F is for Cajun French

[muckefuck]

Cajun French I. Faulk, James Donald. Crowley, La. : Cajun Press, c1977.

Long ago it occurred to me that the truly ironic thing about my dislike of French is if it were some freakish marginalised Romance variety instead of an elabourated literary language with 100 million or so native-speakers, I'd be all over it. I mean, what's not to love about a phonology that turns [akwa] into [o] or [insula] into [il] or verb complex that's got more in common with Swahili or Basque than anything Romance? But, unfortunately, French is associated with France and--even worse--pretentious American Francophiles. I've had to spend my whole life hearing people babble on about how "beautiful" it is while they condemn American English for its "nasality" and German for its "gutteralness", even though French is more nasal and gutteral than the two of them put together.

What I needed, I realised, was a freakish marginalised variety of French, one without any snob appeal or fawning devotees. I thought Québécois would fit the bill but the Québécois are, if anything, more annoying about their language than the French. I got excited when I found out that there were vestiges of colonial French in Missouri, but finding anything on this dialect turned out to be harder than impossible. So when e. and bunj asked me what I wanted from New Orleans, I told them, "Find me a book on Cajun French."

And they did--but not this one. All they could find was a recent reprint of a turn-of-the-century French work that failed to turn my crank much. Cajun French I (AFAICT, Cajun French II never saw the light of day) came from a fellow language geek at my previous job. (It's to him I'm also grateful for the only grammar of Latin I've ever owned. It's in Welsh.) In its own way, it's leaves as much to be desired as the aforementioned reprint, but it's got more charm.

How much more? Bumloads more. For one thing, it looks exactly like what you'd expect something cobbled together in a teacher's spare time to look; browsing the typescript pages, you can almost smell the mimeograph ink. For another, the concerns are unabashedly parochial. Don't expect to come away from it able to discuss the latest Caro and Jeunet film, but you'll be able to talk about fence-mending, critter-hunting, and going down to the Lucky Seven for milk with practiced ease.

The transcription system used is the kind of "phonetic English" that would normally have me pulling my hair out by the roots, but somehow it works here. And I love the long lists of vocabulary terms; makes up for the lack of a glossary. Besides, if I want some prettified documents, there's always the slick pages on the Tulane University site that I've discovered in the meanwhile. (Plus it's nice to have collaboration for some of the more unusual grammatical features identified by Mr Faulk, like the loss of the subject pronoun elles or the pronunciation of elle as [al].)

I just can't wait to use some of it on a snooty poseur francophone and have him tell me how atrocious my French is.

Comments

[thedeli.livejournal.com]

"...the Québécois are, if anything, more annoying about their language than the French."

By far, yes.


I've seen that book you've got. It was a product, I suppose, of that 'American folk revival' of the 60s/70s - along with CODOFIL, and Cajun self-awareness/commercialization in general.

Sadly, Creoles had no such "pride boom", otherwise I could refer you to some killer sources for Colonial French and/or Creole. I mean, other than Valdman's work at Indiana University.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I love this entry. Reminds me of the Russian recitation in A Fish Called Wanda. You could also get all gyppy about Occitan, and choose on the spur of the moment whether to snipe at others' snobbery with your inversion or with a sort of rootsier-than-thou, ultra-nationalist medievalism.

OT: I guess there's a whole argot for breaking down the elements of accents, but I have no idea what it is: is this something you've come across?

I'm thinking about habits of speech which may not come under the rubric of accent at all: voice pitch, speed, cadence, where in the mouth the sounds are held, or made, or whatever (such as: what category would "nasal" come under?). The reason it's on my mind is that I'm in Holland and some of the locals sound just like they're from London - until I pay attention and realise they're speaking Dutch. There seems to be some stratum in Holland that has the same pitch, cadence and tics you find in the Thames estuary. So I'm cashing in my "ask a linguist" coupon to ask: does anyone discuss this stuff? What's the current thinking on these aspects of speech?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

"Nasal" commonly refers to nasal vowels (as it does here), which are vowels produced with blockage of the oral cavity and release of air through the nasal passages, or to nasal stops, which are consonants produced in like manner. This is basic phonetic terminology (and, as such, covered fairly well on Wikipedia).

Pitch, speed, cadence, etc.--these are all suprasegmentals (if they are phonemic) or aspects of prosody (if they are not). What I mean is that in a language like Panjabi or Swedish, the relative pitch of a syllable can change the meaning of word, so you have to treat it as a suprasegmental phoneme. In English, pitch may have some pragmatic meaning (e.g. expressing interrogation, worry, boredom, sarcasm, etc.) so it gets handled under prosody.

You're not the first person to notice this similarity within the North Sea area. I've had people tell me that the German of Hamburg is also spoken with a peculiarly English-like intonation. I don't know if anyone's studied this particular phenomenon, but it is the kind of thing that does come under examination in linguistics.

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

I'll certainly be looking for articles on that! I didn't know pitch was that meaningful in Swedish. Is that true of all the Scandinavian languages?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

That depends how you analyse Danish stød. Although it is often realised as a glottal stop, I've seen arguments that this is only a surface realisation of underlying pitch-accent. Apparently, it can also surface as creaky voice.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

I didn't know pitch was that meaningful in Swedish.

I didn't either, and I speak some Swedish. :) Da, can you give a contrasting pair as an example, please?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Swedes tell me there aren't really that many minimal pairs. A search found this delightful soundfile which tries to cram as many as possible into a few sentences:

anden "the spirit" vs. anden "the duck"
tomten "Santa Claus" vs. tomten "the lot, the site"
stegen "the footsteps" vs. stegen "the ladder"

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the pointer to suprasegmentals and prosody: these do, indeed, seem to cover exactly what I was asking about - though I haven't yet answered to my own satisfaction whether the means exist to describe, for instance, the identifying characteristics of male, 30+ estuary English speech, or the range of culturally-defined options this group has at its disposal when speaking.

The wikipedia entries on the various voices, including creaky, breathy, harsh and slack are also a joy - though I still don't quite know what any of these sound like: why, why, why doesn't wikipedia provide sound files :(

Finally, I wonder over what spread of languages and cultural groups this statement is true (from "prosody," wikipedia):
"prosodic units, intonation units, or declination units... are characterized by several phonetic cues, such as a coherent pitch contour, and the gradual decline in pitch and lengthening of vowels over the duration of the unit, until the pitch and speed are reset to begin the next unit. Breathing, both inhalation and exhalation, only seems to occur at these boundaries."

That sounds pretty specific: if it can be demonstrated in a large range of languages, it seems odd, maybe very interesting (though of course I have no idea what you'd do with such a tidbit of information).

[itchwoot.livejournal.com]

I'll never get it why so many people dislike France, French or French people. Sure, they're smug about their language, but in a sense, a lot of nations are, and I've yet to meet a snooty Frenchman. If I were to abandon a European country, it'd more likely be Italy, but I've never been there anyway.

What's notable about English vs. French is that from my experiences, hardly any native speaker gets the other language's pronunciation the least bit right. Frenchmen speaking English mostly sound horrible, and vice versa.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Envy and anxiety. They continue to have the best food and wine, the most amazing and varied traditional architecture and the most beautiful women in the world, and they refuse to play the subservient role in geopolitics to which their economy would appear to relegate them.

Also, they pretty much invented the to-die-for dessert. You can see how that's a mixed blessing.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I don't see how anyone can see even one Bollywood film and still maintain with a straight face that France has the most beautiful women in the world. As a bonus, Indian women are even acquainted with soap.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

OK, the women point was tongue-in-cheek: you can find beautiful women everywhere - even in Russia and California. Of course, the images projected in films and the experience of being in the country are quite different: I've spent some time in France, but never been to India - I have, however, known quite a few diasporic Indians. As far as soap goes, I don't think your distinction holds up: both groups show a broad range, certainly broader than among WASPy American's I've known.

[zabster.livejournal.com]

I'm amused by your post. I also think the women of the Indian subcontinent are among the most beautiful in the world, (though the women of Thailand could give them a run for their money.) But I think Bollywood is a terrible representation of the beauty of Indian women. Bollywood picks its girls for paleness and often for perky cuteness, and miss most of the variety of Indian beauty.

By the way, I'm a bi woman, and a language nerd. I clicked on your journal from linguaphiles, and have been loving it. I've also discovered aadroma through your site, and am enjoying his posts a lot too.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

The most famously bad Frenchman-speaking-English I can think of is Antoine de Caunes
http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/E/eurotrash/Rapido_trash/

He's actually made a career out of it. Offhand I can't think of an Englishman famous for speaking French badly - although I'm not in France, so I may just be unaware.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

When it comes to individual Frenchmen, I've mostly had good experiences. People warned me before I went to France that the locals are intolerant of bad French, but I got the same positive reactions from my attempts there as I did in other countries.

But, as I point out above, the problem is less the French themselves than, on the one hand, the Statesiders who idealise them and, on the other, their political and cultural leaders, who reflexively turn to USA-bashing when they need to shore up support. The Germans have a very different experience of French political ambitions since the EU is, at its heart, a Franco-German collaboration. However, the lesson the French drew from the Suez Crisis of 1956 is that the USA was getting too big for its britches and had to be counterbalanced within the Western Bloc. Ever since then, it seems it's hardly missed an opportunity to stick one in the eye of the USA (as long as nothing really important is at stake).

Frenchmen speaking English

[ursine1.livejournal.com]

This past Tuesday I was at Átame for their Happy Hour and merienda. A tourist came up to the bar next to where I was seated and ordered "one beer". His English sounded very formal, but it wasn't typically State-side or British sounding. When he was served his beer, he walked toward the back of the bar, without paying. I asked the camarero if the beer was gratis. He laughed and shook his head.

The tourist came back where I was sitting and I asked where he was from. He said "France". So I told him that at a bar here in Spain it is customary to pay when you are served. He seemed a little surprised. Later I told the camarero that the tourist was from la republica de Sarkozy.

As you know there can be a lot of animosity between different national/ethnic groups in Europe. The Spanish don't seem to care so much, just as long as they spend money.

Chuck

[pne.livejournal.com]

Plus it's nice to have collaboration for some of the more unusual grammatical features identified by Mr Faulk

Did you mean corroboration?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

What would I do without you? It's like having my own personal freelance editor! [Did I get all that right?]

[exentric.livejournal.com]

They're French isn't THAT different from the variety I speak. :S:S Except for that "aupres de" thing.

[zompist.livejournal.com]

I have a 600-page book on Louisiana creole French:

http://www.amazon.com/Could-Turn-Tongue-Like-That/dp/0807127795

I don't think I'll ever really use it, so you're welcome to have it...

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

That would be awesome. What would you like trade? (I'm going to the Seminary Co-op members' booksale next weekend, if that helps.)