I had a good time at LAVIS5 / SECOL91 this weekend, a linguistics conference about the southern United States. Louisiana was well represented. Here’s my contribution.
Tag: louisiana french (Page 1 of 3)
I’m transcribing some broadcasts from Louisiana in French for a class on language change. For the recents broadcasts, I chose the show La Tasse de café on KVPI, and for the old broadcasts, the series En français, which was broadcast by Louisiana Public Broadcasting, a public TV station, in the 80s and 90s. I’m analyzing the variation between third person plural subject pronouns, meaning ils, ils -ont, ça, eux and eux-autres, but something that I immediately noticed in relation to the speech of Ms. Ledet, who was born in 1919, is that she employs many constructions that make her speech sound like that of the French in formal contexts. You don’t hear these constructions in the speech of Mr. Soileau and Mr. Manuel on KVPI (the former being born in 1941, the latter, I don’t know):
It’s not clear if this stems from a difference in region, in age, in interlocutor (the interviewer on En français seems rather France French), in interaction with francophones from elsewhere, or something else, but it’s interesting nonetheless. The corpus I’m constructing is small, because it’s just for a term paper, but I intend to extend it and possible perform other analyses.
I updated the flashcards that I created for Louisiana French (vocabulary as well as writing/reading). The links are to the side and below:
More details are found in the previous posts:
It’s been a long time since I’ve written a post due to my studies, but I had the chance to write one for Astheure.com recently, on the elections in Louisiana:
None of them.
None of the candidates for governor of Louisiana speak French, that is. Well, Scott Angelle admits that he speaks it a bit (or maybe he’s just ashamed?), but the rest are absolutely anglophone, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t also support French in the state. So, I tried to figure out their histories and positions concerning French.
Scott Angelle has put out an ad in which he speaks French:
He acknowledges that he isn’t fluent, but he tries nevertheless, and he strongly supported efforts to allow drivers to add the title “I’m a Cajun” on their licenses. The funds generated by this program are passed on to the Fondation Louisiane for the program Escadrille Louisiane, even if they don’t add up to much.
I sent Mr. Angelle, as well as others, an e-mail asking some question about his position, but I only received a response from John Bel Edwards, or rather, from his aide:
This is MP Wray with the JBE campaign. John Bel is the only candidate with a record of supporting riding for programs like CODIFIL and French immersion programs in public schools when their funding was threatened. John Bel went toe to toe with Governor Jindal to support his French speaking colleagues in the legislature. As you are well aware, we have a sordid past that includes the suppression of the French language. We must preserve and grow this unique cultural heritage and never take it for granted. JBE has taken the votes that show he doesn’t just give this issue lip service.
And again another response after more questions about what he will do specifically:
Reinvesting in CODOFIL and our public schools will allow for the investment needed to promote the teaching of French. JBE is responsible for negotiating a quarter of a billion in funding increases for k-12 over the objections of Bobby Jindal and working with Acadiana legislators to restore CODOFIL funding.
We also have to reinvest in our museums in the Secretary of State’s office to ensure that preservation of the history of French in Louisiana remains a top priority. JBE has set out how he will deal with structural budget problems in order to be able to make these investments and find the revenue.
As for David Vitter, there’s nothing to say. Likewise for Jay Dardenne, who is mentioned in in an article on NOLA Française where the links are broken. Lets hope that the links to French won’t be broken by the next governor.
UPDATE:
There are other elections, too. Here’s what the candidates for Lieutenant Governor say about CODOFIL, and French in general. It seems to me that, while two of these candidates respond in French, they aren’t too fluent. In any case:
Thanks to Brad Nation, administrator of the Facebook Group Cajun French Vitrual Table Française, I have other information to share about Scott Angelle, candidate for governor. Mr. Nation contacted him to find out Mr. Angelle’s position in relation to French in Louisiana. Here is what he received as a response:
Scott is an avid supporter of our French culture and heritage here in Louisiana. He strongly believes in protecting and preserving the French language. Scott even speaks some Cajun French himself. He often uses the phrase pour moi c’est la Louisiane chaque fois tout le temps [for me it’s Louisiana each time all the time] as he encourages the people of Louisiana that he is solely focused on them and that our state has its greatest days ahead of us. Scott will always preserve our history and our diversity here in Louisiana. -Jessica Ragusa, Communications Director
Reading French in Louisiana is important. I’ve talked about this before in reference to the potential effects Kirby Jambon’s success with Petites communions: Poèmes, chansons, et jonglements on Louisiana literature, but what I didn’t talk about is how we access these works.
The Milton H. Latter Memorial branch of the New Orleans Public Library recently opened a new section, called the French Corner, for French books geared mostly towards children and young adults who attend nearby French immersion schools, as reported by NOLA Francaise. This initial offering was provided by the Consulate General of France, who, I have been informed, will be provided more books this fall.
Expansion will be a good thing. My initial impression of the section was that it appeared to be good for kids but limited, and I feared that it may be one of those initiatives that quickly loses steam. While a similar areas are not expected to be added to other branches, the Latter branch seems intent on maintaining theirs well.
The library won’t be relying on donations from the Consulate, but will also actively purchase books, and possibly even French films, based on staff and patron feedback. This means there’s an opportunity for those who visit this location to help guide its development by contacting them. One thing I noticed, for instance, was that there were no books by local authors. Of course, there are far greater options if one looks outside of Louisiana for books for children and young adults, but there’s no reason this can’t become a small addition to the economic possibilities for francophone writers in the state by including some. I myself suggested adding some of Jean Arceneaux’s (pen name of Barry Ancelet) transcriptions of folklore stories or perhaps Susan Spillman’s book Compere Lapin voyageur. Giving these works greater visibility and connecting Louisiana francophone publishers, such as Centenary College’s Éditions Tintamarre, to libraries could only help foster a stronger literary scene.
And let’s not forget to use French when visiting the Latter branch. I was informed that there are two full-time staffers who are fluent in French and a French speaker will be taking over managing the section in August. Just as I’ve been urging people to insist on using French in public interactions at francophone businesses around the state, we could also be doing the same when visiting libraries.
There is ample room for this initiative to grow, and it’s wonderful to see these efforts on the parts of the library and the General Consulate.
Asterix, for those unfamiliar, is essentially the Mickey Mouse of France. As such, French culture can arguably be indexed in his stories, where this Gaul from a little village in Armorica drinks a magic potion to gain the strength to regularly repel Roman attempts to subjugate the last of the Gaulish tribes. One can reasonably assume that the French idealize the fortifying qualities of wine, which could certainly be described as magical, as well as the simple life, free of foreign influences. The latter has played out, for instance, in their general rejection of German influences in their music from the Baroque era up to at least the latter part of the Romantic era, as well as in tense debates over whether Muslims can cover their heads in schools and even in public spaces in general. While this is all well and good, Asterix is more importantly useful for learning French.
As I wrote about before, video games can be a great source of linguistic immersion, but so can TV and film. The question is how exactly to watch a film, though, to get the most out of it in terms of language learning. That is, one can view a foreign film with subtitles (in one’s native language), captions (in the target language), or just as is, each providing different advantages. Bianchi and Ciabattoni, linguists from the University of Salento and the University of Pavia respectively, did a fairly convincing study on this in 2008. While I haven’t had time to do a thorough reading of the literature, I think this study is a good starting place and mostly agrees with the results of previous studies cited in the write-up.
Bianchi and Ciabattoni found that, in general, beginners benefit most from watching foreign films with subtitles. This is often what happens in low level courses when a film is put on, although my gut feeling is that most students simply read the subtitles, watch the action, and pay no attention to the actual language being used. Presumably, the reason that this works for beginners is because they can attach sounds and images to immediate translations, eventually building up connections, which is supported by Bianchi and Ciabattoni’s finding that acquisition is most likely when all three of these input streams match up the best. This means that focusing simply on two levels of input and ignoring the third is a sure way to fail to improve one’s language skills, even if it is still entertaining.
Things change when looking at advanced speakers, however, according to Bianchi and Ciabattoni. In these cases, captions are the most useful. The difference is presumably that subtitles begin to vie for attention when learners are already capable of parsing most of the input directly. This matches the general trend of beginning language learning with lots of translations and then moving more and more towards remaining consistently in the target language. For instance, beginner textbooks often translate everything but, by the intermediate levels, teachers begin suggesting that students use standard dictionaries in the language being learned. Ultimately, the goal is to live in the language, avoiding the potentially extra processing required to flip back and forth constantly.
Why would Asterix be good for all this, though? He wouldn’t be. That is, he wouldn’t be good for advanced learners. One should generally seek out media that uses language just above the level that they currently understand. Asterix films, with their relatively basic vocabulary, should work well for beginners, but that same limited vocabulary would mean that advanced users could only use them for things like practicing listening comprehension. The input hypothesis, developed by Krashen, is generally pretty terrible, but this part of the idea is difficult to argue against. Imagine, for example, trying to parse a phrase with five unknown content words and one unknown grammatical construction compared to a phrase with just one unknown word. Clearly, one would have an easier time with the second phrase because there would be that many more context clues to work with.
Unfortunately for Louisiana, though, there are very few films and, as far as I know, no TV shows in Louisiana French. Louisianians wishing to learn French simply have to make do with materials from outside sources, ironically, considering Louisiana’s designation as “Hollywood South.” Perhaps the potential for French becoming part of the film industry here will be the subject of a later post.
Or the party is hidden? Or the cache is done?
There are several lexical differences between Standard French and Louisiana French. One says cache-cache [hide hide] in France, and sometimes cache-est-faite [cache is done] in Louisiana to mean hide-n-seek, but that is not the focus of this post. We’re going to talk about orthography.
This compound noun is written as above, cache-et-faite [cache and done], cache-fette, cachez-fête [hide the party], and caché-fête [hidden party]. Each of these spellings is pronounced the same and can also mean something different if one considers their components.
The writing of Louisiana French, or rather of any unwritten language, is perfect for studying the way that speakers separate words in their heads. It’s very much possible that the standard French writing system influences speakers to think that, for example, je sais [I know; ʃɛ] is truly two words, whereas je [I] is a clitic that can’t be separated from the verb. So, one could just as well write chais without creating much trouble. In fact, these things often come about in informal domains; one can find the spelling chu for je suis [I am; ʃy] in texts as well as online, for example.
In Louisiana, agglutination is the example of this that appears the most often. Liaisons, when they are very regular, become real parts of the words. As such, one says le n-oncle [the uncle; l’oncle in Standard French] and un z-haricot [a bean; un haricot in Standard French] because the standard writing fails to influence illiterate speakers. These forms are still variable, however. As one approches Creole, one see them become rules. Ultimately, this requires a new orthography. The trouble that one finds, trying to write Creole with the writing system it is based on, makes this new orthography more or less necessary, but on loses something with this choice.
So, that brings us back to the subject of cache-est-faite. I guess I didn’t talk about this word much, I kind of got lost, but another angle that I’d like to talk about in another post, is etymology.
It’s not as dark as it sounds, although it is most definitely as nerdy as it sounds.
There are numerous strategies for learning languages, but perhaps the most effective strategy is total immersion. That is to say, learning a language is easiest when you’re constantly forced to use it because no one around you understands your first language. In fact, linguist Stephen Krashen developed the input hypothesis in the 1980s based on the idea that immersion is literally all that a learner needs. But how can one achieve the same effect in a place that is distinctly not immersive? One solution I’ve found is to use online worlds.
I’ve been playing massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) since the 90s. These games are played exclusively online with hundreds to thousands of other players in giant worlds filled with interactive characters (NPCs). Currently, I play one called The Elder Scrolls Online (@joshisanonymous if you play yourself), which is an online version of a very popular single-player role-playing game (RPG) series. What’s special about this game, besides its fun high fantasy setting and game mechanics, is its extensive use of voice-overs for NPCs, available in French. In fact, not only will basically every NPC speak to you in French, but their dialogue is also displayed in written form.
Since this is interactive, NPCs generally speak one to three sentences at a time before allowing you to respond. This has the effect of providing regular amounts of linguistic input in chunks that are small enough to process, with an answer key when you can’t figure out a phrase. All of this is also provided within an activity which you would naturally be drawn to partake in. My personal experience has been that this helps greatly with listening comprehension. It even provides an opportunity to learn new vocabulary about an activity you are naturally inclined to talk about–I know the French word for ballista now, which may not seem useful, but it is when you play a lot of video games.
This environment could potentially lead to many interactions with other French speakers, as well, although The Elder Scrolls Online doesn’t seem to be particularly adept at grouping speakers of the same language together. Still, one could potentially join a guild of players who speak French in order to play through all the in game activities in an immersive way.
Obviously, this is not as effective as real life language immersion because you can’t simply spend every hour of every day playing games–I mean you could, but you probably shouldn’t. However, it is a reasonable compromise.
I intend to have regular posts like this, explaining creative learning strategies for acquiring a language.
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.
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