Ici on parle français
In St. Landry Parish, language lives on as a witness to the region's long and layered history
Editor's Note: Country Roads is thrilled to announce Mary Hawkins's article"Ici on parle français" as a semifinalist in our 2019 All Roads Lead to Home Young Writers' Contest. Read the work of our winner and two other semifinalists at the link, here.
It is an easy thing, to say that language plays an important role in the culture of an area. Take, for example, the Creole singer crying out “Ouais catin, tu vas revenir” on a grainy record from the ‘30s or the bienvenue of the person behind the counter at a local boudin stop in the heart of Cajun country. It took hundreds of years to develop the words used today throughout St. Landry Parish. Their essence tumbles through time gaining new meanings while losing old ones. Language is ever-changing, but the linguistic singularities that remain exist as a snapshot of the history that made them.
Linguistics is the science of language—a study of the ways it ebbs and flows over timeframes as small as the shift from infant to adult and as vast as century-long evolutions as a species. Even from moment to moment, the way we speak and how we speak it are constantly changing to fit a situation, a mindset, or a group—and most of it happens unconsciously. Whether you are with family or friends, with coworkers, new acquaintances, or bosses, your language moves with you, and the French used in St. Landry Parish is no different.
Let’s go back to the beginning, to the first instances of French in this part of the Americas. The La Salle Expeditions in the late 17th century claimed the Mississippi River and the fertile lands surrounding it for their Sun King, Louis XIV. As settlers trickled down the Mississippi from Canada, and the century turned, two St. Landry Parish municipalities—Washington and Opelousas—were settled. They’ll both celebrate their 300th anniversaries in 2020.
The communication used during this frontier-time in central Louisiana was a mixture of French and the Native American languages of the Natchez, Atakapa, and Choctaw, as well as that of the Africans being brought to the area as slaves. With such disparate groups dropped together and forced to work across language barriers, a means of communication secondary to their native language became necessary. From these conditions, a a pidgin language emerged.
A pidgin language is not a proper language, but rather a means to an end. By nature it is simple, impromptu, and born of necessity—a simple vocabulary of borrowed words from the different languages around it.
In the 1800s the French empire continued to expand its colonial exploits along the bayous, building up more permanent farm dwellings in the form of massive sprawling plantations, leading to a growing population of enslaved African peoples brought from the Senegambian, Bight of Benin, and Angola regions, along with subjugated Native Americans. During this time, the pidgin settled into a legitimate creole—a vernacular in which children are raised speaking it as their native tongue. The slaves, with their knowledge of herding and farming, become the first Creole cowboys.
A linguistic creole is distinct from the Creole culture which still populates this parish. Those who identify as Creole have re-appropriated the term for themselves, establishing a new identity tied closely to language and the rural cowboy culture they founded.
Creole as it relates to language refers to the “stabilized pidgin”. To avoid confusion, linguistic researchers have come to refer to the creole spoken here as “Louisiana Creole”—the blended language drawn from this region’s particular mix of cultures, firmly established as a regional vernacular. Today, communities along the Bayou Teche still speak Louisiana Creole, specifically in Arnaudville and Leonville.
In other “cultural” Creole communities, some of the French spoken is not actually the Louisiana Creole prevalent along the Teche, but is in fact more closely related to “Louisiana Regional French”.
This more well-known French is drawn back to the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia in 1755. This group of French-speaking people trace their roots back to the western part of France in a region called Poitou, which was rife with religious turmoil. The Acadians were devout Catholics, and St. Landry Parish still retains a strong religious following. This group of immigrants to Louisiana took a winding way. Some scattered across the then-British colonies, some returned to France, but one way or another in 1765 most of the Acadians found their way to Louisiana. At this time, French rule in Louisiana west of the Mississippi had been conceded to the Spanish, who further solidified Catholicism in the area.
People want to remember [the language], and more than that, they want to be better.
The Acadians mostly stayed to themselves doing what they did best: trapping, farming, and working the land along the bayous and prairies. The other ethnic groups around, the Germans and the Spanish, saw them as lower class, and there was little interaction between communities. Linguistically, this meant that the French spoken by the Acadians remained as it was. In fact, it wasn’t until after the American Civil War—with the socio-economic playing field lowered and leveled for white settlers—that Acadians began to mix with the Germans, Spanish and Louisiana Creole speakers—developing a new, even more nuanced version of Louisiana vernacular French that many today know as Cajun.
In the 1920s, a wave of Americanization began the process—still observed today—of erasing the French language from the area. For almost fifty years, “no French was good French”. English was enforced as the superior language, the language to be taught in schools. Any use of French, regardless of the kind you spoke, was stigmatized. Even at home, families who wanted their children to thrive avoided speaking to their children in French.
Without the archival benefits of a written language, the oral Cajun French language quickly started to fade from memory. The efficiency of Americanization’s reconditioning almost obliterated the French language—in all its forms—from Louisiana in a single generation. The need to start actively preserving Louisiana French wasn’t realized in an official capacity until 1968 with the establishment of The Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL).
Today, there are many efforts to see the preservation of the cultures born of differing French heritage. One of the more boots-on-the-ground methods of this initiative are “French Tables”. These islands of French dialog dot St. Landry Parish in Eunice, a Cajun music haven, in Opelousas, and in Arnaudville. They encourage people to join them claiming “Tout le français est bon français”. All French is good French. At some tables, you’ll find wizened Cajuns reminiscing over hot coffee and swapping stories in French, all the while basking in their freedom of language. At others, Creole women sit in a quilting circle chatting en français and sharing their traditions and language with fluent speakers and newcomers alike. These champions of culture meet in art galleries, in museums, and in historical buildings. They exist in different forms and for a variety of audiences, but the general idea is the same: parler en français.
Even as locals band together to preserve and share, new initiatives are emerging for French immersion schools in Sunset and in Arnaudville. Cajun and zydeco jam sessions are also popping up everywhere, seeing record numbers. People want to remember, and more than that, they want to be better.
The truth is, our language comes with a story, and the sounds you hear have more complexity to them than can possibly be said. But, the mixture of linguistic ingredients in the language gumbo of St. Landry Parish gives visitors a taste of its history, the struggles of its people, and—it seems, hope for its future. Ici on parle français. French is spoken here.