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I can contribute to this, being Cajun myself. The true answer? It´s more complicated than people realize. Yes, as previously said, when we were all expelled from Canada by the British, some of us settled in the Caribbean. We generally didn´t do too well in the Sugar Islands, but we didn´t exactly adapt to life back in France either. When we looked into the story of my family, we discovered that a good chunk of our French-speaking relatives first went to Cuba (obviously still a Spanish colony at that point) before settling in Louisiana. The Spanish Crown was very kind to us in general; people don´t always realize that when the Cajuns settled in southwest Louisiana, it was in fact in Spanish hands. I know plenty of latino-looking Cajuns with French last names, and very pasty white people in that region with Spanish last names like Nunez (it lost the ñ over time), Miguez and Romero. This is a result of both intermarriage as well as some families deciding to adopt last names from the other country out of respect. New Iberia was founded by Analucians and many Canary Islanders settled in Louisiana as well.
My great uncles were split up prior to D-Day and distributed into different platoons to basically serve as informal translators during the liberation of France. Most Cajuns originally came from Normandy and northern France in general, and they were received quite well in the countryside. The long separation resulted in some struggles to communicate from time to time, but there wasn´t a serious issue. The warm welcome went cold in cities like Paris, where people essentially told them they spoke the ugliest French they´d ever heard!
Many Haitians of all colors immigrated to Louisiana during the slave uprisings, but I´m afraid I don´t know enough of their story to say much about it.
French history on the American continent is fascinating.
I am originally an Acadian from the Canadian Maritimes, and a native French speaker though I did much of my schooling in English. I've lived in Quebec in a very predominantly French environment for quite a few years
Ahhhhhh you're a Maritimer Acajack. Moi Aussi. (My adopted culture.)
Quebec and the Maritimes are the best known and largest French speaking areas. Northern Ontario and the prairies also have French speaking communities. I plan on visiting many of them this year.
Ahhhhhh you're a Maritimer Acajack. Moi Aussi. (My adopted culture.)
I know. You've lived in a surprising number of places in Canada! You seem to move consistently westwards. Perhaps you will end up in Vancouver eventually.
Nearly everyone calls the local Creole, Patois, except for a handful of *activists* who are trying to elevate its status in the country. The Folk Research Centre is spearheading these efforts: Folk Research Centre - St. Lucia Home. It has now been put to writing, but there is little interest among St Lucians in learning to write it... and the spoken language is dying out to the local English, especially in and around Castries.
The French Creoles of the Caribbean are different from each other by a bit, but St Lucians and Dominicans can communicate with each other with ease. It seems to me that most Martinicans have moved away from it. When they visit St Lucia, St Lucians tend to consider Martinicans snobbish (in part because of language, but also because Martinicans know they have it better). I met one St Lucian who was angry at the UK because the Brits threw away all their Caribbean subjects by forcing independence on them while France brought them fully into the fold.
Lewiston-Auburn is in what Mainers call "Central Maine". It is not near the border, but it is closer to Quebec than New Brunswick. It is a good old-fashioned New England mill town. It has been losing population for decades, but now some 40% of elementary school children in Lewiston are of African or African-American origin (when I was in high school, just two of my classmates were black [all grades combined]).
I did go to high school with just one girl who spoke Acadian-like French (her parents were from New Brunswick). All others I knew who spoke French spoke a type of low-class Canadian (Quebec) French. In high school, I worked in the produce department of a local supermarket. The guys in the meat department were all from Aroostook county and spoke like Acadians.
Northern Aroostook county still has French-speaking Acadian communities... Madawaska, Fort Kent, Van Buren, Frenchville (!!!!), Ste-Agathe (St. Agatha)...
This post was originally aborted above, but is reposted here for the sake of maintaining the integrity of this thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by UrbanLuis
Interesting. I got confused. I meant to say Creole. I will have to look up some of the St lucian Creolo.
Nearly everyone calls the local Creole, Patois, except for a handful of *activists* who are trying to elevate its status in the country. The Folk Research Centre is spearheading these efforts: Folk Research Centre - St. Lucia Home. It has now been put to writing, but there is little interest among St Lucians in learning to write it... and the spoken language is dying out to the local English, especially in and around Castries.
The French Creoles of the Caribbean are different from each other by a bit, but St Lucians and Dominicans can communicate with each other with ease. It seems to me that most Martinicans have moved away from it. When they visit St Lucia, St Lucians tend to consider Martinicans snobbish (in part because of language, but also because Martinicans know they have it better). I met one St Lucian who was angry at the UK because the Brits threw away all their Caribbean subjects by forcing independence on them while France brought them fully into the fold.
Quote:
Originally Posted by UrbanLuis
Is that closer to Quebec or New Brunswick. Are there any French speaking Acadians communites in Maine?
Lewiston-Auburn is in what Mainers call "Central Maine". It is not near the border, but it is closer to Quebec than New Brunswick. It is a good old-fashioned New England mill town. It has been losing population for decades, but now some 40% of elementary school children in Lewiston are of African or African-American origin (when I was in high school, just two of my classmates were black [all grades combined]).
I did go to high school with just one girl who spoke Acadian-like French (her parents were from New Brunswick). All others I knew who spoke French spoke a type of low-class Canadian (Quebec) French. In high school, I worked in the produce department of a local supermarket. The guys in the meat department were all from Aroostook county and spoke like Acadians.
Northern Aroostook county still has French-speaking Acadian communities... Madawaska, Fort Kent, Van Buren, Frenchville (!!!!), Ste-Agathe (St. Agatha)...
Louisiana Francophones use some of the features of old-time Acadian French, in pronunciation and certain grammatical conventions.
One thing French-speaking Cajuns say to each other is mon nèg, meaning 'my man'. However, etymologically speaking nèg is the n-word in English. Cajun French speakers have a very salty language. In the states, I hear black young people call each other 'my n*gger' frequently. Nèg in Haitian Creole also means 'man'.
As for South America, French is obviously spoken in French Guiana. In Brazil, there is a Native American tribe called the Karipúna, whose elders still speak a French-based Creole. They live in Amapá state. It is thought by some that they moved there from French Guiana.
To me, the tribal name 'Karipúna' sounds a lot like the name of the people living on the Caribbean coast of Belize, Guatemala and Honduras, namely the Garifuna. Both have their ethnogenesis in the Carib people (for which the Caribbean is named), at least in part. DNA-wise, the Garifuna are about 80% West African and 20% Carib, but their language is a phonetically Africanized version of Carib, with about 15% of the its vocabulary derived from French (I think the numbers, days of the week, and months of the year, among others, are all in French). They lived on St Vincent. They were enslaved by the native Carib after a slave ship wrecked off their island's coast, but eventually diseases the Africans carried and for which the Caribs had no immunity, killed off all the Caribs. When the British took over the island, the Garifuna said, in effect, "you can't enslave us, we are native Carib people." So, the British shipped them off to Roatan Island. From there, they hopped over to Honduras.
In colonial Belize, the Creoles (English-speaking blacks) looked down on the Garifuna (Black Caribs) because they were considered once the slaves of Indians. The Creoles inherited British institutions. The Garifuna inherited a primitive backwater culture. This is not the case anymore and the two groups intermarry with each other. The Garifuna language is threatened, although many in the coastal village of Hopkins could still speak it until recently.
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