Louisiana Creole

Louisiana Creole
kréyòl, kouri-vini, gombo, fransé, fransé kasé
Native to Louisiana, (particularly St. Martin Parish, Natchitoches Parish, St. Landry Parish, Jefferson Parish, Lafayette Parish, Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana and New Orleans); also in California (chiefly Southern California), Illinois, and in Texas (chiefly East Texas).
Native speakers
 < 10,000 (2010)[1]
French
Language codes
ISO 639-3 lou
Glottolog loui1240[2]
Linguasphere 51-AAC-ca
Creole-speaking parishes in Louisiana.

Louisiana Creole (kréyol la lwizyàn; French: créole louisianais), also called Louisiana French Creole, is a French-based creole language spoken by far fewer than 10,000 people, mostly in the state of Louisiana.[1] Due to the rapidly shrinking number of speakers, Louisiana Creole is considered an endangered language.[3]

Origins

Louisiana Creole was spoken initially by those living in the French slave colony of Louisiana. Many of the enslaved Africans came from Senegambia region of West Africa beginning in about 1719. These people originally spoke a Mande language related to Malinke and they were in contact with other languages such as Ewe, Yoruba and Kikongo.[4]

Louisiana Creole is a contact language that arose from interactions between speakers of French and various African languages in the 18th century. For this reason, prior to its establishment, the precursor to Louisiana Creole was considered a pidgin language. In its historical backdrop, this pidgin was born to facilitate communication between African slaves and francophone land owners. Once the pidgin tongue was transmitted to the next generation (who were then considered the first native speakers of the new grammar), it could effectively be considered a creole language.

Language shift, endangerment and revitalization

In the case of Louisiana Creole, a diglossia resulted between Louisiana Creole and Plantation Society French (PSF) also known as Colonial French. The latter was frequently associated with plantation owners, plantation overseers, small landowners, military officers/soldiers and bilingual, free people of color. Over the centuries, Louisiana Creole's negative associations with slavery have 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 PSF and that of "low" variety (or L language) was given to Louisiana Creole (please refer to diglossia for more information on H and L languages).[5]

The social status of Louisiana Creole further declined as a result of the Louisiana Purchase. The promise of upward socioeconomic mobility prompted many speakers of Louisiana Creole to abandon their stigmatised language in favor of English.[6] 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 extensive influence from English, including loanwords, code-switching and syntactic calquing.[7][8][9]

Today, Louisiana Creole is spoken by fewer than 10,000 people.[1] 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.[10]

Efforts to revitalize French in Louisiana have placed emphasis on Cajun French, to the exclusion of Creole.[11] However, community organisations such as CREOLE, Inc. have led a handful of community-level efforts to promote the language.[8] CREOLE, Inc., for example, has organised a 'Creole Table' in St. Martinville, as well as a number of other language-focused events.[12] In addition, there is an active online community of language-learners and activists engaged in language revitalization, led by language activist Christophe Landry.[13] These efforts have resulted in the creation of a semi-standardized orthography[14] and a digitalized version of Valdman et al.'s Louisiana Creole Dictionary.[15] A first language primer was released in 2017.[16][17]

Geographic distribution

Speakers of Louisiana Creole are mainly concentrated in south and southwest Louisiana, where the population of Creolophones is distributed across the region. St. Martin Parish forms the heart of the Creole-speaking region. Other sizeable communities exist along Bayou Têche in St. Landry, Avoyelles, Iberia, and St. Mary Parishes. There are smaller communities on False River in Pointe-Coupée Parish, in Terrebone Parish, and along the lower Mississippi River in Ascension, St. Charles Parish, and St. James and St. John the Baptist parishes.[18]

There are also numbers of Creolophones in Natchitoches Parish on Cane River and sizable communities of Louisiana Creole-speakers in adjacent Southeast Texas (Beaumont, Houston, Port Arthur, Galveston) and the Chicago area. Louisiana Creole speakers in California reside in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino counties and in Northern California (San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento County, Plumas County, Tehama County, Mono County, and Yuba County.).[8] Historically, there were Creole-speaking communities in Mississippi and Alabama (on Mon Louis Island), however it is likely that no speakers remain in these areas.[19]

Grammar

Definite articles in Louisiana Creole vary between the le, la and les used in standard French (a testament of possible decreolization in some areas) and a and la for the singular, and yé for the plural. Louisiana Creole exhibits subject-verb-object (SVO) word order.[8]

Personal pronouns [15]

SubjectiveSubjectiveObjectiveObjectivePossessivePossessive
EnglishCreoleEnglishCreoleEnglishCreole
1st personImomemòminemokin/mochin (masculine)

makènn/mochènn (feminine)

2nd personyoutoyoutwayourstokin/tochin

tokènn/tochènn

3rd personhe, sheli, çahim, herlihis, her, herssokin/sochin

sokènn/sochènn

1st pluralweno, not, nouzòtusnouzòt, nou, zòtour, oursnokin/nochin

nokènn/nochènn

2nd pluralyouvos, vouzòtyouvou, vouzòtyour, yoursvokin/vochin

vokènn/vochènn

3rd pluraltheyyéthemyétheir, theirsyékin/yéchin

yékènn/yéchènn

In theory, Creole places its definite articles after the noun, unlike French. Given Louisiana Creole's complex linguistic relationship with Colonial French and Cajun French, however, this is often no longer the case. Since there is no system of noun gender, articles only vary on phonetic criteria. The article a is placed after words ending in a vowel, and la is placed after words ending in a consonant.

Another aspect of Louisiana Creole which is unlike French is the lack of verb conjugation. Verbs do not vary based on person or number. Verbs vary based on verbal markers (e.g., té (past tense), sé (conditional), sa or "a[alé]" (future)) which are placed between the personal pronouns and conjugated verbs (e.g. Mo té kourí ô Villaj, "I went to Lafayette"). Frequently in the past tense, the verbal marker is omitted and one is left to figure out the time of the event through context.

Vocabulary

The vocabulary of Louisiana Creole is of primarily of French origin, as French is the language's lexifier. Some local vocabulary, such as topography, animals, plants are of Amerindian origin. The language has a small number of vocabulary items from west and central African languages (namely Bambara, Wolof, Fon) in folklore and in the religion of Voodoo.[20] 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 vocabulary with Louisiana French.[21]

Numbers

Included are the French numbers for comparison.

Number Louisiana Creole French
1 un un
2 dé deux
3 trò/trwa trois
4 kat quatre
5 cink cinq
6 sis six
7 sèt sept
8 wit huit
9 nèf neuf
10 dis dix

Greetings

English Louisiana Creole French
Hello Bonjou Bonjour
How are things? Konmen lé-zafè? Comment vont les affaires ?
How are you doing? Konmen to yê? Konmen ç'ap(é) kouri? Comment allez-vous ? Comment vas-tu?
I'm good, thanks. Çé bon, mèsi. Mo bien, mèsi. Ça va bien, merci.
See you later. Wa (twa) pli tar. Je te vois (vois-toi) plus tard. (À plus tard.)
I love you. Mo laimé twa. Je t'aime.
Take care. Swinn-twa. Soigne-toi. (Prends soin de toi.)
Good Morning. Bonjou. Bonjour.
Good Evening. Bonswa. Bonsoir.
Good Night. Bonswa. / Bonnwí. Bonne nuit.

The Lord's Prayer

Nouzòt Popá, ki dan syèl-la
Tokin nom, li sinkifyè,
N'ap spéré pou to
rwayomm arivé, é n'a fé ça
t'olé dan syèl ; paréy si la tèr
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.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonants of Louisiana Creole[22][8][9]
Labial Dental/

Alveolar

 Postalveolar/

Palatal

 Velar
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Plosive p b t d     k ɡ
Affricate         tʃ dʒ    
Fricative f v s z ʃ ʒ    
Tap   ɾ    
Approximant w   j  
Lateral   l  

Vowels

Oral and nasal vowels of Louisiana Creole [22][8][9]
  FrontCentralBack
unroundedrounded
Close oral iyu
Close-mid eøo
Open-mid ɛœɔ
nasal ɛ̃œ̃ɔ̃
Open ɑ̃
oral a

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 "APiCS Online -". apics-online.info. Retrieved 2017-08-15.
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Louisiana Creole". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ "Louisiana Creole". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2017-08-15.
  4. ↑ Sylvie Dubois and Megan Melançon (2000), "Creole Is, Creole Ain't: Diachronic and Synchronic Attitudes toward Creole Identity in Southern Louisiana," Language in Society Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 237-258
  5. ↑ Carlisle, Aimee Jeanne. "Language Attrition in Louisiana Creole French" (PDF). linguistics.ucdavis.edu. University of California, Davis. Retrieved March 27, 2016.
  6. ↑ Brown, Becky (March 1993). The Social Consequences of Writing Louisiana French. Cambridge University Press. pp. 68–92.
  7. ↑ Valdman, ed. by Albert (1997). French and Creole in Louisiana. New York [u.a.]: Plenum Press. p. 111. ISBN 0-306-45464-5.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 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. ISBN 0807127795. OCLC 846496076.
  9. 1 2 3 Neumann, Ingrid (1985). Le créole de Breaux Bridge, Louisiane: étude morphosyntaxique, textes, vocabulaire. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. ISBN 9783871186974.
  10. ↑ Klingler, Thomas A. (2003). "Language labels and language use among Cajuns and Creoles in Louisiana". University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. 9 (2).
  11. ↑ Squint, Kirstin L. (2005-05-04). "A Linguistic Comparison of Haitian Creole and Louisiana Creole". Postcolonial Text. 1 (2).
  12. ↑ "About Us". www.louisianacreoleinc.org. Retrieved 2017-11-05.
  13. ↑ Mayeux, Oliver. 2015. “New Speaker Language: The Morphosyntax of New Speakers of Endangered Languages.” MPhil dissertation, Cambridge, United Kingdom: University of Cambridge.
  14. ↑ Landry, Christophe; St. Laurent, Cliford; Gisclair, Michael; Gaither, Eric; Mayeux, Oliver (2016). A Guide to Louisiana Creole Orthography. Louisiana Historic and Cultural Vistas.
  15. 1 2 "Louisiana Creole Dictionary". www.louisianacreoledictionary.com. St. James Consulting. Retrieved 2018-01-11.
  16. ↑ Wendte, N. A.; Mayeux, Oliver; Wiltz, Herbert (2017). Ti Liv Kréyòl: A Louisiana Creole Primer. Public Domain.
  17. ↑ "Ti Liv Kréyòl: A Louisiana Creole Primer - Louisiana Historic and Cultural Vistas". Louisiana Historic and Cultural Vistas. 2017-08-14. Retrieved 2017-11-05.
  18. ↑ Kirstin Squint, A Linguistic and Cultural Comparison of Haitian Creole and Louisiana Creole, postcolonial.org, Accessed March 11, 2014
  19. ↑ 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.
  20. ↑ Albert Valdman, Dictionary of Louisiana Creole, Indiana University Press, 1998, pp. 3-4.
  21. ↑ 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. New Orleans and the global South : Caribbean, Creolization, carnival. Hildesheim: Georg-Olms-Verlag AG. ISBN 3487155044. OCLC 973171332.
  22. 1 2 Klingler, Thomas A.; Neumann-Holzschuh, Ingrid (2013). "Louisiana Creole". In Susanne Maria Michaelis; Philippe Maurer; Martin Haspelmath; Magnus Huber. The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Volume 2: Portuguese-based, Spanish-based, and French-based languages. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-967770-2.

Further reading

  • Fortier, Alcée (1895). "Louisiana Folk-Tales in French Dialect and English Translation". Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society. II. Retrieved 11 April 2015.
  • Kein, Sybil (2005). Learn to Speak Louisiana French Creole: An Introduction. Gumbo People Products.
  • Kein, Sybil (2006). Maw-Maw's Creole ABC Book. Gumbo People Products.
  • Valdman, Albert; et al. (1998). Dictionary of Louisiana Creole. Indiana University Press.
  • Klinger, Thomas A. (2003). If I could turn my tongue like that: The Creole Language of Pointe-Coupée Parish, Louisiana. Louisiana State University Press.
  • laFleur II, John; Costello, Brian (2013). Speaking In Tongues, Louisiana's Colonial French, Creole & Cajun Languages Tell Their Story. BookRix GmbH & Co. KG.
  • Brasseaux, Carl (2005). French, Cajun, Creole, Houma: A Primer on Francophone Louisiana. Louisiana State University Press.
  • Hail, G.M. (1992). Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
  • Brown, B. "The Social Consequences of Writing Louisiana French". JSTOR 4168410.
  • Dubois & Horvath. "Creoles and Cajuns: A Portrait in Black and White". American Speech.
  • Valdman, A. (1997). French and Creole in Louisiana. Plenum Press.
  • Wendte, N. A.; Mayeux, Oliver; Wiltz, Herbert (2017). Ti Liv Kréyòl: A Louisiana Creole Primer. Public Domain.
  • Louisiana Creole Dictionary - Online
  • Learn Louisiana Creole Online (Kouri-Vini)
  • Learn Pointe-Coupée Parish Creole
  • Brian J. Costello – La Language Créole de la Paroisse Pointe Coupée
  • Centenary University Bibliothèque Tintamarre Texts in Louisiana Creole
  • Louisiana Languages Channel
  • Le bijou sur le Bayou Teche
  • Cajun French (Creole dialect): "C'est Sophie Guidry" by: Emily Lopez on YouTube
  • "Allons Manger" Cajun French with Creole dialect
  • Oral History Forum I Raphaël Confiant on YouTube
  • Bernard, S. "Creoles". KnowLA: Encyclopedia of Louisiana.
  • "Louisiana Creole". The Endangered Languages Project.
  • English - Louisiana creole Glosbe dictionary
  • louisiana creole - English Glosbe dictionary
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