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Louisiana Creole Language Guide

Louisiana Creole is a French-based creole language spoken by fewer than 10,000 people in Louisiana. It developed when French colonizers and African slaves needed a common means of communication. The language incorporates elements of French, Spanish, and African languages. It exists along a spectrum from an acrolect with more French influences to a basilect with more African influences. Louisiana Creole has a subject-verb-object grammar and definite articles similar to French but differs in its pronunciation of consonants, vowels, and 'r' sounds. Features include reduplication, demonstrative pronouns following nouns, and variations across regions and sociolinguistic groups. English semantics and syntax have also influenced the language.

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410 views3 pages

Louisiana Creole Language Guide

Louisiana Creole is a French-based creole language spoken by fewer than 10,000 people in Louisiana. It developed when French colonizers and African slaves needed a common means of communication. The language incorporates elements of French, Spanish, and African languages. It exists along a spectrum from an acrolect with more French influences to a basilect with more African influences. Louisiana Creole has a subject-verb-object grammar and definite articles similar to French but differs in its pronunciation of consonants, vowels, and 'r' sounds. Features include reduplication, demonstrative pronouns following nouns, and variations across regions and sociolinguistic groups. English semantics and syntax have also influenced the language.

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© © All Rights Reserved
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• Spoken by fewer than 10,000 speakers

• Mix of French (as a lexifier), elements of Spanish as well as African languages.


• When Louisiana was colonized by France, there was need for a new communication
method between slaves, and colonisers.
• France sold Louisiana to Spain which added elements of Spanish.
• The term Créole - French meaning to distinguish those in Louisiana from elsewhere.

• Louisiana Creole is also an ethnic variety of people in Louisiana that identify themselves
with African ancestory.

Acrolect- the most pretigious

Mesolect

Basilect- the least prestigious

Grammar

Grammar
Has a SVO SUBJECT VERB OBJECT order.
Definite articles in Louisiana Creole vary between le, la and les
before nouns just like in Louisiana French.
Louisiana French is said to be heavily decreolized from
Liousiana French casuing the partial introduction of grammar
from LF with things like number and gender agreement (seen by
the possessive pronouns).

Phonology
Much more common with other French creoles and diverges
less from French itself.
Consonants (any sound that is not the dominant sound of
the syllable)-
Louisiana French and Louisiana Creole utilizes postalveolar
affricates just like in English
/ʤ/ as in mouth “ladjèl” /ʤɛl/

 /ʧ/ as in /ʧololo/ ‘weak coffee’ 

• Dental sounds

 In French the /t/, /d/ and /n/ are “dental” sounds, but in Creole they are
pronounced as in English. Dental sounds in English are / θ/, /ð/

• Post-vocalic “r” sounds

 The /r/ sound is like the Spanish tap rather than that of French, and may not be
sounded at all after vowels.

 E.g. greetings of “bonjour” becomes “bonjou” and “bonsoir” becomes “bonswa”


• Phonological spelling; phonetic

 Louisiana creole is easy in the sense that it is a phonetic language unlike English
or French. What you see is what you pronounce and the way you pronounce it.

 Where as in French you would get a lot of letters and vowels that are silent. The
creole omits a lot of these and then some. These words sound similar to the
original to hear but have completely different spelling.

 E.g. “amuser” in French becomes “misé” in Louisiana Creole

 E.g. also numbers in creole is literally how the numbers in French are
pronounced though in French they are not spelt that way.

Oral and nasal vowels

Speakers use many rounded vowels where they occur in French but there is a variation with the
same region, sociallingusitic group etc…

Some examples of this process:

 /diri/~/dyri/ 'rice' pronounced “diri”, compare French du ris /dyri/


 /vje/~/vjø/ 'old' pronounced “vyé” compare French vieux /vjø/

Features
Reduplication

Louisiana Creole: To bras li zhiska li vini zhon zhon zhon.


Literal translation: You mix it until it become yellow yellow yellow.
English translation: You mix it until it turns (very) yellow.

demonstrative pronoun
(this that these) come after the noun so it would be “ball this” “man that”
whereas in English it would come before the noun “this ball and that man”.
Louisiana Creole: fwa-sa-la
Literal translation: time-this/that
English translation: this/that time
Louisiana Creole: Kòmon to lem gonbo-sa-la?
Literal translation: How you like gumbo-this
English translation: How do you like this gumbo?
Pronunciation variation

 the same word may be pronounced in different ways depending on regional


variants.

Pronunciations differ from place to place. In the Valdman et al. LCF dictionary, the word
for “horse” is listed with all of the following regional variants: shval, shwal, swal, shfal, shvo,
shvòl and shwo.

Varying influences of langauges


 Because there was a great lexical influence from a variety of regions on Kouri-
Vini, some of the vocabulary and phonology have been adapted and changed
from French.

 E.g. the /æ/ sound from French is changed to the /è/ sound as “mère”
becomes “mær” (pronounced maar)

LEXICON and english influence


English semantics have influenced LCF, thus zot shar pa travaye “your car doesn’t work” (cf.
French votre auto ne marche pas).

The syntax follows that of English as in french the negatives are placed differently.

Semantically- shar in Kouri-Vini is a phonological alteration of the English word for


car. (Shar in French means army tank).

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