who still knows the language today, and even those who do are hesitant to admit it.

“I think our parents wanted us to fit in,” she said.

The Villmers’ story is typical, said Scott Gossett, who studies francophone literature at the University of Missouri. He said when that small communities like Old Mines became industrialized, there wasn’t really a need for French anymore, and learning English became a matter of survival.

“They just thought it would be easier to teach their children English to give them the best chance for success,” he said. “To survive, really.”

It was only in recent years that views of minority languages like paw-paw French have changed, Gossett said.

“Language was a stigma,” he said. “Only recently in the past half a century or so have we started to see language as an asset as opposed to a detriment.”