Three at the very least. Because communities were relatively isolated in the days when French was spoken currently by most people, differences in accent, vocabulary and even syntax have been maintained and/or heightened over the years. In some cases, it's noticeable even between people who live 20 miles from each other. Merci pour l'encouragement.

C'est intéressant d'entendre les cajuns utiliser "back" la même façon qu'on l'utilise au NB. Ça veut peut-être dire que le mot à été adopté par les acadiens très tôt dans notre histoire, avant même la déportation en 1755. Par contre, c'est peut-être juste une coincidence et les deux peuples ont adopté "back" à différent temps de façon parallèle.

Moi itou!

Merci d'avoir partagé cette histoire émouvante.

Amanda LaFleur I was wondering if you have any information about the creole-style French language that was spoken in New Orleans up to the early 20th century. Not the black creole patois (African-French) spoken in Acadiana by Creoles of color, but the creole-style French that the white Creoles of a New Orleans spoke. Thanks.

haha

Soldiers may have play a role but I don’t think this explanation goes to the point. Peanut is an american legume. The first name for peanuts in French was actually pistaches de terre. It is how there were called in the Antilles. Later the word cacahuètes was introduced in France from Spanish and originally from Mexico . ( Wikipedia arachide). From this article , you deduct that peanuts were introduced in those french speaking territories before the 19th century and that the new french terminology had no influence there( which is common) or on the people who introduced the legume if it happened later.

My ancestors are from all over Cajun country, and we have lots of Cajun family names in my lineage : Blanchard, Thibodeaux, Billiot, Dugas, Guidry and several more. I personally am an Aucoin and am proud of my heritage

Madame Guidry est décédée le 13 de juin 2012.

@@lacadjine Merci pour votre réponse. Que Mme Guidry repose en paix.

Amanda LaFleur People from Louisiana that are of colonial Louisiana French descent (not Acadian or Québécois, but French) are called “French Creoles”. Not to be confused with the mixed race “Creoles of color”, French Creoles are white Creoles. Actually your surname is a French creole surname, so you’re a French creole. Lafleur is not an Acadian surname, it’s an old Louisiana French creole surname that predates the Acadians. There are certain surnames associated with certain groups...French Creoles had mostly a different set of surnames from the Acadians, who were Creoles also as they were called Acadian Creoles before adopting the name cajun. And many of the people claim8g to be Cajuns today are actually French Creoles. Surnames like Fontenot, Soileau, Lafleur, Fuselier etc are French creole surnames of people claims to be Cajuns...go figure... but were all Creoles. Louisiana Creole = colonial Louisiana descent. And the colonial population used the word to mean born in the Louisiana colony. With that said, there are also non-French heritage Creoles in Louisiana. Such as the Spanish Creoles like the Isleños and malagueños, the German Creoles such as those in areas like in Des Allemands, Hahnville and the parishes up river from New Orleans like St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes and also there are métis Creoles (mixed European Native American) and also afro Creoles (predominantly of colonial Louisiana African ancestry). We are all Creoles down in south Louisiana. There’s a bunch of French Creoles around greater New Orleans and also the northern parishes of Acadiana in Avoyelles, St. Landry, Evangeline and Pointe coupee.

@@IslenoGutierrez I don't disagree with your comments, and I would add that many people who identify as Creoles of Color would also consider themselves to be French Creoles. As you and I both accurately point out, many people who call themselves Cajun are not necessarily of Acadian origin. I'd even venture to say that with historical marriages among different groups, one's present-day last name is only a very small part of the picture of one's ethnic make-up. And to complicate matters even further, some people conflate the term "Creole" as an ethnic identity with "Creole" used to describe a language or a dialect. So a black man in Jeanerette who speaks "kuri-vini" would probably say that he is Creole and that he speaks Creole. A black man in Church Point who calls himself Creole may speak a French that is very similar or even identical to his white Cajun counterpart in the same community (and very distinct from the Creole speaker in Jeanerette), but because he identifies as Creole, he might call what he speaks "Creole," too. And to add to the complicated nature of the whole thing, I have heard white French speakers in Marksville (many of whom fit the historical ethnic description of French Creole you describe in your message) call what they speak "Creole," even though it has no features that are similar to the "kuri-vini" spoken in St. Martin or St. James Parishes---because of course, they are Creole. Still, that doesn't mean that any of them is incorrect. Labels like these are fluid over time and end up being determined by usage, no matter how many dictionaries or specialists may tell us different. That's why I get so frustrated when media people contact me for a 3 minute interview and want to know "What's the difference between Cajun and Creole?" It takes at least a semester to cover the main concepts of this question with students. Some people have been doing it for a professional lifetime, and because language evolves, so does the answer to the question.

I believe it is more of a rural French as the speakers would have been from humble backgrounds. Back then France had many regional dialects and languages, which have been largely replaced by the French spoken by the ruling classes, particularly in Paris. France was quite ardent in its desire to destroy regional linguistic variation unlike for example Italy. France is quite centralised and bureacratic. You can of course still hear regional variations in France, but not so much now.

@@StillAliveAndKicking_ I am sorry but in all european countries pupils have been tought in the official language. It was a challenge in the countryside where the children arrived at school speaking only the language used at home. The situation in big cities was different. This is not a french specificity. France is probably the european country which has the greatest diversity of languages groups: Langue d’oil, langue d’oc ( I include catalan ), basque, celtic in Brittany, italic in Corsica, germanic ( Alsace Lorraine), flemish ( Nord)….I don’t take overseas under consideration In Germany which is the most decentralized country in Europe , the teachers are very strict on learning and using at school what they call Hochdeutsch. The goal is not to destroy dialects or regional languages but is to teach french, german, spanish etc…What put the regional languages under pressure was and still is : urbanization, TV, Radio, easy communications, migrations etc….So keeping them alive requires a strong will and many efforts. If you want to give an exemple where there was a real will to destroy a language ( and a social group within a population) you should take the example of Ireland and Gaellic.

@@metphmet Not so, I listened to an interview with an elderly woman in Brittany. She spoke French with an obvious accent, not unlike Welsh, and with odd grammar. She explained how children at school were punished if they were caught speaking Breton. That is a major reason why Breton is struggling. I have listened to many Bretons speaking Breton, all the younger ones (under sixty) spoke with an obvious French accent. It was similar all over France. Dialects or languages are disappearing. Basque in France has suffered far more than in Spain due to French state policies. In Germany dialects are still widely spoken. Italy has a huge number of healthy languages. Irish in Ireland is disappearing due to the Irish preferring English. It was and is seen as the language of opportunity. It is taught in schools but that is the way to kill it. You need full immersion. Britain has woken up to minority languages. There are now TV stations in Welsh and Gallic, and Welsh language schools in Wales. The Welsh language is stable. One reason for the threat to Welsh was the huge influx of English speakers into the industrial areas, along with oppression by the British state of course, which fortunately has ended.

I heard an interview with a teacher of French as a foreign language in Quebec. She was from France. She said she taught standard French because that was the correct form. Imagine an English person teaching English English in America because it is the correct form! You might as well feed the oerson to alligators. The chauvinism of the French from France often astonished me. It was rather like that of the British 50-100 years earlier.

Variety is clearer than dialect ? I am not sure . Why change ?

je pense que ta pas compris, il visé justement les gens qui parler francais peut etre les americains qui ont appris notre francais a nous, pour leur dire justement arrété de critiquer parce que vous comprenez pas. c'est un dialecte sud americain