Louisiana French/Introduction

The term "Louisiana French" (le français louisianais) refers to the varieties of French spoken in Louisiana's Cajun, Creole, and American Indian communities. In informal contexts, it is often dubbed Cajun French (le français cadien) or simply Cajun (le cadien), but linguists tend to avoid this term because it is not only Cajuns that speak French in Louisiana.

Louisiana French is not a broken, simplified, or inferior dialect of French. Just as the languages of France have centuries of built-up history, culture, and norms, so too do the languages of Louisiana. A learner of French in Ville Platte should not feel pressured to speak or write like Molière or Emmanuel Macron in Paris, almost 5,000 miles (8047 kilometers) away, when there is such a fantastic local tradition to take part in!

Additionally, Louisiana French should not be confused with Kouri-Vini (a.k.a. Louisiana Creole), a French-based creole language native to Louisiana, though they do share similarities due to historical factors.

Enough introduction? Learn how to say hello or build simple sentences in Louisiana French!

Hosea Phillips, in his article titled "The Spoken French of Louisiana"^[1], identifies three varieties of French spoken in Louisiana: Standard Louisiana French, Acadian French, and Creole French.

What Phillips refers to as Standard Louisiana French is not too dissimilar from what we will refer to as International French. This Standard Louisiana French resembles International French and differs only slightly in pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary, and grammar from International French. The sources of the difference can be identified in the following ways: Standard Louisiana French (1) retains many of the "archaic" French that would have been standard in the 17th century, and, (2) because of its long interaction with Acadian French, has adopted many of its forms and pronunciations. Phillips gives a number of examples in his article to support his point.

Acadian French, as described by Phillips, is closer to what we have in mind as Louisiana French. Phillips stresses that Acadian French isn't a dialect of French, but is "a common language which has assimilated certain dialectal elements, but, on the whole, resembles the French spoken in the villages and rural areas of northern and western France."^[2] Phillips's Acadian French is the French imported by the Acadians from Nova Scotia, but which has experienced a great deal of internal normalization through interaction with the many languages and cultures that have settled in Louisiana in the past three hundred years. Phillips briefly outlines how Acadian French has developed through "phonetic accidents" such as metathesis, assimilation, dissimilation, and agglutination, which combined has contributed to the modern pronunciation of Acadian French. Even though there are regional flavors of Acadian French that differentiate the French spoken in one parish from another, Phillips emphasizes that the differences aren't so great as to make difficult the communication of Acadian French speakers from different parishes.

The other major variety of Louisiana French identified by Phillips is Creole French. Similar to Phillip's Standard Louisiana French and Acadian French, Creole French primarily is a spoken language and has been handed down from generation to generation orally without formal instruction. Also similar to Acadian French, there are wide regional variations in Creole French.

Apparently, speakers of Standard Louisiana French and Creole French historically have been able to shift to Acadian French for daily communication (when necessary or when social customs demand it).

French colonists were speaking French in Louisiana long before the Acadians arrived. The language of the Cajuns is just one of many influences which combined to create Louisiana French. The Cajuns are the descendants of the francophone people exiled by the British in 1755 from Acadia (which includes modern-day Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and part of Maine) who settled in Louisiana.

Louisiana French is a way of speaking French that was passed down orally, generation to generation, by the descendants of the original Louisiana Acadians and by others who adopted their (linguistic) culture. This way of speaking was influenced by contact with other settler languages (like Spanish, German, and English), as well as Louisiana Creole and various American Indian languages (for example, Choctaw).

By the 20th century, most Cajuns were bilingual, capable of speaking both their native French and English. As a result, modern Louisiana French has considerable influence from English. For example, a Louisiana speaker might say appelle-moi back ("call me back") instead of the more "natively French" expression rappelle-moi, though both are valid.

Because Louisiana French was transmitted orally, there is no traditional way to spell words which are peculiar to the dialect, and different authors have rendered the language in different ways. Faulk, in his Cajun French I (1977), adopted a phonetic method. Rev. Jules O. Daigle chose a method more closely mapped onto International French orthography, but used complementary phonetic transcriptions to aid pronunciation. Valdman's Dictionary of Louisiana French (2010) normalizes Louisiana French spelling with the international standard, except for those cases where Louisiana's dialectal characteristics would otherwise be lost. This book will follow Valdman's standard.

In both of his seminal reference books^[3], Rev. Jules O. Daigle argued that Louisiana French (which he referred to as "Cajun") was different enough from International French to qualify as a separate language. However, more recent sources instead stress the similarities between the two. (One might consider here that the word "language" is, at its core, a political tool in building—and stripping away—linguistic identity. Whether a way of speaking is considered a "language", a "dialect", a "patois", a "slang", etc., is more based on perception than on empirical reality.)

Probably the greatest difference between Louisiana French and the French spoken in France is pronunciation, though most International French words should be comprehensible to a Louisiana speaker, and vice versa. The two also exhibit significant differences in vocabulary (including idiomatic expressions), spelling, and some differences in grammar. Louisiana French is varied: speakers from either side of a bayou could speak differently from one another. However, in the grand scheme of things, the varieties of French in Louisiana are not too dissimilar from the international standard.

To demonstrate some of what makes the two different, though, the table below compares selected words in Louisiana and International French. Note that a Louisiana speaker may understand and use some of these words associated with International French, though perhaps not as often and sometimes with a shift in meaning.

Source: Faulk 1977

[To be moved and repurposed:]

Source: Whatley & Jannise 1981 (Pelican)