Josh McNeill

Tag: language maintenance (Page 1 of 2)

Pluarlistic globalism and endangered languages.

December 16, 2016 / / 0 Comments

I finally finished watching this over breakfast this morning. Something interesting from a linguistic perspective is that they don’t seem to use any English words in their Cherokee despite heavy contact, perhaps because they go to lengths to create new words for new things (see 35:00). This is not the strategy taken elsewhere, such as in Louisiana and the Maritimes (although Quebec tries to do this at least officially).

First Language, The Race to Save Cherokee by Neal Hutcheson on Vimeo.

Also, I think the quote at the end is particular fitting given the current social and political climate throughout the West. He positions the idea of a strong local culture within a broader context that doesn’t necessarily need to reject larger over-arching cultures or even global interconnectedness:

“If we consider what it actually means to be a pluralistic society, then that means we’re gonna have to make space for people who speak different languages, who think different ways, who have different cultures, inside of a national culture or a global culture, and so all the movement has been in the opposite direction towards globalization, towards homogenization, you know? What does it mean to change the process and open up space for a plurality of different small cultures working together? How can we truly accept and respect those people and allow them some measure of autonomy with their educational system and the language that they speak?” –Hartwelll Francis de West Carolina University, ma traduction

Religious tongues.

May 27, 2015 / / 0 Comments

That is a recording of the Hellenic College Holy Cross Seminarian Chanters, who were singing during the New Orleans Greek Festival. It was a beautiful sound, that of the two singers, that resembles the flourid organum of Léonin (also known as Leoninus), the principal voice moves freely while the other voice rests on single notes for very long periods of time. In any case, neither pronounces the words quickly, choising instead to meditate on the word of God. Because of this, it’s unlikely that you can hear that they’re singing in English.

Grec

I’ve written a bit about the importance of institutionalizing endangered languages. I also touched on the case of Hebrew (which I intend to write more on). Likewise, Greek seems to be institutionalized in the Orthodox Church, but not as strongly, at least in New Orleans, as the only exists in the writing, as in the picture to the right.

This wasn’t the case for Louisiana French in the past, when it was normal to attend Mass in French. Nowadays, Masses like that maybe only take place at festivals in Lafayette. But why? Evidently, there are priests who speak French and people that want to go to mass in French, judging by festivals and the fact that there have been opportunities to learn prayers on the Louisiana French Facebook group. In my opinion, it’s because of the dispersion of speakers. Maybe there are not enough of them in each parish, and the goal for the priests is to reach as many people as possible. That means that English is the most effective means because everyone in Louisiana speaks it. Yet the festivals gather enough francophones that Masses are possible, but in order for that to happen normally in the churches, speakers have to make themselves known as speakers, well enough that it seems necessary to offer services in French.

Support bilingualism; be monolingual.

May 13, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Though it is not the only way to ensure that a language remains healthy, as in the case of Catalan, which was completely forbidden during Franco’s rule but remains quite strong today, institutionalization of a language is very important. Hebrew, for instance, may have only been possible to revitalize because it was already so deeply embedded within Judaism, and hence Jewish culture. Institutionalization in no way guarantees that a language will flourish, but it may guarantee that it at least has a stable persistence, providing the opportunity to be revitalized in the first place when the time is right.

Perhaps one of the best ways to ensure that a minority language is institutionalized within a community is to make sure that no one in that community can speak the majority language. One can see this in services that are offered to more recent immigrant communities, such as Vietnamese and Hispanic communities in New Orleans. A new community health center was recently opened in New Orleans East, where many Vietnamese people live, and it offers services in both Vietnamese and Spanish via translators. This both provides speakers of these languages with important services in their native tongues as well as economic opportunities for those who know these languages.

In the case of languages such as Louisiana French, a minority language which can very nearly always be easily avoided, speakers must insist strongly on its use to get the same result, perhaps to the point of refusing to speak English, regardless of being perfectly fluent in it. This doesn’t bode well for a population of speakers who just a few decades ago were generally ashamed of the language. Even people who have grown up with Louisiana French and use it professionally are liable to use English as their day to day language. In this climate, the desire to affect a change in the linguistic makeup of the state must be particularly strong.

And every singer will still sing about broken hearts, continued.

May 10, 2015 / / 0 Comments

I wrote about Feufollet’s new album Two Universes recently, essentially just to say that their switch from being a band that sings strictly in French to one that sings mostly in English is unique. It isn’t unheard of for musicians to begin using different languages, particularly if the change is to English, but Feufollet’s history and the niche they’ve carved out for themselves make this feel more pronounced.

The implications for this linguistic decision may also spread beyond Feufollet’s own personal sound and image. Arguably the most popular band in Cajun music at the moment, they’re quite possibly in a position to redefine what Cajun music is. Much like zydeco, French could become an occasional occurrence instead of a defining feature if others decide to follow their lead. One could even see this simply as strong support for the more regular tendency of a few other well-known Cajun music acts, such as The Pine Leaf Boys or The Red Stick Ramblers, to sprinkle English language songs throughout their albums.

I didn’t mention this tendency in my last post as both The Pine Leaf Boys and The Red Stick Ramblers generally use English in songs that aren’t of Cajun origin. The former can be heard singing Jerry Lee Lewis tunes in English during concerts but they never translate classic Belton Richard numbers, while the latter seems more at liberty to use English when playing western swing songs. In fact, western swing has been sung in both English and French in Louisiana since the 1940s by people like Harry Choates, to the point where the term Cajun swing is sometimes used. It’s almost as if the less strictly Cajun the other musical aspects of a song are, the more freedom a band has to abandon French, which may partially explain why Feufollet is moving in the same direction as their sound becomes less and less centered on tradition.

We speak English primarily, as our first language, so to write songs in English is not that crazy. But a lot of the way we’ve built our careers was attached to the French cultural preservation side of the music, so we’ll see if people get upset about our singing in English. We’ve done the cultural preservation thing for a very really long time, and right now we just want to be songwriters and musicians and make art first and foremost. –Chris Stafford of Feufollet speaking about singing in English in an interview in Oxford American

It is also possible that the members of Feufollet are coming to the conclusion that French is not a necessary component of Cajun music, or perhaps of even being Cajun, or perhaps they simply no longer view their music as Cajun music. It is interesting to note that Stafford would still describe the action of singing in French as preservation after doing it for so long, with at least two members of the band having grown up in French immersion schooling. Why isn’t this their primary language? Why hasn’t it become a normal aspect of their lives? Are songwriting and language preservation mutually exclusive activities? And what does this say for the future of French in Louisiana when even people who went through immersion schooling and use French professionally view using the language simply as preservation?

The lyrics of the title track Two Universes, quoted partially in the title of this post, may be evidence of the idea that Stafford & Co. are re-evaluating what it means to be a Cajun from Louisiana. At one point, Louisianians could speak of the state almost as its own country, with those from other places simply being referred to as “les Américains,” but these two universes certainly have collided, and maybe that’s just how it should be. For those of us still hoping to see French regain strength in Louisiana, however, this sentiment is particularly sobering.

And every singer will still sing about broken hearts.

April 26, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Rejoice! Feufollet has finally released a new album after five years and an important lineup change. This first single goes a long way towards summing up the result:

The first thing you might notice, certainly the first thing I noticed, is that the newcomer Kelli Jones-Savoy is singing in English. Jones-Savoy is no newcomer to Cajun music in general, though, having played in T’Monde, a band specializing in traditional Cajun songs, since 2011. She’s more than capable of singing in French and in fact does so on three of the four French language tracks on this eleven track album. Numbers like that are surprising themselves when one considers that the only songs Feufollet has recorded in English since their inception over 10 years ago were three lowly songs on the Color Sessions EP, which themselves were written by the psychedelic rock band Brass Bed, also from Lafayette.

Seeing as my own study of the subject found that French is a highly ranked indicator for Cajun music, meaning this isn’t only a notable development because it’s different for Feufollet, but also because it’s different for this style of music altogether. They certainly aren’t the first Cajun musicians to make this change–Zachary Richard recorded songs in English as far back as 1977 and swamp pop has essentially always been sung in English. Feufollet’s situation is different for several reasons, though.

Zachary Richard, for instance, essentially recorded English language music regularly since his career began, almost as if he was suggesting right away that he didn’t want to be pigeonholed into Cajun music conventions. In fact, his career didn’t even start in Louisiana, nor has he ever seemed to come back for very long. In a way, he successfully distanced himself from the music and culture, to the point where one can expect reasonably expect traditionalists to scoff at the mention of his name. None of this is true for Feufollet, however, who have been firmly planted in Lafayette throughout their career and who spent their first years playing nothing but traditional songs, even including them prominently on their later major releases Cow Island Hop and En Couleurs, so that, even when experimenting, it’s easy to imagine that everything they do is derived from that initial seed of respect.

And while Feufollet are well known for their experimentations, their music almost always includes many of the highest ranked indicators of Cajun music. They wield accordions and fiddles and swing to two-steps and waltzes, as any good Cajun artists would do. These features have been progressively dropped from Zachary Richard’s repertoire to the point where his version of the traditional song Colinda in 1979 was essentially straight reggae. This is also where swamp pop becomes a poor comparison to Feufollet. Swamp pop is nearly indistinguishable from any other R&B to come out of the 1950s, except that it was performed by people from Louisiana who might identify as Cajun.

It’s clear that Feufollet are doing something unique with the release of Two Universes, but discussion of the implications will have to wait until another post.

Let’s not break the tree into a million pieces.

April 20, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Glossaire des communions

A couple weeks ago, I posted about the prize that the Académie française awarded Louisiana writer Kirby Jambon for his book of poetry, Petites communions: Poèmes, chansons, et jonglements. I received my own copy of Mr. Jambon’s book almost the day after posting, and was instantly drawn into his style of writing. It’s easy to see why this work was recognized. The book is organized as a cohesive whole while also providing poems that feel fulfilling on their own. Form plays an important role in many pieces, sometimes with whole sections being written in particular styles, such as haikus about the weekend. Even the language itself feels fresh and modern, while still retaining its local identity, as it ranges from Louisiana Creole:

Mo gain pou couri
I have to go

To a sort of parodic literary Standard French:

Voici les paroles que le prophète Aïeux adressa à toute Descendance
Here are the words that the prophet Where addressed to all of Posterity

from Un passage du deuxième livre de l’Ancienne nouvelle
A passage from the second book of the Former news

Something that immediately caught my eye, though, was the glossary I found in the back of the book. Definitions of lexical items and grammatical forms are listed that may not be familiar to French speakers from, say, Paris, and what was chosen to be included is interesting from a linguistic standpoint.

Grammatically, one finds the first person plural imperative form using allons instead of simply the first person plural present conjugations (i.e. allons danser vs dansons). This form isn’t unheard of outside of Louisiana, though perhaps the regularity of it here makes it somewhat of an indicator for this variety of French.

Morphologically, the infix -aill- is given to show a sort of negative, or more negative, sense to a word, as touched on by Thomas Klingler, professor of French at Tulane University (The Lexicon of Louisiana French 1997). For instance, casser (to break) is already inherently not a positive action–one would be hard pressed to think of instances where breaking something results in feeling happy–but cassailler suggests not only breaking something but breaking something valuable into a million pieces then stomping on it. Although I’m not certain how widely used this form is in other varieties of French, I have personally come across it in a popular video game (this is a topic that I intend to write about later on).

Of course, lexical differences themselves show up in the glossary as well, bois being one of them. This isn’t a completely unique word, rather it’s a word whose semantic extension goes beyond the normal usage, meaning forest or woods. In Louisiana, bois can refer to a single tree, particularly in Southeast Louisiana, where Mr. Jambon resides.

These three particular examples can add up to a phrase such as allons pas cassailler le bois, translated in the title of this post itself, which is an attempt to say something possibly unintelligible to many francophones while also taking poetic license to suggest that maybe we shouldn’t be so explicitly segregating Louisiana French from other varieties of the same language. Who is this glossary really for if not other francophones? Why is it necessary? Are we saying that our French is so incomprehensible to someone from Switzerland, for example, that we need to literally translate for them?

Personally, I feel like this is a rather unnatural way of creating (reinforcing?) mutual intelligibility. I remember at one time attempting to learn some Spanish by reading a collection of short stories entitled La increíble y triste historia de la Cándida Eréndira y de su abuela desalmada by Gabriel García Márquez and often coming across words and phrases that I could not make heads or tails of using translators and a Spanish textbook. To my surprise, my perfectly fluent Mexican friend who lent me the book also didn’t understand some of the words and phrases Márquez used read in isolation, yet a glossary was not provided. It must have been assumed that context alone would be enough to get Márquez’s ideas across to those unfamiliar with his dialect, which is exactly how this played out for my friend.

Of course, poetry is a different discussion. It is almost by its very nature vague, suggesting that we either need to have a deep understanding of each element being used to get the whole picture, or possibly that the whole picture requires that we don’t fully understand anyway. Perhaps this renders the issue moot from the get go in the case of Petites communions.

Creole, like 20th century African-American spiritual opera from New York.

April 10, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Opera Creole. It’s an intriguing name for a musical group that conjures up numerous possible meanings. Do they sing opera standards in Creole? If so, is it Haitian Creole or Louisiana Creole? Or do they sing music written by Creole people? If so, which definition of Creole people are they going with? Have any Creole people written operas in the first place? But Opera Creole isn’t really any of these things; it’s more like this:

Not that I have anything against Scott Joplin, and Treemonisha is certainly a hidden musical gem, but what does the work of the originator of ragtime, a native Texarkanian, have to do with anything Creole?

I saw this group a couple weeks ago at the Rayne Memorial United Methodist Church in New Orleans and what I discovered was an attempt to paint a portrait of the musical life of Creole people in the city during the 19th century. The program has headings that touch on favorite arias, compositions by Creole composers, and.. African-American 20th century spirituals?

Again, how does Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess or Bernstein’s Mass fit in with Creole musical life in 19th century New Orleans? Why include music from an entirely different century in an entirely different styles, particularly when the name of the group, Opera Creole, suggests that the music they perform will be operatic? This sort of disparate arrangement of sources creates an incoherence that’s really a missed opportunity to focus on some of the things mentioned above, which to my knowledge are entirely absent from any group performing today.

Opera Creole verges on some truly unique programming choices, though. The set begins with E tan patate and Fais dodo (Go to Sleep) and ends with Cher, mo lémmé toi (Dear, I Love You), three Louisiana folksongs arranged by musician Camille Nickerson. This was the first time I had ever heard, or even heard of, classically-oriented music sung in Louisiana Creole. One would be hard pressed to find examples of the language in Cajun music, la-la, or Zydeco, let alone orchestral music. The group also had the audience sing two repeated lines from the last piece, providing an opportunity to learn a common Creole phrase (Mo lémmé toi kòm ti kochon lémmé labou [forgive the spelling], I love you like small pigs love mud). A whole program dedicated to this type of thing would go a long way towards giving the group a unique twist while also helping to maintain an endangered local language, yet these songs acted simply as bookends to a very different collection.

Little-known Creole composers, such as Edmond Dédé and Samuel Snaër, also fit into the program. In this case, I mean Creole as in 19th century concept, which essentially included anyone born in Louisiana. This confuses the matter even more as Opera Creole seems to be going by the more modern definition of Creole, meaning anyone of African and French descent born in Louisiana, or perhaps just anyone of African descent period. Ultimately, I’m not sure what Opera Creole is really about, but this idea of the changing definitions of Creole may be worth a follow up post.

It’s in the Jam.

March 15, 2015 / / 0 Comments


That is to say, Kirby Jambon. I recently spoke about the importance of music in Louisiana, concerning language maintenance, and I spoke about the importance of using French in commerce. A recent article, in The Advertiser, brings these ideas, not rare, to the forefront, as well as the increased participation of CODOFIL. All of this is really great, and must continue, but it must not be forgotten that it’s also necessary to increase the domain of usage of the language. As Barry Ancelet, celebrated folklorist from Louisiana, says in the article:

There’s two basic ways that language preservation or regeneration can happen and one of them . . . is to produce stuff of such interest that people want to come to it. They’re interested, they’re attracted to it.

What better way to highlight a creative work than to award a prize to someone, as the Académie française recently did when it awarded the Prix Henri de Régnier to Kirby Jambon for his book of poetry, Petites communions: Poèmes, chansons, et jonglements. In my opinion, the moment when Dewey Balfa returned to Louisiana after having received a standing ovation at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964 is very much comparable to this. In the former instance, external validation was found for Cajun music, then in the latter instance, it was found for Louisiana French literature. This moment could be pivotal for literature in Louisiana. It wasn’t so long ago that the belief that one couldn’t write Louisiana French was common, which is an idea that persists even today, but now, we not only have proof that it’s possible to write it, but that the world values the art that one can create when they write this language.

Vietnamese, everywhere in the East.

March 1, 2015 / / 0 Comments

So, I was a bit behind on posts because of Mardi Gras. I had to create a costume with pinwheels, attend daily parades and, maybe the most important activity, eat king cake, like this one here. This cake comes from Dong Phuong in New Orleans East, where I went with my friend so that she could buy one.

Despite having lived here for more than two years, I’ve never gone to the East, where there’s a large Vietnamese population. What I found there was writing everywhere in Vietnamese, on advertisements, on the windows, on the stores, on the products in the stores. Vietnamese is a language of business in the East. The cashiers speak it by default as if one must understand it if one wants to do business there. It seems to me that Vietnamese is maybe more institutionalized there than French is elsewhere in Louisiana, but it’s difficult to say that for me, seeing as I haven’t traversed the state all that much.

I intend to find out if on can speak French there also, as part of the project to create a map of the francophone businesses in Louisiana. While I was working at AT&T, I met a Vietnamese woman who spoke French, better than English. She was somewhere older, so maybe that is still common among the old. I’ve heard that this would happen in Terrebonne-Lafourche, that francophones were able to speak with the Vietnamese better in French than English. It would be interesting if the Vietnamese became the newest francophones in Louisiana, helping to preserve the language. I doubt this would happen, but who knows.

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