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    French Creole

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    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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    French Creole

    Uploaded by

    nef
    167 views3 pages
    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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    FRENCH CREOLE

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    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
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    167 views3 pages

    French Creole

    Uploaded by

    nef
    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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    • 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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