Okay, this is coo. Surfing around on Saturday morning, I stumbled across this video where a French woman talks about Louisiana French and how it differs from standard French. It all goes back to the history of Louisiana
In the mid 1700s, the British expelled the French from Nova Scotia. This took several forms, but a bunch of those unfortunate souls washed ashore in Louisiana. They formed the basis of our French-speaking culture. My maternal grandmother, Gretna Segura, was directly descended from those Canadians and spoke French in her childhood household. When she went to school, she was punished for speaking French and refused to teach it to her descendants. What little I've picked up was from other sources.
So, we have this Parisian gal listening to our Louisiana patois and commenting on how close it is to her standard French. It's a cool 13 minutes to spend on a Saturday.
5 comments:
My father was from the Marksville,Bunkie,cottonport area of Louisiana. He told us kids that when he started school (in the 30's), if you spoke French the nuns would beat you. Her refused to teach any of his kids how to speak Cajun French. Feel like we all lost out.
We gonna have a good time, yeah..
I lived in Alexandria, 74 & 75, and Thibodeau in 77 or 8 ,just up the road from Nichols state. Not a world traveler, but the people I met, the Cajuns, they carried a natural joy, they know how to live.
That was an interesting video.
Here's one on different Southern accents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl8ksfLfW6Q
some mornings when I have the notion, I'll "tune in" on the 'Net for a station out of Golden Meadow. They open their broadcast day with a Cajun version of our national anthem. Enjoy it very much. Also enjoy their music on weekends...again, as the notion strikes me.
A friend of mine married a girl from France in the early 80s. She missed her language and culture but he couldn’t afford to take her to France. So they took short vacations to Louisiana, Montreal, and Haiti. She was insulted and incensed by the patois in all these places. They divorced after a few years.
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