Louisiana Creole is a French-based creole language spoken by fewer than 10,000 people, mostly in the U.S. state of Louisiana.[4] Also known as Kouri-Vini,[1] it is spoken today by people who may racially identify as white, black, mixed, and Native American, as well as Cajun and Creole. It should not be confused with its sister language, Louisiana French, a dialect of the French language. Many Louisiana Creoles do not speak the Louisiana Creole language and may instead use French or English as their everyday languages.
Due to the rapidly shrinking number of speakers, Louisiana Creole is considered an endangered language.[5]
Origins and historical development
Louisiana was colonized by the French beginning in 1699, as well as Acadians who were forced out of Acadia around the mid-18th century.[6][7] Colonists were large-scale planters, small-scale homesteaders, and cattle ranchers; the French needed laborers, as they found the climate very harsh. They began to import enslaved Africans, as they had done in their Caribbean island colonies.[7] Two-thirds of the slaves brought to Louisiana originated in the Senegambian region, speaking Malinke, Sereer, Wolof, Pulaar, and Bambara. The largest group from Senegambia was the Bambara, who spoke mutually intelligible dialects of the Malinke. [8]
Also, the monopoly held by the Company of Indies in both Senegal and Louisiana may also have contributed to the Africans' relative ancestral homogeneity. Because of this homogeneity, retention of the Africans' indigenous languages may have hindered the development of a Creole in Louisiana. In fact, the Pointe Coupee slave revolt in 1731 was organized by the Bambara who were purportedly speaking their ancestral languages to plan the coup. Ultimately, Louisiana Creole did develop, with West African languages becoming the substrates to a varied French lexifier.[8] The importation of enslaved people by the French regime continued until 1743.[7]
The language developed in 18th-century Louisiana from interactions among speakers of the lexifier language of Standard French and several substrate or adstrate languages from Africa.[9][7] Prior to its establishment as a creole, the precursor was considered a pidgin language.[10] The social situation that gave rise to the Louisiana Creole language was unique, in that the lexifier language was the language found at the contact site. More often the lexifier is the language that arrives at the contact site belonging to the substrate/adstrate languages. Neither the French, the French-Canadians, nor the enslaved Africans were native to the area; this fact categorizes Louisiana Creole as a contact language that arose between exogenous ethnicities.[11] Once the pidgin tongue was transmitted to the next generation as a lingua franca (who were considered the first native speakers of the new grammar), it could effectively be classified as a creole language.[7][9]
No standard name for the language has existed historically. In the language, community members in various areas of Louisiana and elsewhere have referred to it by many expressions, though Kréyol/Kréyòl has been the most widespread. Until the rise of Cajunism in the 1970s and 1980s, many Louisiana Francophones also identified their language as Créole, since they self-identified as Louisiana Creoles. In Louisiana's case, self-identity has determined how locals identify the language they speak. This leads to linguistic confusion. To remedy this, language activists beginning in the 2010s began promoting the term Kouri-Vini, to avoid any linguistic ambiguity with Louisiana French.[1]
The boundaries of historical Louisiana were first shaped by the French, then, in statehood after 1812, took on its modern form. By the time of the Louisiana Purchase by the U.S in 1803, the boundaries came to include most of the Central United States, ranging from present-day Montana; parts of North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado; all of South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas; part of Southeast Texas; all of Oklahoma; most of Missouri and Arkansas; as well as Louisiana.[12]
In 1978, researchers located a document from a murder trial in the colonial period that acknowledges the existence of Louisiana Creole.[7][12] The documentation does not include any examples of orthography or structure.[7][12]
In an 1807 document, a grammatical description of the language is included in the experiences of an enslaved woman recorded by C.C. Robin. This was prior to arrival in Louisiana of French-speaking colonists and enslaved Africans from Saint-Domingue; the whites and free people of color (also French speaking) were refugees from the Haitian Revolution, which had established the first empire in the western hemisphere. The statements collected from Robin showed linguistic features that are now known to be typical of Louisiana Creole.[7]
The term "Criollo" appears in legal court documents during the Spanish colonial period (1762–1803); the Spanish reference to the language stated that it was used among enslaved people and whites.[12]
The importation of enslaved Africans increased after France ceded the colony to Spain, in 1763, following France's defeat by Great Britain in the Seven Years' War in Europe.[13] Some Spaniards immigrated to the colony, but it was dominated by French language and culture. Like South Carolina, Louisiana had a "minority" population of Africans that greatly outnumbered the European settlers, including those white Creoles born in the colony.[7]
Language shift, endangerment and revitalization
In the case of Louisiana Creole, a diglossia resulted between Louisiana Creole and Louisiana French. Michael Picone, a lexicographer, proposed the term "Plantation Society French" to describe a version of French which he associated with plantation owners, plantation overseers, small landowners, military officers/soldiers and bilingual, free people of color, as being a contributor to Louisiana Creole's lexical base. Over the centuries, Louisiana Creole's negative associations with slavery stigmatized the language to the point where many speakers are reluctant to use it for fear of ridicule. In this way, the assignment of "high" variety (or H language) was allotted to standard Louisiana French and that of "low" variety (or L language) was given to Louisiana Creole and to Louisiana French.[14]
The social status of Louisiana Creole further declined as a result of the Louisiana Purchase. Americans and their government made it illegal for Francophones to speak their language. In 1921, the State of Louisiana mandated that public education take place in English only.[15] Children and adults were often punished by corporal punishment, fines, and social degradation. By the 21st century, other methods were enforced. The promise of upward socioeconomic mobility and public shaming did the rest of the work, prompting many speakers of Louisiana Creole to abandon their stigmatised language in favor of English.[16] Additionally, the development of industry, technology and infrastructure in Louisiana reduced the isolation of Louisiana Creolophone communities and resulted in the arrival of more English-speakers, resulting in further exposure to English. Because of this, Louisiana Creole exhibits more recent influence from English, including loanwords, code-switching and syntactic calquing.[17][18][19]
Today, Louisiana Creole is spoken by fewer than 6,000 people.[1][4] Though national census data includes figures on language usage, these are often unreliable in Louisiana due to respondents' tendencies to identify their language in line with their ethnic identity. For example, speakers of Louisiana Creole who identify as Cajuns often label their language 'Cajun French', though on linguistic grounds their language would be considered Louisiana Creole.[20]
Efforts to revitalize French in Louisiana have placed emphasis on Cajun French, to the exclusion of Creole.[21]Zydeco musician Keith Frank has made efforts through the use of social media not only to promote his music, but preserve his Creole heritage and language as well, most notably through the use of Twitter. Additionally, Frank developed a mobile application in 2012 titled the "ZydecoBoss App", which acts as a miniature social network linked to a user's Facebook and Twitter accounts, allowing users to provide commentary in real time amongst multiple platforms. Aside from social media activism, Frank also created a creole music festival in 2012 called the "Creole Renaissance Festival", which acts a celebration of Creole culture.[22]
A small number of community organizations focus on promoting Louisiana Creole, for example CREOLE, Inc.[23] and the "Creole Table" founded by Velma Johnson.[24] Northwestern State University developed the Creole Heritage Centre, designed to bring people of Louisiana Creole heritage together, as well as preserve Louisiana Creole through their Creole Language Documentation Project.[25] In addition, there is an active online community of language-learners and activists engaged in language revitalization, led by language activist Christophe Landry.[26]
These efforts have resulted in the creation of a popular orthography,[27] a digitalized version of Valdman et al.'s Louisiana Creole Dictionary,[28] and a free spaced repetition course for learning vocabulary hosted on Memrise created by a team led by Adrien Guillory-Chatman.[29] A first language primer was released in 2017[30][dead link][31] and revised into a full-length language guide and accompanying website in 2020.[2] 2022 saw the publication of an anthology of contemporary poetry in Louisiana Creole, the first book written completely in the language.[32] A December 2023 article in The Economist highlighted revitalization efforts with the headline "Louisiana Creole is enjoying a modest revival," focusing in particular on language activists Jourdan Thibodeaux and Taalib Pierre-Auguste.[15]
The phonology of Louisiana Creole has much in common with those of other French-based creole languages. In comparison to most of these languages, however, Louisiana Creole diverges less from the phonology of French in general and Louisiana French in particular.
The table above shows the consonant sounds of Louisiana Creole, not including semivowels/j/ and /w/. In common with Louisiana French, Louisiana Creole features postalveolar affricates/tʃ/ and /dʒ/, as in /tʃololo/ ‘weak coffee’ and /dʒɛl/ ‘mouth’. The nasal palatal /ɲ/ usually becomes a nasal palatal approximant when between vowels, which results in the preceding vowel becoming nasalized. At the end of a word, it typically is replaced by /n/ or /ŋ/.[37]
Vowels
Oral and nasal vowels of Louisiana Creole [37][18][19]
The table above shows the oral and nasal vowels of Louisiana Creole as identified by linguists.[7]
Vowel rounding
Speakers of the language may use rounded vowels [y], [ø] and [œ] where they occur in French. This is subject to a high degree of variation with the same region, sociolinguistic group, and even within the same speaker.[19][18][38] Examples of this process include:
/diri/~/dyri/ 'rice', compare French du riz/dyri/
/vje/~/vjø/ 'old', compare French vieux/vjø/
/dʒɛl/~/dʒœl/ 'mouth', compare French gueule/ɡœl/[28]
Vowel lowering
The open-mid vowel[ɛ] may lowered to the near-open vowel [æ] when followed by [ɾ], e.g. [fɾɛ]~[fɾæɾ] 'brother'.[7]
Regressive and progressive nasalization of vowels
In common with Louisiana French, Louisiana Creole vowels are nasalized where they precede a nasal consonant, e.g. [ʒɛ̃n] 'young', [pɔ̃m] 'apple'. Unlike most varieties of Louisiana French, Louisiana Creole also exhibits progressive nasalization: vowels following a nasal consonant are nasalized, e.g. [kɔ̃nɛ̃] 'know'.[39]
In 19th-century sources, determiners in Louisiana Creole appear related to specificity. Bare nouns are non-specific. As for specific nouns, if the noun is presupposed it took a definite determiner (-la, singular; -la-ye, plural) or by an indefinite determiner (en, singular; de or -ye, plural). Today, definite articles in Louisiana Creole vary between the le, la and lê, placed before the noun as in Louisiana French, and post-positional definite determiners -la for the singular, and -yé for the plural.[37] This variation is but one example of the influence of Louisiana French on Louisiana Creole, especially in the variety spoken along the Bayou Têche which has been characterized by some linguists as decreolized, though this notion is controversial.[19][18][37]
Possession is shown by noun-noun possessum-possessor constructions (e.g. lamézon mô papa 'house (of) my grandfather') or with the preposition a (e.g. lamézon a mô papa 'house of my grandfather').[37]
Verbs
Verbal morphology
Older forms of Louisiana Creole featured only one form of each verb without any inflection, e.g. [mɑ̃ʒe] 'to eat'. Today, the language typically features two verb classes: verbs with only a single form ([bwɑ] 'to drink') and verbs with a 'long' or 'short' form ([mɑ̃ʒe], [mɑ̃ʒ] 'to eat').[7]
Tense, aspect, mood
Like other creole languages, Louisiana Creole features preverbal markers of tense, aspect and mood as listed in the table below
The vocabulary of Louisiana Creole is primarily of French origin, as French is the language's lexifier. Some local vocabulary, such as topography, animals, plants are of Amerindian origin. In the domains folklore and Voodoo, the language has a small number of vocabulary items from west and central African languages.[40] Much of this non-French vocabulary is shared with other French-based creole languages of North America, and Louisiana Creole shares all but a handful of its vocabulary with Louisiana French.[41]
Dites moi qui vous aimez, et je vous dirai qui vous êtes.
Tell me who you love, and I'll tell you who you are.
Craché nen laire, li va tombé enhaut vou nez.
Crachez dans l'air, il vous en tombera sur le nez.
Spit in the air, and it will fall on your nose.
Coupé zoré milet fait pas chewal.
Couper les oreilles du mulet, n'en fait pas un cheval.
Cutting off the mule's ears doesn't make it a horse.
Compé Torti va doucement, mais li rivé coté bite pendant Compé Chivreil apé dormi.
Compère Tortue va doucement, mais il arrive au bût pendant que Compère Chevreuil dort.
Tortoise goes slowly, but he arrives at the barrel while Roe Deer is sleeping.
Cochon conné sir qui bois l'apé frotté.
Le cochon sait bien sur quel [arbre] bois il va se frotter.
The pig knows well on which [tree] wood it will rub.
Cila qui rit vendredi va pleuré dimanche.
Celui qui rit le vendredi va pleurer le dimanche.
Whoever laughs on Friday will cry on Sunday.
Chien jappô li pas morde.
Le chien qui jappe ne mord pas.
The barking dog doesn't bite.
Chatte brilé pair di feu.
Le chat brûlé a peur du feu.
The burnt cat is afraid of fire.
Bouki fait gombo; lapin mangé li.
Le bouc fait le gombo; le lapin le mange.
The goat makes the gumbo; the rabbit eats it.
The Lord's Prayer
Catholic prayers are recited in French by speakers of Louisiana Creole. Today, some language activists and learners are leading efforts to translate the prayers.[45][unreliable source?]
Nouzòt Popá, ki dan syèl-la Tokin nom, li sinkifyè, N'ap spéré pou to rwayonm arivé, é n'a fé ça t'olé dan syèl; parèy si latær Donné-nou jordi dipin tou-lé-jou, é pardon nouzòt péshé paréy nou pardon lê moun ki fé nouzòt sikombé tentasyon-la, Mé délivré nou depi mal.
A pidgin, or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside.
A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the process of different languages simplifying and mixing into a new form, and then that form expanding and elaborating into a full-fledged language with native speakers, all within a fairly brief period. While the concept is similar to that of a mixed or hybrid language, creoles are often characterized by a tendency to systematize their inherited grammar. Like any language, creoles are characterized by a consistent system of grammar, possess large stable vocabularies, and are acquired by children as their native language. These three features distinguish a creole language from a pidgin. Creolistics, or creology, is the study of creole languages and, as such, is a subfield of linguistics. Someone who engages in this study is called a creolist.
Pointe Coupee Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 20,758. The parish seat is New Roads.
New Roads is a city in and the parish seat of Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, United States. The center of population of Louisiana was located in New Roads in 2000. The population was 4,831 at the 2010 census, down from 4,966 in 2000. In the 2020 census the population was 4,549, while at the beginning year of 2023 the census showed a population of 4,205 and expects to be under 4,000 by the years end. The city's ZIP code is 70760. It is part of the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Ò, ò (o-grave) is a letter of the Latin script.
Acadiana, also known as Cajun Country, is the official name given to the French Louisiana region that has historically contained much of the state's Francophone population.
Liberian English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Liberia. Four such varieties exist:
Haitian Creole, or simply Creole, is a French-based creole language spoken by 10 to 12million people worldwide, and is one of the two official languages of Haiti, where it is the native language of the vast majority of the population. Northern, Central, and Southern dialects are the three main dialects of Haitian Creole. The Northern dialect is predominantly spoken in Cap-Haïtien, Central is spoken in Port-au-Prince, and Southern in the Cayes area.
Antillean Creole is a French-based creole that is primarily spoken in the Lesser Antilles. Its grammar and vocabulary include elements of French, Carib, English, and African languages.
Decreolization is a postulated phenomenon whereby over time a creole language reconverges with the lexifier from which it originally derived. The notion has attracted criticism from linguists who argue there is little theoretical or empirical basis on which to postulate a process of language change which is particular to creole languages.
A French creole, or French-based creole language, is a creole for which French is the lexifier. Most often this lexifier is not modern French but rather a 17th- or 18th-century koiné of French from Paris, the French Atlantic harbors, and the nascent French colonies. This article also contains information on French pidgin languages, contact languages that lack native speakers.
Louisiana Creoles are a Louisiana French ethnic group descended from the inhabitants of colonial Louisiana before it became a part of the United States during the period of both French and Spanish rule. They share cultural ties such as the traditional use of the French, Spanish, and Creole languages and predominant practice of Catholicism.
Cajun English, or Cajun Vernacular English, is a dialect of American English derived from Cajuns living in Southern Louisiana. Cajun English is significantly influenced by Louisiana French, the historical language of the Cajun people, themselves descended from the French-speaking Acadian people. While French remains mostly only used by the elderly, it is seeing something of a cultural renaissance. Still, Cajun English is not merely a transitional dialect between French and English, and most of its speakers today are monolingual anglophones.
A lexifier is the language that provides the basis for the majority of a pidgin or creole language's vocabulary (lexicon). Often this language is also the dominant, or superstrate language, though this is not always the case, as can be seen in the historical Mediterranean Lingua Franca. In mixed languages, there are no superstrates or substrates, but instead two or more adstrates. One adstrate still contributes the majority of the lexicon in most cases, and would be considered the lexifier. However, it is not the dominant language, as there are none in the development of mixed languages, such as in Michif.
The nasal palatal approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some oral languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨j̃⟩, that is, a j with a tilde. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j~, and in the Americanist phonetic notation it is ⟨ỹ⟩.
The Mina were a community of well-organized, enslaved Black people in Louisiana who spoke a common language, most likely a dialect of Ewe that may have been related to Fon.
Haitian French is the variety of French spoken in Haiti. Haitian French is close to standard French. It should be distinguished from Haitian Creole, which is not mutually intelligible with French.
Brian James Costello is an American historian, author, archivist and humanitarian. He is an 11th generation resident of New Roads, Louisiana, seat of Pointe Coupee Parish. He is three-quarters French and one-quarter Italian in ancestry.
Louisiana French is an umbrella term for the dialects and varieties of the French language spoken traditionally by French Louisianians in colonial Lower Louisiana. As of today Louisiana French is primarily used in the state of Louisiana, specifically in its southern parishes.
↑ Neumann-Holzschuh, Ingrid; Klingler, Thomas A. (2013), "Louisiana Creole structure dataset", Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online, Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, retrieved May 15, 2023
1 2 Klinger, Thomas A. (2003). If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That: The Creole Language of Pointe Coupee parish, Louisiana. Louisiana: Louisiana State University. pp.3–92.
↑ Dubois, Sylvie; Melançon, Megan (2000). "Creole is, Creole Ain't: Diachronic and Synchronic Attitudes Toward Creole Identity in Southern Louisiana". Language in Society. 29 (2): 237–58. doi:10.1017/S0047404500002037. S2CID144287855.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A., Klingler, Thomas (2003). If I could turn my tongue like that: the Creole language of Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN0807127795. OCLC846496076.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
1 2 3 4 5 Neumann, Ingrid (1985). Le créole de Breaux Bridge, Louisiane: étude morphosyntaxique, textes, vocabulaire. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. ISBN9783871186974.
1 2 Landry, Christophe; St. Laurent, Cliford; Gisclair, Michael; Gaither, Eric; Mayeux, Oliver (2016). A Guide to Louisiana Creole Orthography. Louisiana Historic and Cultural Vistas.
↑ Mayers, Jonathan Joseph; Mayeux, Oliver, eds. (2022). Févi (in Louisiana Creole). Shreveport, L.A.: Les Cahiers du Tintamarre. ISBN978-1-7353605-4-6.
↑ Marshall, Margaret (1991). "The Creole of Mon Louis Island, Alabama, and the Louisiana Connection". Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages. 6: 73–87. doi:10.1075/jpcl.6.1.05mar.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Klingler, Thomas A.; Neumann-Holzschuh, Ingrid (2013). "Louisiana Creole". In Susanne Maria Michaelis; Philippe Maurer; Martin Haspelmath; Magnus Huber (eds.). The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Volume 2: Portuguese-based, Spanish-based, and French-based languages. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-967770-2.
↑ Neumann-Holzschuh, Ingrid (2016). "Entre la Caraïbe et l'Amérique du Nord: le créole louisianais et son lexique à la lumière de ses contacts linguistiques et culturels". In Ette, Ottmar; Müller, Gesine (eds.). New Orleans and the global South: Caribbean, Creolization, carnival. Hildesheim: Georg-Olms-Verlag AG. ISBN978-3487155043. OCLC973171332.
Wendte, N. A. (2020). Creole - a Louisiana label in a Texas Context. New Orleans, LA: Lulu Press, Inc. ISBN978-1-716-64756-7. OCLC1348382332.
Further reading
Brasseaux, Carl A. (2005). French, Cajun, Creole, Houma: a primer on francophone Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN978-0-8071-4778-8. OCLC774295468. Partial preview at Google Books.
Guillory-Chatman, Adrien; Mayeux, Oliver; Wendte, Nathan; Wiltz, Nathan; Mayers, Jonathan (2020). Ti liv Kréyòl: a learner's guide to Louisiana Creole. New Orleans. ISBN978-1-5272-7102-9. OCLC1257416565.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo (1992). Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN978-0-585-32916-1. OCLC45843432.
Kein, Sybil (2005). Learn to speak Louisiana French Creole: an introduction. Natchitoches, LA, US: Gumbo People Products. OCLC144558377.
Kein, Sybil; Forsloff, Del (2006). Maw-Maw's Creole ABC book. New Orleans, LA, US: Gumbo People Products. OCLC809926365.
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