| Louisiana Creole | |
|---|---|
| Kréyol La Lwizyàn | |
| Spoken in | Louisiana, particularly St. Martin Parish, Natchitoches Parish, St. Landry Parish, Jefferson Parish and Lafayette Parish, Illinois and a small community in East Texas. Significant community in California; chiefly in Northern California |
| Native speakers | 70,000 (1985) |
| Language family |
French Creole
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | lou |
| Linguasphere | 51-AAC-ca |
Louisiana Creole (Kréyol La Lwizyàn) (français: Créole louisianais) is a French Creole language spoken by the Louisiana Creole people of the state of Louisiana. The language consists of elements of French, Spanish, African, and Native American roots.
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Speakers of Louisiana Creole are mainly concentrated in south and southwest Louisiana, where the population of Creolophones is distributed across the region. There are also numbers of Creolophones in Natchitoches Parish on Cane River and sizable communities of Louisiana Creole-speakers in Southeast Texas Beaumont ,Texas (Houston, Port Arthur, Galveston) and the Chicago area. California has the most Creole speakers of any state outside Louisiana, and the number of speakers may surpass that of Louisiana . Louisiana Creole speakers in California reside in Los Angeles, San Diego Riverside County and San Bernardino counties and in Northern California (Alameda, Berkeley ,Oakland , San Jose , San Marino , Sacramento, San Francisco, Mendocino, Plumas, Tehama, Siskiyou, Napa, Sierra, Mono and Yuba counties; notably in Tennant, California).
St. Martin Parish forms the heart of the Creole-speaking region. Other sizeable communities exist along Bayou Têche in St. Landry, Avoyelles ,Iberia and St. Mary Parishes. There are smaller communities on False River in Terrebone Parish , Pointe-Coupée Parish], and along the lower Mississippi River in Ascension, St. Charles, and St. James and St.John the Baptist parishes (Klingler; Marshall; Valdman).
The grammar of Louisiana Creole is very similar to that of Haitian Creole. Definite articles in Louisiana Creole vary between the le, la and les used in standard French (a testament of possible decreolization in some areas) and a and la for the singular, and yé for the plural. In St. Martin Parish, the masculine definite article, whether le or -a, is often omitted altogether.
In theory, Creole places its definite articles after the noun, unlike French. Given Louisiana Creole's complex linguistic relationship with Colonial French and Cajun French, however, this is often no longer the case. Since there is no system of noun gender, articles only vary on phonetic criteria. The article a is placed after words ending in a vowel, and la is placed after words ending in a consonant.
Another aspect of Louisiana Creole which is unlike French is the lack of verb conjugation. Verbs do not vary based on person or number. Verbs vary based on verbal markers (e.g., té (past tense), sé (conditional), sa (future)) which are placed between the personal pronouns and conjugated verbs (e.g. mo té kourí au Villaj, "I went to Lafayette"). Frequently in the past tense, the verbal marker is omitted and one is left to figure out the time of the event through context.
The vocabulary of Louisiana Creole is of French, African, Native American and Spanish origin. Most local vocabulary, i.e. topography, animals, plants are of regional Amerindian origin - mostly substrata of the Choctaw or Mobilian Language group. The language possesses vestiges of west and central African languages (namely Bambara, Wolof, Fon) in folklore and in the religion of voodoo. The grammar, however, remains distinct from that of French (Midlo Hall; Klingler; Valdman).
Included are the French numbers for comparison.
| Number | Louisiana Creole | French |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | un | un |
| 2 | dé | deux |
| 3 | trò/trwoi | trois |
| 4 | kat | quatre |
| 5 | cink | cinq |
| 6 | sis | six |
| 7 | sèt | sept |
| 8 | wit | huit |
| 9 | nèf | neuf |
| 10 | dis | dix |
| English | Louisiana Creole | French |
|---|---|---|
| I | mo | je |
| you (informal) | to | tu |
| you (formal) | vou | vous |
| he | li, ça | il |
| she | li, ça | elle |
| we | nou, nou-zòt (nous-autres) | nous |
| you (plural) | vou, zòt, vou-zòt (vous-autres) | vous |
| they (masculine) | yé | ils |
| they (feminine) | yé | elles |
| English | Louisiana Creole | French |
|---|---|---|
| Hello | Bonjou | Bonjour |
| How are things? | Konmen lé-z'affè? | Comment vont les affaires? |
| How are you doing? | Konmen to yê? | Comment allez-vous? Comment vas-tu? Comment ça va? |
| I'm good, thanks. | Çé bon, mèsi. | Ça va bien, merci. |
| See you later. | Wa (twa) pli tar. | Je te vois (vois-toi) plus tard. (À plus tard.) |
| I love you. | Mo laimm twa. | Je t'aime. |
| Take care. | Swinn-twa. | Soigne-toi. (Prends soin de toi.) |
| Good Morning. | Bonjou. | Bonjour. |
| Good Evening. | Bonswa. | Bonsoir. |
| Good Night. | Bonswa. / Bonnwí. | Bonne nuit. |
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