Louisiana French
Louisiana French includes 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.
Over the centuries, the language has incorporated some words of African, Spanish, Native American and English origin, sometimes giving it linguistic features found only in Louisiana. Louisiana French differs to varying extents from French dialects spoken in other regions, but Louisiana French is mutually intelligible with other dialects and is most closely related to those of Missouri, New England, Canada and northwestern France.
Historically, most works of media and literature produced in Louisiana—such as Les Cenelles, a poetry anthology compiled by a group of Free people of color#New Orleans and La Louisiane, and Creole-authored novels such as L'Habitation St-Ybars or Pouponne et Balthazar—were written in standard French. It is a misconception that no one in Louisiana spoke or wrote Standard French. The resemblance that Louisiana French bears to Standard French varies depending on the dialect and register, with formal and urban variants in Louisiana more closely resembling Standard French.
The United States Census' 2017–2021 American Community Survey estimated that 1.64% of Louisianans over the age of 5 spoke French or a French-based creole at home. As of 2023, The Advocate roughly estimated that there were 120,000 French speakers in Louisiana, including about 20,000 Cajun French, but noted that their ability to provide an accurate assessment was very limited. These numbers were down from roughly a million speakers in the 1960s. Distribution of these speakers is uneven, however, with the majority residing in the south-central region known as Acadiana. Some of the Acadiana parishes register francophone populations of 10% or more of the total, with a select few exceeding 15%.
French is spoken across ethnic and racial lines by people who may identify as Cajuns and Creoles as well as Chitimacha, Houma, Biloxi, Tunica, Choctaw, Acadians, and French Indians among others. For these reasons, as well as the relatively small influence Acadian French has had on the region, the label Louisiana French or Louisiana Regional French is generally regarded as more accurate and inclusive than "Cajun French" and is the preferred term by linguists and anthropologists. However, the term "Cajun French" is commonly used in lay discourse by speakers of the language and other inhabitants of Louisiana.
Louisiana French should further not be confused with Louisiana Creole, a distinct French-based creole language indigenous to Louisiana and spoken across racial lines. In Louisiana, language labels are often conflated with ethnic labels, and Cajun-identified speakers might therefore call their language "Cajun French" even when linguists would identify it as Louisiana Creole. Likewise, many Creoles of various backgrounds do not speak Louisiana Creole but rather Louisiana French.
Parishes in which the dialect is still found include Acadia, Allen, Ascension, Assumption, Avoyelles, Cameron, Evangeline, Iberia, Jefferson Davis, Lafayette, Lafourche, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Mary, Terrebonne, Pointe Coupée, Vermilion, and other parishes of southern Louisiana.
History
Colonial Louisiana
Starting in the second half of the 17th century, several trading posts were established in Lower Louisiana eventually giving way to greater French colonial aspirations with the turn of the century. French immigration was at its peak during the 17th and 18th centuries which firmly established the Creole culture and language there. One important distinction to make is that the term "créole" at the time was consistently used to signify native, or "locally-born" in contrast to "foreign-born". In general the core of the population was rather diverse, coming from all over the French colonial empire namely Canada, France, and the French West Indies. Eventually, with the consistent relations built between the Native American tribes and francophones, new vocabulary was adopted into the colonial language. For example, something of a "French-Choctaw patois" is said to have developed primarily among Louisiana's Afro-French population and métis Creoles with a large portion of its vocabulary said to be of Native American origin.Prior to the late arrival of the Acadian people in Louisiana, the French of Louisiana had already begun to undergo changes as noted by Captain Jean-Bernard Bossu who traveled with and witnessed Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne speaking this "common language." This unusual blend of French was also noticed by Pierre-Clement de Laussat during a lunch visit with the Creole-French Canterelle family. Upon the arrival of their Houma relatives, the family began conversing in "French and Choctaw." Additional witness to this variety of French comes from J.F.H. Claiborne, a cousin of Louisiana's first American governor, who also noted the "unusual patois of provincial French and Choctaw."
Starting in 1755, large populations of the French-speaking Acadians began to arrive en masse along the Mississippi River as well as eventually arriving all the way to south to the modern-day state of Louisiana following the Great Upheaval. In 1762, France relinquished their territorial claims to Spain just as Acadians had begun to arrive; despite this, Spanish governor Bernardo de Gálvez, permitted the Acadians to continue to speak their language as well as observe their other cultural practices. The original Acadian community was composed mainly of farmers and fishermen who were able to provide their children with a reasonable amount of schooling.
However, the hardships after being exiled from Nova Scotia, along with the difficult process of resettlement in Louisiana and the ensuing poverty made it difficult to establish schools in the early stages of the community's development. Eventually schools were established, as private academies whose faculty had recently arrived in Louisiana from France or who had been educated in France. Children were usually able to attend the schools only long enough to learn counting and reading. At the time, a standard part of a child's education in the Cajun community was also the Catholic catechism, which was taught in French by an older member of the community. The educational system did not allow for much contact with Standard French. It has often been said that Acadian French has had a large impact on the development of Louisiana French but this has generally been over-estimated.
19th century
French immigration continued in the 19th century until the start of the American Civil War, bringing large numbers of francophones speaking something more similar to today's Metropolitan French. Over time, through contact between different ethnic groups, the various dialects converged to produce what we know as Louisiana French. The 1845 Louisiana constitution permitted any legislator to address the body in either English or French, and the 1845 and 1852 constitutions required all laws to be written in both English and French.The 1864 Louisiana constitution abandoned the dual language requirement and directed public instruction to be conducted in English, although Article 128 prohibited the state from barring French speakers from public office. The post-Civil War constitution of 1868 further stated that "no laws shall require judicial process to be issued in any other than the English language". However, French was still the most spoken language in many parishes of Louisiana, and the constitution of 1879 adjusted the previous restrictions to require that laws "be promulgated and preserved in the English language; but the General Assembly may provide for the publication of the laws in the French Language, and prescribe that judicial advertisements in certain designated cities and parishes...be made in that language." It also allowed primary school to teach in French, a provision that was extended in the 1898 and 1913 constitutions to include secondary schools.
Decline in the early 20th century
In 1921, the new Louisiana constitution reversed the previous language rights and banned the teaching of French in all public schools. The constitution established English as the official language of Louisiana, which pushed French out of New Orleans to its current location in southwestern parts of the state. The education and religious services of Louisiana eventually fell prey to English, and the eventual consequence of speaking French was that speaking French became a sign of cultural illegitimacy. Parents viewed the practice of teaching their children English as the intrusion of a foreign culture, and many refused to send their children to school. When the government required them to do so, they selected private French Catholic schools in which class was conducted in French. Derogatory terms and phrases were used by English speakers to put social pressure on French speakers, a sentiment later criticized by the Québécois poet Michèle Lalonde's in her 1974 poem "Speak White". The French schools worked to emphasize Standard French, which they considered to be the prestige dialect. When the government required all schools, public and parochial, to teach in English, new teachers, who could not speak French, were hired. Children could not understand their teachers and generally ignored them by continuing to speak French. Eventually, children were subjected to corporal punishment for speaking French on school grounds.The punishment system seems to have been responsible for much of the decay that Louisiana French experienced in the 20th century since, in turn, people who could not speak English were perceived as uneducated. Therefore, parents became hesitant to teach French to their children, hoping that the children would have a better life in an English-speaking nation. As of 2011, there were an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people in Louisiana who spoke French. By comparison, there were an estimated one million native French-speakers in Louisiana in about 1968. While French is now taught in schools, the local dialect is now at risk of extinction as children are no longer taught it.
, there were questions whether the Louisiana French language would survive into another generation. Some residents of Acadiana are bilingual though, having learned French at home and English in school. Currently, Louisiana French is considered an endangered language.