47 (D-15) Cajun French / Louisiana French

Can you speak French?  Can you understand French?
Can you speak/understand Louisiana French?


Let's start with a listening exercise.  Good luck!

An interview :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPs_KSdRcnY  with transcription  9 minutes...take a quick look.

Another:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYTqI7rF2ys  8 minutes ...very interesting also.

More difficult:  Cajun French with ENGLISH subtitles!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvPqifZqjM4 

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After that listening exercise, take a look at a little grammar.

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And vocabulary: 
-assayer = to try
-asteur = now
-autrement que = unless
-une barbue  = a catfish
-un brème = eggplant (British = aubergine)
-une bête à Bon Dieu = a ladybug (British= ladybird)
-un cocodri (cocodril, cocodrie) = alligator
-cogner = knock (Quelqu'un est après cogner à la porte.  Someone is knocking at the door.)
-dîner = to have lunch, to have a noon meal
-la drigaille = rubbish, trash (or trashy people)
-échapper = to drop  Il a échappé sa boisson par terre.
-étouffée = a style of cooking in which the food is smothered by being cooked while covered.
-Ca fait chaud. = The weather is hot.  
-faraud = well-dressed
-une fromi = an ant
-prendre la galerie = to go out on the porch
-une grègue = a coffeepot
-hormis que = unless
-icitte = here
-itou = also, too (Moi itou, je veux partir.)
-joliment = very (Ca va joliment bien aujourd'hui.)
-lagniappe =  something extra given at no cost, from Spanish "la napa" meaning "something extra"
-boutique de linge = a clothing store
-une machine à herbes = a lawnmower
-la mangeaille = food
-mouiller = to rain
-nous autres = us (Venez avec nous-autres.)
-propter = to clean
-qualité = kind  (Quelle qualité de crème tu veux?)
-quoi faire = why
-radoter = to talk incessantly
-le souper = the evening meal
-du tactac = popcorn
-le voisinage = neighborhood
-zirable = disgusting
-une z'oie = a goose

For the curious, here you have a French-English glossary and you can listen to the pronunciation of some of the words.  Click on the underlined words for pronunciation.  From LSU (Louisiana State University) Department of French Languages: http://uiswcmsweb.prod.lsu.edu/hss/french/Undergraduate%20Program/Cajun%20French/item49567.html
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In 1915 it became compulsory (obligatoire) for the Cajuns to speak English. (The Americanization Movement)  Children were punished in school for using French; they were called names like "swamp rat" and "bougalie", forced to write lines ("I will not speak French in school"), made to kneel on kernels of corn and slapped with rulers.

In 1968, a Lafayette native James Domengeaux, a US Congressman and State Representative, created the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), whose mission was to promote and develop the use of the French language in Louisiana.  His objective was to make all Louisianans bilingual in International French and English. He worked with political leaders in Canada and France, even former French President Georges Pompidou.  He found Louisiana French too limiting so he imported Francophone teachers from Europe, Canada and the Caribbean to teach normative French in the schools.  He lost support because many Louisianans wanted Louisiana French, not "Parisian French"!

Thank you Jacques for giving me this article from Le Figaro March 20, 2015. To read it on the internet, a subscription to the newspaper is necessary.  Here is just the beginning of the article:  (http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2015/03/20/01003-20150320ARTFIG00183-la-miraculeuse-survie-des-francophones-de-louisiane.php

Jane
A long blog entry today!  It's still vacation...you have a lot of free time!!!!????
And if you are interested in statistics (just take a quick look):  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Louisiana_parishes_by_French-speaking_population

46 (D-16) Jane's St. Martinville

St. Martinville is my mother's hometown.  Her maiden name was Thomas.   Many of my ancestors come from St. Martinville.  It will be a very special place for me to visit and to share with the UIAD students I am taking to Louisiana.

Some of the names of these ancestors are: Bienvenu, Fontenette, Tertrou, Beauvais, Guidry, Peignon, Latille de Thimecourt. Philippe Bienvenu and Françoise Claire Allari were married in Ploemeur in Brittany in France in 1699!  (What do you know about St. Martinville and Ploemeur if you read yesterday's post?)

There was also Marguerite Decuir who died in St. Martinville in 1815.  In 1766 in Point Coupée, Louisiana, she married François Jacques Ozenne from New Orleans, who died in 1819 in St. Martinville.  Their daughter Suzanne Ozenne married Jean Baptiste Beauvais and one of the daughters of this couple is Laurent Tertrou's wife!!!!  Laurent Tertrou died in St. Martinville on October 14, 1847 and he is buried in St. Martin de Tours Church cemetery.  

STOP, this is too complicated!!
  
Laurent Tertrou, my great-great-great-grandfather originated from Nantes and his father, Michel Charles Tertrou, born in 1763, was from Chaudron in Maine-et-Loire. 

I will stop here, I promise!

Thanks go to my father who did all this genealogy research in the 1970s and even published a book in 1976, which I will always cherish.  Thank you so much, Dad.

Jane

An old postcard of St. Martinville

An ancestor's death certificate; he is buried in the Church Cemetery of St. Martinville.

After the time when St. Martinville was called "Petit Paris" came The Civil War (1861-65). Adolphe Bienvenu and Emma Fontinot's marriage certificate.  This Bienvenu died on March 13, 1869...the last years of his life saw St. Martinville in decline (The Terrible Years).

My great-grandfather's brother is also buried in the cemetery of St. Martin de Tours Church.

Dad doing his genealogy research at St. Martin Cemetery in St. Martinville in the 1970s.

45 (D-17) St Martinville / Evangeline

From Lafayette to St. Martinville:  16 miles (26 km)

10 facts about St. Martinville:

1.  The city of St. Martinville is twinned with the village of Ploermel in Brittany.

2. It is situated on Bayou Teche and its terrain is a mixture of swamp and prairies.

3. With a population of 6100 (2014), its largest racial/ethnic groups are African American (61%) and White (34%).

4. Its economy is based on agriculture (crawfish and sugar cane).

5.  April 25, 1766 marked the arrival of the first Acadians.

6. It's called the birthplace of Cajun culture and traditions, in the heart of Cajun Country. It's a multicultural community with Acadians, Cajuns, Creoles (French coming from Guadeloupe, Martinique and Santo Domingo), French, Spaniards, Africans and African Americans.

7. It's nickname, Petit Paris, dates from the era when St. Martinville was known as a cultural mecca with good hotels and a French theater (1830).

8.  It's the third oldest town in Louisiana, and has many buildings and homes with beautiful architecture.

9.  The Evangeline Oak, made famous in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's* poem, Evangeline, An Acadian Tale, stands on the bank of the Bayou Teche.  The epic poem tells the story of Evangeline who spends much of her life wandering North America in search of her love, Gabriel. It's based on the true story of Emmeline Labiche and her love, Louis Arceneaux, who were separated when the British chased the Acadians from their homeland in 1755. 
(I shouldn't tell you this, but Evangeline dies of a broken heart at the end of the poem.)

10.  St Martin de Tours Church is one of the oldest churches in Louisiana and is known as the Mother Church of the Acadians because it was founded in 1766 when the Acadians arrived.


And we'll return to this church and this town, in a special way tomorrow.  I hope you are interested.

Jane
*Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet (1807-1882) 
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-twinned = jumelée
-swamp --> http://www.wordreference.com/enfr/swamp
-crawfish--> http://www.wordreference.com/definition/crawfish if you have forgotten
-oak = chêne
-tale = a story  (a fairy tale = un conte de fée)
-bank = http://context.reverso.net/traduction/anglais-francais/banks+of+the+mississippi

44 (D-18) Lafayette... and Lafayette!

LAFAYETTE, there's a name the French people know!  And what a coincidence!  Look at Saturday's post on this blog: Acadian Village / Lafayette.  That Saturday, April 19, 2015 was the day when the replica of the Hermione, the ship which took Lafayette (in 1780, at age 23!) back to America 235 years ago, set sail from Ile d'Aix for a six-week journey to the United States. 
http://www.lavoixdunord.fr/france-monde/la-fregate-l-hermione-appareille-pour-l-amerique-235-ia0b0n2779418
Or in English if you prefer: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-19/replica-of-french-general27s-historic-us-independence-ship-sai/6403618

And Lafayette is also the name of the 4th-largest city in Louisiana, with a population of 124,276 in 2013.  The city was founded in 1821 by Jean Mouton, a French-speaking man of Acadian descent and in 1884 its name was changed from Vermilionville to Lafayette* for General Lafayette who fought with and greatly helped the American Army during the 
American Revolutionary War (1775-1783).

Lafayette is considered the center of Acadiana. (See the map on Day 2 (D-60)...when this blog began!

The city's economy was primarily based on agriculture until the 1940s, when the petroleum and natural gas industries became dominant.

Today more than 1000 students participate in the Lafayette area's French immersion learning option, in which students begin at an early age --  either preschool or kindergarten -- learning all their subjects in the foreign language, except for English.

Jane
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*Many other cities in the United States, as well as counties, streets and squares - including Lafayette Square opposite the White House - are also named after Lafayette.
Did you know that there was also the Lafayette dollar minted (frappé) in 1899 as part of the United States participation in The Paris World's Fair of 1900?
And did you know that Lafayette named his only child, born in 1779, George Washington de Lafayette?

Washington and Lafayette

Le Serment de La Fayette à la Fête de la Fédération, 14 juillet 1790 

The painting is in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris

The boy in the painting is Lafayette's son, George Washington.

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a county = United States administrative division which, as you remember, is called a parish in Louisiana.
  

43 (D-19) Le Grand Dérangement, Part 2 / Cajun Dancing

The Great Upheaval = Le Grand Dérangement

First, a brief history lesson:
Acadia was founded in the 17th century in Nova Scotia by the French.  In 1713, it became British.  Acadians remained neutral during persistent conflicts between the French and the British. But the British were afraid that the Acadians would side with France so in 1755 their homes were burned, the families were separated and deported.  In all, of the 14,100 Acadians in the region, approximately 11,500 were deported.  Most were sent to the British colonies along the East Coast of North America, others were sent to Britain and France (Belle-Ile-en-Mer). 

Double click to see the map better.

The Acadians arrived in Louisiana starting in 1764 until 1768, coming from the British colonies on the east coast or from Halifax via St. Domingue.  From 1768 to 1785 no new Acadian settlers arrived in Louisiana.  

Henri Peyroux, de la Coudreniere (1743-18??) was a French politician and author who organized sending the exiled Acadians from France to Louisiana.  Louisiana was ruled by the Spanish at that time and Peyroux made a deal with the Spanish.  About 1600 Acadian exiles sailed for Louisiana between May and October 1785.

Of the 11,500 deported, some historians estimate that nearly fifty percent died as a direct consequence of the expulsion. 

Numbers:  Acadian arrivals in Louisiana -->  20 from New York in 1764, about 311 from Halifax in 1764-65; about 689 from Maryland and Pennsylvania in 1766-70; about 1600 from France in 1785; and 19 from St. Pierre in 1788.  More came in over the years, but documentation on their arrival is still being sought.   http://www.acadian-cajun.com/exla.htm

Secondly, going from past to present:
Yesterday you discovered the story of Le Grand Dérangement through a video and song.

Today, this Grand Dérangement has become La Joie de Vivre.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbrDu88lEvI


Cajun Dancing...Would you like to learn?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgUUUgmy6qA

Or you can go to Challes Les Eaux...http://nonc.jack.pagesperso-orange.fr/cajun.htm

Jane...who says: "Laissez le Bon Temps Rouler!"
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to side with = se mettre du côté de
sought  (seek- sought- sought) = chercher

42 (D-20) Le Grand Dérangement

It's vacation time.  Enjoy this special way to learn about Le Grand Dérangement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQTfMjWa2p0
More tomorrow.

Jane 

41 (D-21) Acadian Village / Lafayette

In the afternoon on this sixth day, we go to Lafayette where we'll first visit the private cultural park, Acadian Village, where a typical 1800s Cajun village was recreated during the 1970s.  Seven of the eleven buildings are authentic homes of the 19th century donated by the families whose ancestors once occupied them.  

Just a glimpse:

Come back tomorrow to learn more about Acadia, Le Grand Dérangement, Les Acadiens-->The Cajuns.

And do enjoy your Spring holidays!

Jane
-glimpse = un aperçu