How’s my command of Savoy’s dialect?

Le Patois Savoyard (Savoy dialect) is the name given to the dialects of the Franco-Provençal language spoken in the French province Savoy where I come from. It was the most widely spoken Franco-Provençal variant in France, with a number of speakers still estimated at 35,000 people in 1988. 

In 2001 that number dwindled to only 2% of Savoyards and God knows if there are a handful of folks alive still speaking that dialect. The reason I’m talking dialect is that I suddenly remembered a local joke (not very nice about some of the inhabitants of a nearby village) and it put me back into the patois groove.

When I was growing up, my parents were speaking patois savoyard between them, but they were addressing their three kids in French, except when they were angry and loosing their cool. However, when my parents were small, they were spoken to in Patois and only the family dog was addressed in French! When they started school, we’re talking about the early 1900s, French was a foreign language they had to learn from scratch; yeah, full immersion… 

Since I’ve been immersed into it since I was a baby, I can perfectly and totally understand that dialect, but am just able to say a few words and sentences quite awkwardly and with a strong French accent (huge difference between understanding and speaking!) I don’t master its grammar well, my vocabulary is lacking and I know only a few idiomatic expressions. 

Nowadays, as this mode of communication is about to go extinct, a few enthusiast are trying to keep it alive, because it kinds of sound cool, but it must be extremely hard and I can imagine how “butchered” it can get during the lives get together, but – again - I might be totally wrong.