Louisiana Creole (Créole Louisiane and "Kourí-Viní", as it is known in and near St. Martin Parish) is a French and West African-based creole language spoken by the Louisiana Creole people in Louisiana. It has many resemblances to other French creoles in the Caribbean. While Cajun French and Louisiana Creole have had a significant influence on each other, they are not closely related (while Cajun is basically a dialect with grammar similar to standard French, Louisiana Creole applies a French lexicon to a system of grammar and syntax which is quite different from French grammar). St. ... St. ... Jefferson Parish is a parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. ... Lafayette Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. ... Red counties show the core of East Texas; pink and red counties may or may not be included in East Texas, and thus their inclusion varies from source to source. ... Northern California, sometimes referred to as NorCal, is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. ... A French creole, more properly French-based creole language, is a creole language with substantial influence from the French language. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of the sounds of human speech. ... Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ... French (français, langue française) is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered in speakers only by Spanish and Portuguese. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is stable language that originated from a non-trivial combination of two or more languages, typically with many features that are not inherited from any parent. ... This article is about an ethnic culture in Louisiana, USA. For uses of the term Creole in other countries and cultures, see Creole (disambiguation). ... Official language(s) de jure: none de facto: English & French Capital Baton Rouge Largest city New Orleans [1] Area  Ranked 31st  - Total 51,885 sq mi (134,382 km²)  - Width 130 miles (210 km)  - Length 379 miles (610 km)  - % water 16  - Latitude 29°N to 33°N  - Longitude 89°W... “West Indian” redirects here. ... Cajun French is one of three varieties or dialects of the French language spoken primarily in the U.S. state of Louisiana, specifically in the southern parishes. ... For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ...

Geography

St. Martin Parish.

Creole-Speaking Parishes in Louisiana

The speaker population of Louisiana Creole French today is mainly concentrated in South and Southwest Louisiana, where the population of Creolophones is distributed across the region. There are also minute numbers of Creolophones in Natchitoches Parish on the Cane River and sizable communities of Louisiana Creole-speakers in East Texas. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Red counties show the core of East Texas; pink and red counties may or may not be included in East Texas, and thus their inclusion varies from source to source. ...

Speaker Demographics

The language is now spoken mostly by older generations (over 60 years old), 4.6% of whom are monolingual in Louisiana Creole. Louisiana Creoles under the age of 30 tend to prefer speaking English. In the State of Louisiana, 4,465, or .10% of the population reports speaking Louisiana Creole French at home (1.2% of the non-English speaking community), 700 of whom report speaking English "not well" or "not well at all"[1]. Particularly, St. Martin Parish has a concentration of Creole speakers (1.52% of the parish reports speaking the langauage at home, 250 of whom had low English-language skills[2]). In Texas, there is a population of 3,505 speakers, 230 of whom report poor English skills.[3] English, a West Germanic language originating in England, is the first language for most people in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. ... St. ... Official language(s) No Official Language See languages of Texas Capital Austin Largest city Houston Area  Ranked 2nd  - Total 261,797 sq mi (678,051 km²)  - Width 773 miles (1,244 km)  - Length 790 miles (1,270 km)  - % water 2. ...

Census and demographic reports provide extremely low yields for native speakers of Louisiana Creole. These low yields are due to identification issues in Louisiana. For example, some speakers of Creole identify themselves culturally and ancestrally as French, and therefore call the language they speak French, when in fact it is Creole. One can also find this on the prairies of southwest Louisiana, where speakers of Cajun-French identify themselves as Creole, and call the language they speak Creole (Valdman).

St. Martin Parish is today's current Creole-speaking heartland. Other sizeable communities exist all along Bayou Têche in St. Landry, Iberia and St. Mary Parishes. There are smaller communities on False River in Pointe-Coupée Parish, and along the lower Mississippi River in Ascension, St. Charles, and St. James Parishes (Klingler; Marshall; Valdman). St. ...

Grammar

In general, the grammar of Louisiana Creole is very similar to the grammar of Haitian Creole. Definite articles in Louisiana Creole vary between "le, la and les" (testament of possible decreolization in some areas) and "a" and "la" for the singular, and "yé" for plural. In St. Martin Parish, the masculine definite article, "le" or "-a" is often omitted all together. Haitian Creole (Kreyòl ayisyen) is a creole language based on the French language. ...

In theory, unlike French, Creole places its definite articles after the noun. Given Louisiana Creole's complex linguistic relationship with Colonial French and Cajun French, this has often proven to no longer be a reality. Since there is no system of noun gender, articles only vary on phonetic criteria. "a" is placed after words ending in a vowel, and "la" is placed after words ending in a consonant. Map of the first (light blue) and second (dark blue — plain and hachured) French colonial empires France had colonial possessions, in various forms, from the beginning of the 17th century until the 1960s. ...

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" (i.e. "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.

Vocabulary

Numbers

Included are the French numbers for comparison.

External links

• Learn Louisiana Creole Online
• Learn Pointe-Coupée Parish Creole
• Cane River Valley French
• Les Créoles de Pointe-Coupée
• Créoles Sans Limites
• Louisiana Creole Grammar
• Lousiana Creole French at Ethnologue
• Centenary University Bibliothèque Tintamarre Texts in Louisiana Creole

Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language. ...

References

• Brasseaux, Carl. French, Cajun, Creole, Houma: A Primer on Francophone Louisiana. Bâton-Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.

• Klingler, Thomas A. If I could turn my tongue like that: The Creole Language of Pointe-Coupée Parish, La. Bâton-Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003.

• Marshall, Margaret. The Origin and Development of Louisiana Creole French: French and Creole in Louisiana. Ed. Valdman, Albert. New York: Plenum Press, 1997.

• Valdman, Albert. Valdman, Albert, et al. Dictionary of Louisiana Creole. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.

• Valdman, Albert, Thomas A. Klingler, Margaret M. Marshall, and Kevin J. Rottet (eds.). 1996. The Dictionary of Louisiana Creole. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.