no french speakers in la

The MLA Language Map tracks the linguistic makeup of American places. In other words, it is a database, derived from census data, of who speaks what languages where.
Regular readers of this site know I’m a proud Cajun and very interested in all things related to language persistence. Just a few decades ago — until World War II — Cajuns were almost entirely Francophone. (Some spoke English, too, but only to talk to those damned Anglos.) The rise of a national popular culture and a host of economic factors have since pushed French to the sidelines.
(To put this in my family’s context, my great-grandmother, Oureline Dugas Mouton, died in 1988 without knowing a word of English. My grandmother Mazie grew up speaking only French and didn’t learn English until grade school — but she barely spoke any French in her last few years. My mother knows enough French to get by, but hasn’t used it in conversation for years. And by the time I was a kid, French was the language the old people spoke when they didn’t want you to understand what they were saying. So while I took French class in school, my language skills are mediocre.)
Anyway, I used the MLA site to run a few numbers for Louisiana. This is the sad result.
You’ll notice that there are still 194,314 French speakers in Louisiana — the largest total of any state and more than one-tenth of all French speakers nationally. That’s still a lot more than the second-largest minority language in Louisiana — Spanish, which has 105,189 speakers.
But look at the age breakdown on that chart. Among children aged 5 to 17, there are 16,395 who speak French at home. But there are 20,689 who speak Spanish at home.
In other words, among today’s children, French isn’t even Louisiana’s secondmost popular language. And this is in a state with a relatively tiny Hispanic population.
Depressing — particularly with all the evidence out there about the benefits of being bilingual. At some point, folks Zachary Richard — who tie concepts of Cajun identity with the persistence of the language — are going to have to realize that battle is already lost. If a Cajun identity is going to persist, it’ll have to do so separate from the language.

5 thoughts on “no french speakers in la”

  2. I’m not Cajun, but I’ve lived in Lafayette for the last six years. Both the Cajun and Creole cultures are what attracted me to the area and what have kept me here.
    I know a lot of guys who feel the same way you do, particularly Cajuns under 40 who don’t speak Cajun French. If we believe what several cultural crusaders contend – that without the French language the Cajun identity and Cajun culture will vanish – then how does one explain the resurgence in all things Cajun and even Cajun-like (particularly in the 80s) while the language does indeed disappear? It’s a very interesting dilemma.
    When I was working for The Times of Acadiana last year, I took a stab at answering that question in an article titled “AmeriCajuns?”
    (http://www.timesofacadiana.com/html/67DAE9A6-B900-4A0C-93AF-82FA6B36AC2F.shtml).
    I interviewed Shane K. Bernard, a historian who had looked at the Cajun identity from World War II to September 11, 2001 in his book “The Cajuns: The Americanization of a People.” While he doesn’t try to predict the future, he does try to determine how Cajuns have defined themselves since The Americans invaded their pocket of the world.
    Bernard believes that Cajuns will remain Cajun through what sociologist Herbert J. Gans calls “symbolic ethnicity.” In my article, I wrote that Bernard believes “Cajuns will remain Cajun by participating in preservation groups, attending Festivals Acadiens, boiling crawfish and listening to or playing Cajun music, without practicing the daily folkways of their forefathers. Bernard points to the bilingual street signs as an example of symbolic ethnicity. If the majority of Louisiana residents cannot speak or read French, then why are there signs in both languages? While it may not serve a practical purpose, it serves as a reminder that there is, however tenuous, still a connection to that French past.”
    In the same article, I spoke with Jacques Henry, an associate professor of sociology at UL Lafayette, who, with Carl Bankston wrote “Blue Collar Bayou: Louisiana Cajuns in the New Economy of Ethnicity.” Henry and Bankston tackle the question: ” … how does Cajun ethnicity endure when its ancestral roots are becoming more distant and its core cultural components are apparently waning?” They conclude that while the decline of Cajun French will eventually suffocate the culture, it is what Cajuns value that will sustain it for generations.
    Henry said, “If we think of culture in the old, traditional way – as some kind of suitcase full of things that generations pass on to one another

  3. Hey Reese,
    I’ve got no doubt Cajun identity will persist, in some form. If I wanted to be crass, I’d note there’s a pretty significant tourism-industrial complex that has been built around all things Cajun in Louisiana, and the folks who profit from that business will always have an interest in keeping Cajun identity alive — whether in real life or in bottled form.
    But the metaphor I use for how I see Cajun identity moving in the future is Italian-Americans. Not too long ago, in certain urban enclaves, you had an overpowering Italianness: people speaking Italian in the streets, popular Italian-language media, strong identification with cultural mores, etc. I’m talking De Niro-in-Godfather-II stuff here — people who were obviously different in important ways than their peers of other ethnic groups.
    But today, being an Italian-American isn’t much more than a minor cultural marker — something you can bring up at parties when the conversation lags. Sure, you’ve still got Joe DiMaggio, you’ve still got Sinatra, and you’ve still got pasta. But an Italian-American can choose to ignore or emphasize his ethnic background however he chooses, probably has no more interaction with fellow I-As than he does with other ethnic groups, and no doubt considers himself far more “American” than his parents or grandparents did. And the chances of him speaking Italian, either on a daily basis or once in a while, are pretty rare.
    There’s nothing wrong with that model. It’s the model the vast majority of white American ethnic groups have followed. We’ll still have the food (even if it’s cooked by Massachussetts Italians like Emeril) and we’ll still have Cajun music. I love them both. But there’s a whole lot more that will be lost if that’s all we have. For one thing, Cajun music and Cajun food are both nearly as easy for non-Cajuns in Peoria to enjoy as they are for Cajuns in Eunice or Cankton. I think that sort of diversity is great — it’s the same economic mechanism that allows me to have Vietnamese food in Dallas. But it makes being Cajun a less unique experience if the only cultural markers that matter are just as available to John Doe as they are to Jean Breaux.
    One other reason why all this is a little depressing to me: Acadian/Cajun identity has persisted so much longer than other white microcultures have in the U.S. You didn’t get the rush of Italians and Greeks and other big ethnic groups until circa 1900 — they assimilated within 2-3 generations. Cajuns have been here since the 1780s and survived as a linguistic minority for 200 years. I don’t know of any other white ethnic group that can claim that sort of persistence in the face of American assimilation. (Obviously, Hispanic and Native American groups can make that claim, but that gets into a whole host of other racial issues about ease of assimilation.)

  5. I was pondering this the other day and I think a big distinction needs to be made between this situation and that of groups such as Italians who came to this country early last century.
    My grandfather’s family was so intent on assimilating the family into American culture that they didn’t even teach him Italian. That was a common reaction of many families coming over, to deny who they were and pick up new ways. On the other hand, there are still Italians in Italy speaking Italian. Many 3rd, 4th or 5th generations in immigrant families I know, including my own, have gone back to re-establish ties with the mother country. This allows for the drawing of continual inspiration, for lack of a better word, for an Italian-American cultural indentity. In addition, Italians continue to immigrate to America, again providing an influx of cultural indentity.
    Here, we have a somewhat more difficult and troubling situation. One in which a group is being assimilated almost through osmosis. I suppose we could argue about whether or not Cajuns want to be assimilated, but that’s fairly moot. The fact is that at this point, no matter what preservation efforts were undertaken, the horse has already left the barn, in some ways. Not only that, Cajun culture really being neither French nor Acadian, there is no place from which to get a new infusion of identity. Thus, the death or radical transformation of Cajun culture is likely irreversible and permanent.

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