Louisiana French/The Basics

If you speak English, you already know quite a bit of Louisiana French! There are many French words that are identical or almost identical to their English counterparts. Here are just a few examples:

There are also words that are more similar to English than they may appear, if you know what to look for. Turns out some "new" vocabulary is not so new after all! Keep in mind, however, that these magic tricks only work for some word pairs.

To learn how to derive even more meaning from French words by use of prefixes, suffixes, and the like, click here.

Then there are a bunch of words borrowed directly from English (called anglicisms), some of which have changed meaning a bit as they have entered Louisiana French (called pseudo-anglicisms).

Nouns are the foundation of any language. In French, every noun has what is called grammatical gender. Any given French noun falls into one of two categories: masculine or feminine.

Whether a noun is considered masculine or feminine has nothing to do with sex or gender as we tend to think of them. Here, when we talk about "gender", we call back to the old Latin word genus, meaning "kind" or "type". So nouns are either the first type or the second type.

In the table below are some French nouns. They are preceded by the indefinite article un/une^{[note 2]}, which translates to "a" or "an". The indefinite article agrees with, or matches, the gender of the noun: un for masculine nouns and une for feminine nouns. Again, a noun's grammatical gender does not have to—and often does not—match its "natural" gender.

As we know, not all babies are male, not all people are female, and tables are neither male nor female! So, just to hammer it home, do not confuse grammatical gender with "natural" gender, because they are separate concepts.

In Louisiana French, there are also several nouns that vary in the grammatical gender they are assigned according to the region or the speaker, though these are relatively uncommon:

Additionally, as we saw above, words recently borrowed from English tend to be masculine.

It is highly recommended that you learn a noun with its article. For example, as you practice, do not memorize "garçon" or "table" but "un garçon" and "une table". This will save you a lot of headache in the long run.

In addition to gender, articles also agree in number. The plural form of "un/une" is "des", which means "some". Des is used with both masculine and feminine nouns. (Note that the nouns in the table below are marked with a silent final ⟨s⟩. This is the most common way to express the plural in writing.)

Now we know how to say "a(n) [thing]" and "some [things]" with the indefinite articles. French also has definite articles, which all correspond to English "the". The definite articles are le, la, l’, and les. Le is used with masculine singular nouns, la with feminine singular nouns, and les with plural nouns of either gender (just like des). L' is used with nouns that begin with a vowel sound of either gender. This is to avoid vowel pairs that speakers of French do not like to make. For example, arbre ("tree") and eau ("water") both begin with vowel sounds. But to the French ear, "le arbre" and "la eau" do not sound right at all. Instead, we say "l'arbre" (the tree) and "l'eau" (the water). That way we do not have two vowels clashing with each other, and our speech flows more smoothly.

There is no sure-fire way to know a noun's gender just from how it looks or sounds. Whether a noun is masculine or feminine will need to be memorized. However, there are common suffixes that tend to suggest one gender over the other (though there are always exceptions). [To be added...]

As we have seen already, grammatical gender is an important component of Louisiana French grammar. Gender affects definite and indefinite articles, adjective agreement, adverb construction, and even occasionally determines a word's meaning. For example, we say "un livre" (masculine) for "a book", and "une livre" (feminine) for "a pound (of weight)". The only difference here is the gender of the noun.

Louisiana French's subject pronouns are chock-full of variety. They are also significantly different from the pronouns used in International French. Below is a simplified table of the subject pronouns used in Louisiana, organized by person and number:

• je ("I"): j’ before vowel sounds (obligatory) and before consonant sounds (optional but common); also ej before consonant sounds
• tu ("you"): t’ before vowel sounds (obligatory) and tu before consonant sounds (though this too can be elided to t’ in some cases); also rendered as ti (t’)
• il ("he/it"): il before vowel sounds (obligatory); i(’) or y before consonant sounds (obligatory in speech but not writing)
• alle ("she/it"): alle or al before vowel sounds (obligatory); a(’) before consonant sounds (obligatory in speech but not writing); also rendered as elle (e’) (occasionally said, often more formal)
• ça ("he/she/it; they"): sometimes elided to ç’ before a vowel sound
• some speakers also use the pronoun li ("he/she/it") due to influence from Louisiana Creole

If ordered purely by conjugation (which will come in handy later), the subject pronouns can be organized like this:

We will use "je, tu, il, nous, vous, ils" as a truncated conjugation template moving forward.

• While the use of tu ("you") and its variants is reserved for informal speech (for example, between family members or close friends) in International French, tu is the preferred second-person pronoun in Louisiana French. It can be used in pretty much any situation, regardless of the relationship between the two speakers. Even among older generations of Louisiana francophones (among whom the formal pronoun vous is more common), its use would be reserved for when there is a significant age difference between two speakers. Among the younger generations, vous has all but fallen out of use. In contrast with International French, using vous to address someone only slightly older than yourself (even if they are a perfect stranger) could be interpreted as slightly insulting—the implication being that by using vous, you would be calling the other person old.

• Though il and alle usually refer to people, i.e. "he" and "she", they can also be used to refer to inanimate objects (i.e. "it"). Il refers to masculine nouns while alle refers to feminine nouns. This is not unlike how an old-timey sailor might call their trusty ship "she". French speakers may do the same with all their nouns. In Louisiana, though, perhaps what is more common is to use the pronoun ça ("he/she/it/they"). Ça is one of the most versatile words in Louisiana French, as it refers back to an antecedent without regard to gender or number.

• The typical first-person plural pronoun ("we") in informal Louisiana French is on. Nous is used in formal situation. Speakers may also use nous-autres either alone or before on for emphasis. For example, "nous-autres, on..." could be translated as "us, we...".

• Vous-autres ("y'all") is used when the speaker is addressing two or more people.

• In Louisiana French, the third-person plural has different forms (ils, eux-autres, eusse, ça) depending on the region, and they can be used interchangeably. In fact, you will often hear more than one of these forms used in the same sentence. The word elles ("they (f.")), which is used in International but not Louisiana French, can be replaced if necessary by naming the referent outright. For example, instead of the usual ils (which is vague with regards to gender), one might say les femmes-là ("those women") or les hommes-là ("those men"), and so on.

Here are some examples of all those pronouns in action:

In the next section we will look at how subject pronouns are used in coordination with verbs in Louisiana French.

[The following section is to be reorganized and expanded.]

One way to understand Louisiana French verb conjugation is to break verbs up into three groups: verbs that end in "-er", "-ir", or "-re". Most verbs in each of these groupings are regular, meaning they follow the same pattern. There are also irregular verbs that in some way or another do not follow the typical pattern. Here is an example conjugation of the regular -er verb parler ("to speak"), which begins with a consonant sound:

Singular conjugations:

j'parle (or ej parle) ("I speak", "I am speaking", "I do speak")

tu parles (or ti parles) ("you speak", "you're speaking", "you do speak")

[vous parlez (or vous parle)] ("you (formal) speak", "you're speaking", "you do speak")

il parle (or i(’)/y parle) ("he/it speaks")

alle parle (or al/a(’)/elle/e’ parle) ("she/it speaks")

ça parle ("he/she/it speaks")

Plural conjugations:

on parle (or nous-autres(, on) parle) ("we speak")

[nous parlons (or nous parle)] ("we (formal) speak")

vous-autres parle ("y'all speak")

[vous parlez (or vous parle)] ("y'all (formal) speak")

ils parlont (or ils parlent) ("they speak")

eux-autres/eusse/ça parle ("they speak")

Despite their differences in spelling (which reflect historical pronunciations), the vast majority of regular verb conjugations in Louisiana French have the same pronunciation as one another. There are a few exceptions, however. The pronoun ils may take either the "regular" conjugation (albeit with a different spelling ending in -ent), or the ending -ont. The pronoun nous, when it is even used, may be conjugated either as it is in International French (ending in -ons) or as if it were conjugated like nous-autres. The same goes for the pronoun vous, which may either be conjugated as in International French (ending in -ez) or as if it were vous-autres. Both nous and vous, including their separate conjugations, are increasingly rare in Louisiana French, as is the distinct ils conjugation.

Because regular verb conjugations have converged for many speakers, it is not uncommon for writers to use the same spelling for each conjugation (à la the third-person singular). So you might find tu parles spelled tu parle or ils parlent spelled ils parle. This is ultimately a matter of preference.

Louisiana French writing conventions on the whole are not so different from what one might find in European French... that is to say, the written language does not match all too well the spoken language. Infamous for its silent letters and exceptions to every rule, reading and writing in French can be a daunting ask. But there is a method to the madness! A lot of it comes down to careful listening and practice. [To be expanded.]