How many people speak Cajun French in La (Lafayette, Lake Charles: 2014, live)

[jlawrence01]

Originally Posted by pandorafan5687

It's still out there, however, most of it is in the east part. Like an earlier post said, there used to be a heavy amount of it in the Lafayette and N.O. areas. However, Some of it is in the country towns like New Iberia, opelousas. And the fact that it kind of started fading after WWII.

About the time of the rise if national radio networks and television ...

[Huckleberry3911948]

"patroi" is not the same across the state. it changes from parrish to parrish.
a determined effort was made to teach state wide parisian french-- with mixed success.
the educated people in louisiana speak parisian french, the rest-- its a hit and miss.

[tmarieb78]

My relatives in Terrebonne Parish speak Cajun French. I grew up in Dulac.

[CMA2014]

Maybe I'm an anomaly, but I live in the city (New Orleans), and I speak Cajun French. My mama and my dad's parents are all Cajun, and I've spoken it since I was little. My mom, she's from Leeville, and my dad's family is from Abbeville. Right now, I'm 17 and I love my language. I have a lot of cousins around the same age who speak French. I don't know why the language has to disappear... I'm gonna teach it to my kids...

[WestbankNOLA]

Not sure about Cajun French, but I run across Kreyol Lwizian (Louisiana Creole) from time to time.

[Drouzin]

I'm sure I've told this story here before, but it's not on this thread so... I used to work out at the airport, (a million years ago), for a car rental place. There were two old men who used to work on the cars, one a Cajun and the other a Creole. Both spoke their own kind of French, but they seemed to understand one another. One day I asked and they told me that while some of it was different they could understand one another.

Anyways, this elderly couple pulls in one day and they tell me they are from France and apparently have little to no English in their vocabulary. I get this brilliant flash and call for the Cajun and Creole where they proceed to try to talk with this couple. Try being the operative word. The guys told me that they could barely understand the French couple, but managed to communicate to them where they were to go. They did say that they seemed like a nice couple and then went back to their part of the lot. From what I gather the Cajun & Creole French have a lot more in common than France French.

[mhounit]

Originally Posted by Huckleberry3911948

"patroi" is not the same across the state. it changes from parrish to parrish.
a determined effort was made to teach state wide parisian french-- with mixed success.
the educated people in louisiana speak parisian french, the rest-- its a hit and miss.

Parish is spelled with one " r " , and I'm not sure where you get that business about educated people here speaking Parisian French .

[WestbankNOLA]

Originally Posted by Drouzin

I'm sure I've told this story here before, but it's not on this thread so... I used to work out at the airport, (a million years ago), for a car rental place. There were two old men who used to work on the cars, one a Cajun and the other a Creole. Both spoke their own kind of French, but they seemed to understand one another. One day I asked and they told me that while some of it was different they could understand one another.

Anyways, this elderly couple pulls in one day and they tell me they are from France and apparently have little to no English in their vocabulary. I get this brilliant flash and call for the Cajun and Creole where they proceed to try to talk with this couple. Try being the operative word. The guys told me that they could barely understand the French couple, but managed to communicate to them where they were to go. They did say that they seemed like a nice couple and then went back to their part of the lot. From what I gather the Cajun & Creole French have a lot more in common than France French.

Dead on!. Everything from the articles, to conjugation and spelling in "Louisiana French" differ from "France French". The Louisiana versions are broken down into improper (I guess that's the right word) forms, and were then adapted in changed over the years.

[CMA2014]

Not exactly. It's not been broken improperly, it's just not been standardized. Most things that you find in Cajun French you can find over there in France in the more informal conversation. All the articles, except for some ways to say "they" are used in more informal conversation. For example, "ej" or "j'" for "I" are fairly common. "Ti" instead of "Tu" and "Y" or "Il" can be universally understood.
Cajun has dropped verb tenses that are overcomplicated or just unnecessary in everyday life. The future tense in Cajun is a compound tense consisting of article + to go + verb, so instead of saying "J'irai" for "I will go" or "Je travaillerai" in Classic French, we say "J'vas aller" and "J'vas travailler". This is actually a fairly common evolutionary attribute of modern language and is prevalent in Louisiana French.
One must remember that before there was so called standardized "Classic" or "Parisian" French (whatever name is preferred), the French language was actually a rough collection of mutually (sometimes not) intelligible languages grouped together in the "Langue d"Oil"(oil is actually pronounced as "oui") family and another more distant family called "Langue d'Oc". Most of these language still exist marginally in France. Cajun French is the descendant of the spoken languages of Anjou and Poitou, France. Since the colonist left France before any standardization processes were in effect, the language has evolved independent of Standard French. That's why the syntax, grammar, vocabulary, loanwords from contact groups, and accent of Cajun are so unique. It makes for a very pleasant melange I feel .
Creole has a bit of different story behind it hahaha. It's just living alongside eachother for so long, we are used to the way eachother speaks. It's kind of like how whites can understand African American Vernacular English and vise versa.

I hope this has been helpful. Any questions? haha

[CMA2014]

Sorry, I confused pronouns and articles haha. The articles are the exact same in Cajun as in Parisian.