Louisiana Creole French Totally Explained

Everything about Louisiana Creole French totally explained

Louisiana Creole is a French Creole language spoken by the mixed Creole people of Louisiana region. The language consists of elements of French, Native American, Spanish, and West African roots.

Geography

The speaker population of Louisiana Creole French today is mainly concentrated in South and Southwest Louisiana, where the population of Creolophones is distributed across the region. There are also numbers of Creolophones in Natchitoches Parish on Cane River and sizable communities of Louisiana Creole-speakers in East Texas (Houston, Port Arthur, Beaumont, Galveston), Chicago, Illinois and Maryland. California has a significant number of Louisiana Creole French speakers and is the state with the most speakers outside Louisiana, however the number of speakers in California and may surpass that of Louisiana as well. Louisiana Creole French speakers in California reside in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernadino counties and in Northern California (Alameda, Sacramento, San Francisco, Mendocino, Plumas, Tehama, Siskiyou, Napa, Sierra, Mono and Yuba counties; notably in Tennant, California). Speakers in Maryland reside in Worchester County, Dorchester County, Somerset County, Wicomio County, Caroline County, Talbot County, Charles County, Calvert County, Saint Mary's County, and Anne Arunda County.

Speaker Demographics

The language is now spoken mostly by older generations (over 60 years old), 4.6% of whom are monolingual in Louisiana Creole. Louisiana Creoles under the age of 30 tend to prefer speaking English. In the State of Louisiana, 112,465, or 0.24% of the population reports speaking Louisiana Creole French at home (1.2% of the non-English speaking community), 700 of whom report speaking English "not well" or "not well at all"(External Link

). Particularly, St. Martin Parish has a concentration of Creole speakers (1.52% of the parish reports speaking the language at home, 250 of whom had low English-language skills(External Link

)). In Texas, there's a population of 3,505 speakers, 230 of whom report poor English skills.(External Link

). In California, the number is unknown, but estimates have put the number of speakers to be over 110,000.
Census and demographic reports provide extremely low yields for native speakers of Louisiana Creole. These low yields are due to identification issues in Louisiana. For example, some speakers of Creole identify themselves culturally and ancestrally as French, and therefore call the language they speak French, when in fact it's Creole. One can also find this on the prairies of southwest Louisiana, where speakers of Cajun-French identify themselves as Creole, and call the language they speak Creole (Valdman). St. Martin Parish is today's current Creole-speaking heartland. Other sizeable communities exist all along Bayou Têche in St. Landry, Iberia and St. Mary Parishes. There are smaller communities on False River in Pointe-Coupée Parish

, and along the lower Mississippi River in Ascension, St. Charles, and St. James Parishes (Klingler; Marshall; Valdman).

Grammar

In general, the grammar of Louisiana Creole is very similar to the grammar of Haitian Creole. Definite articles in Louisiana Creole vary between "le, la and les" (testament of possible decreolization in some areas) and "a" and "la" for the singular, and "yé" for plural. In St. Martin Parish, the masculine definite article, "le" or "-a" is often omitted all together.
In theory, unlike French, Creole places its definite articles after the noun. Given Louisiana Creole's complex linguistic relationship with Colonial French and Cajun French, this has often proven to no longer be a reality. Since there's no system of noun gender, articles only vary on phonetic criteria. "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 don't vary based on person or number. Verbs vary based on "verbal markers" (for example "té" (past tense), "sé" (conditional), "sa" (future)) which are placed between the personal pronouns and conjugated verbs (for example mo té kourí au 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 overwhelmingly of Colonial French origin. Most local vocabulary, for example topography, animals, plants are of regional Amerindian origin - mostly substrata of the Choctaw or Mobilian Language group. We find vestiges of west and central African languages (namely Bambara, Wolof, Fon) in folklore and in the religion of voodoo. The grammar, however, remains distinct from that of French (Midlo Hall; Klingler; Valdman).

Numbers

Included are the French numbers for comparison.

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

Subject & Personal Pronouns

English	Louisiana Creole	French
I	Mo	Je
You (informal)	To	Tu
You (formal)	Vous	Vous
He.	Li, Ça.	Il.
She.	Li. Ça.	Elle.
We	Nous. Nous-zòt. (Nous autres)	Nous
You (plural)	Vous. Zòt. Vous-zòt. (Vous autres)	Vous.
They (masculine)	Yé.	Ils
They (feminine)	Yé.	Elles

Greetings

English	Louisiana Creole	French
Hello	Bonjou	Bonjour
How are things?	Konmen lé-z'affè	Comment vont les affaires?
How are you doing?	Konmen to yê?	Comment allez-vous? Comment vas-tu? Comment ça va?
I'm good, thanks.	C'est bon, mèsi.	Ça va bien, merci.
See you later.	Wa toi pli tar.	Vois-toi plus tard. (À plus tard.)
I love you.	Mo laime toi.	Je t'aime.
Take care.	Swinye-toi.	Soigne-toi. (Prends soin de toi.)
Good Morning.	Bonjou.	Bonjour.
Good Evening.	Bonswa.	Bonsoir.
Good Night.	Bonswa.	Bonne nuit.

Further Information

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