Language In Louisiana

Download Language In Louisiana full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Language In Louisiana ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Language in Louisiana

Author : Nathalie Dajko
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496823885
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Language in Louisiana by : Nathalie Dajko

Download or read book Language in Louisiana written by Nathalie Dajko and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2019-08-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributions by Lisa Abney, Patricia Anderson, Albert Camp, Katie Carmichael, Christina Schoux Casey, Nathalie Dajko, Jeffery U. Darensbourg, Dorian Dorado, Connie Eble, Daniel W. Hieber, David Kaufman, Geoffrey Kimball, Thomas A. Klingler, Bertney Langley, Linda Langley, Shane Lief, Tamara Lindner, Judith M. Maxwell, Rafael Orozco, Allison Truitt, Shana Walton, and Robin White Louisiana is often presented as a bastion of French culture and language in an otherwise English environment. The continued presence of French in south Louisiana and the struggle against the language's demise have given the state an aura of exoticism and at the same time have strained serious focus on that language. Historically, however, the state has always boasted a multicultural, polyglot population. From the scores of indigenous languages used at the time of European contact to the importation of African and European languages during the colonial period to the modern invasion of English and the arrival of new immigrant populations, Louisiana has had and continues to enjoy a rich linguistic palate. Language in Louisiana: Community and Culture brings together for the first time work by scholars and community activists, all experts on the cutting edge of research. In sixteen chapters, the authors present the state of languages and of linguistic research on topics such as indigenous language documentation and revival; variation in, attitudes toward, and educational opportunities in Louisiana’s French varieties; current research on rural and urban dialects of English, both in south Louisiana and in the long-neglected northern parishes; and the struggles more recent immigrants face to use their heritage languages and deal with language-based regulations in public venues. This volume will be of value to both scholars and general readers interested in a comprehensive view of Louisiana’s linguistic landscape.

Dictionary of Louisiana French

Author : Albert Valdman
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1604734043
Total Pages : 934 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (47 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Dictionary of Louisiana French by : Albert Valdman

Download or read book Dictionary of Louisiana French written by Albert Valdman and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2010 with total page 934 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dictionary of Louisiana French (DLF) provides the richest inventory of French vocabulary in Louisiana and reflects precisely the speech of the period from 1930 to the present. This dictionary describes the current usage of French-speaking peoples in the five broad regions of South Louisiana: the coastal marshes, the banks of the Mississippi River, the central area, the north, and the western prairie. Data were collected during interviews from at least five persons in each of twenty-four areas in these regions. In addition to the data collected from fieldwork, the dictionary contains material compiled from existing lexical inventories, from texts published after 1930, and from archival recordings. The new authoritative resource, the DLF not only contains the largest number of words and expressions but also provides the most complete information available for each entry. Entries include the word in the conventional French spelling, the pronunciation (including attested variants), the part of speech classification, the English equivalent, and the word's use in common phrases. The DLF features a wealth of illustrative examples derived from fieldwork and textual sources and identification of the parish where the entry was collected or the source from which it was compiled. An English-to-Louisiana French index enables readers to find out how particular notions would be expressed in la Louisiane .

French on Shifting Ground

Author : Nathalie Dajko
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496830962
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis French on Shifting Ground by : Nathalie Dajko

Download or read book French on Shifting Ground written by Nathalie Dajko and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In French on Shifting Ground: Cultural and Coastal Erosion in South Louisiana, Nathalie Dajko introduces readers to the lower Lafourche Basin, Louisiana, where the land, a language, and a way of life are at risk due to climate change, environmental disaster, and coastal erosion. Louisiana French is endangered all around the state, but in the lower Lafourche Basin the shift to English is accompanied by the equally rapid disappearance of the land on which its speakers live. French on Shifting Ground allows both scholars and the general public to get an overview of how rich and diverse the French language in Louisiana is, and serves as a key reminder that Louisiana serves as a prime repository for Native and heritage languages, ranking among the strongest preservation regions in the southern and eastern US. Nathalie Dajko outlines the development of French in the region, highlighting the features that make it unique in the world and including the first published comparison of the way it is spoken by the local American Indian and Cajun populations. She then weaves together evidence from multiple lines of linguistic research, years of extensive participant observation, and personal narratives from the residents themselves to illustrate the ways in which language—in this case French—is as fundamental to the creation of place as is the physical landscape. It is a story at once scholarly and personal: the loss of the land and the concomitant loss of the language have implications for the academic community as well as for the people whose cultures—and identities—are literally at stake.

Language Shift in the Coastal Marshes of Louisiana

Author : Kevin James Rottet
Publisher : Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Language Shift in the Coastal Marshes of Louisiana by : Kevin James Rottet

Download or read book Language Shift in the Coastal Marshes of Louisiana written by Kevin James Rottet and published by Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 2001 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the twentieth century numerous ethnic cultures and languages have been threatened by increasing globalization. French Louisiana, a vibrant and diverse region that has been culturally and linguistically distinct from its neighbors for over two centuries, has not been spared this trend. Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes, which comprise the coastal marsh area, have been described as strongholds of tradition, in which large numbers of people have continued to speak Cajun French. Yet a closer examination reveals that widespread bilingualism is drawing to a close, with very few young people able to speak French at all. This book examines the intergenerational decline of French in the coastal marsh area, including changes taking place in the structure of the language in what appears to be its terminal phase.

Speaking French in Louisiana, 1720-1955

Author : Sylvie Dubois
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807168467
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Speaking French in Louisiana, 1720-1955 by : Sylvie Dubois

Download or read book Speaking French in Louisiana, 1720-1955 written by Sylvie Dubois and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2018-01-08 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the course of its three-hundred-year history, the Catholic Church in Louisiana witnessed a prolonged shift from French to English, with some south Louisiana churches continuing to prepare marriage, baptism, and burial records in French as late as the mid-twentieth century. Speaking French in Louisiana, 1720–1955 navigates a complex and lengthy process, presenting a nuanced picture of language change within the Church and situating its practices within the state’s sociolinguistic evolution. Mining three centuries of evidence from the Archdiocese of New Orleans archives, the authors discover proof of an extraordinary one-hundred-year rise and fall of bilingualism in Louisiana. The multiethnic laity, clergy, and religious in the nineteenth century necessitated the use of multiple languages in church functions, and bilingualism remained an ordinary aspect of church life through the antebellum period. After the Civil War, however, the authors show a steady crossover from French to English in the Church, influenced in large part by an active Irish population. It wasn’t until decades later, around 1910, that the Church began to embrace English monolingualism and French faded from use. The authors’ extensive research and analysis draws on quantitative and qualitative data, geographical models, methods of ethnography, and cultural studies. They evaluated 4,000 letters, written mostly in French, from 1720 to 1859; sacramental registers from more than 250 churches; parish reports; diocesan council minutes; and unpublished material from French archives. Their findings illuminate how the Church’s hierarchical structure of authority, its social constraints, and the attitudes of its local priests and laity affected language maintenance and change, particularly during the major political and social developments of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Speaking French in Louisiana, 1720–1955 goes beyond the “triumph of English” or “tragedy of Cajun French” stereotypes to show how south Louisiana negotiated language use and how Christianization was a powerful linguistic and cultural assimilator.

Speaking In Tongues, Louisiana's Creole French & "Cajun" Language Tell Their Own Story

Download Speaking In Tongues, Louisiana's Creole French &

Author : John laFleur II
Publisher : BookRix
ISBN 13 : 3730911465
Total Pages : 75 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (39 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Speaking In Tongues, Louisiana's Creole French & "Cajun" Language Tell Their Own Story by : John laFleur II

Download or read book Speaking In Tongues, Louisiana's Creole French & "Cajun" Language Tell Their Own Story written by John laFleur II and published by BookRix. This book was released on 2014-07-10 with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adapted from a larger work,"Speaking In Tongues, Louisiana's Colonial French, Creole & Cajun Languages Tell Their Story" reveals Louisiana's remarkable Old World French & metis language traditions which continue to enchant America and scholars in all the world! But, along with the fame Cajunization has brought the State, historical distortion and misinformation fostered by mass-marketing and media conditioning myopia have suppressed and misrepresented Louisiana's historic French languages, cultural history and people as if uniquely Acadian in origin. But, Louisiana's diverse multi-ethnic French languages, cultural traditions and people existed long before the arrival of the Acadians, who themselves were to become its beneficiaries! Author-scholars John laFleur & Brian Costello, native-speakers respectively of Louisiana's Colonial Creole French & her sister tongue of Louisiana Afro-Creole with Dr. Ina Fandrich, provide a non-commercially scripted, first-time study of both the history and ethnological origins of Louisiana's diverse French-speaking peoples of the French Triangle and present the unvarnished results of their investigation, experience along with the evidence of modern and historical scholarship as seen through the franco and creolophonic traditions of Louisiana. A must read for all Louisiana cultural and linguistic afficionados!

French and Creole in Louisiana

Author : Albert Valdman
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 1475752784
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (757 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis French and Creole in Louisiana by : Albert Valdman

Download or read book French and Creole in Louisiana written by Albert Valdman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading specialists on Cajun French and Louisiana Creole examine dialectology and sociolinguistics in this volume, the first comprehensive treatment of the linguistic situation of francophone Louisiana and its relation to the current development of French in North America outside of Quebec. Topics discussed include: language shift and code mixing speaker attitudes the role of schools and media in the maintenance of these languages and such language planning initiatives as the CODOFIL program to revive the sue of French in Louisiana. £/LIST£

French, Cajun, Creole, Houma

Author : Carl A. Brasseaux
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807130362
Total Pages : 173 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis French, Cajun, Creole, Houma by : Carl A. Brasseaux

Download or read book French, Cajun, Creole, Houma written by Carl A. Brasseaux and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2005-03-01 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, ethnographers have recognized south Louisiana as home to perhaps the most complex rural society in North America. More than a dozen French-speaking immigrant groups have been identified there, Cajuns and white Creoles being the most famous. In this guide to the amazing social, cultural, and linguistic variation within Louisiana's French-speaking region, Carl A. Brasseaux presents an overview of the origins and evolution of all the Francophone communities. Brasseaux examines the impact of French immigration on Louisiana over the past three centuries. He shows how this once-undesirable outpost of the French empire became colonized by individuals ranging from criminals to entrepreneurs who went on to form a multifaceted society -- one that, unlike other American melting pots, rests upon a French cultural foundation. A prolific author and expert on the region, Brasseaux offers readers an entertaining history of how these diverse peoples created south Louisiana's famous vibrant culture, interacting with African Americans, Spaniards, and Protestant Anglos and encountering influences from southern plantation life and the Caribbean. He explores in detail three still cohesive components in the Francophone melting pot, each one famous for having retained a distinct identity: the Creole communities, both black and white; the Cajun people; and the state's largest concentration of French speakers -- the Houma tribe. A product of thirty years' research, French, Cajun, Creole, Houma provides a reliable and understandable guide to the ethnic roots of a region long popular as an international tourist attraction.

If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That

Author : Thomas Klingler
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 080715590X
Total Pages : 571 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That by : Thomas Klingler

Download or read book If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That written by Thomas Klingler and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2003-08-01 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That, by Thomas Klingler, is an in-depth study of the Creole language spoken in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, a community situated on the west bank of the Mississippi River above Baton Rouge that dates back to the early eighteenth century. The first comprehensive grammatical description of this particular variety of Louisiana Creole, Klingler's work is timely indeed, since most Creole speakers in the Pointe Coupee area are over sixty-five and the language is not being passed on to younger generations. It preserves and explains an important yet little understood part of America's cultural heritage that is rapidly disappearing. The heart of the book is a detailed morphosyntactic description based on some 150 hours of interviews with Pointe Coupee Creole speakers. Each grammatical feature is amply illustrated with contextual examples, and Klingler's descriptive framework will facilitate comparative research. The author also provides historical and sociolinguistic background information on the region, examining economic, demographic, and social conditions that contributed to the formation and spread of Creole in Louisiana. Pointe Coupee Creole is unusual, and in some cases unique, because of such factors as the parish's early exposure to English, its rapid development of a plantation economy, and its relative insulation from Cajun French. The volume concludes with transcriptions and English translations of Creole folk tales and of Klingler's conversations with Pointe Coupee's residents, a treasure trove of cultural and linguistic raw data. This kind of rarely printed material will be essential in preserving Creole in the future. Encylopedic in its approach and featuring a comprehensive bibliography, If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That is a rich resource for those interested in the development of Louisiana Creole and in Francophony.

Louisiana in Words

Author : Joshua Clark
Publisher : Pelican Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9781455607778
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (77 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Louisiana in Words by : Joshua Clark

Download or read book Louisiana in Words written by Joshua Clark and published by Pelican Publishing. This book was released on 2007-02-28 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Louisiana in Words is a Book of Hours for a place that's more like a religion than a state." -Josh Russell, author of Yellow Jack "Here we are, Louisianians all, somewhere in this book, but after that sense of self-recognition comes a desire to go to every place in this book, see it, know it like the writer does, experience our home state's every corner." -New Orleans Times-Picayune Taste, smell, hear, and see Louisiana in this collection of one-minute experiences taking place over a twenty-four-hour period across the Pelican State. One hundred twenty Louisiana-born or current resident contributors of all ages, backgrounds, and perspectives have offered their grateful, graceful, and grave visions of the state, a place as evocative as the essays within this gathering of voices. The ultimate insider's look, the book provides an unparalleled feel for hitherto hidden worlds inside the state. Together these minutes provide a mosaic of the landscape, heritage, speech, and traditions of Louisiana, a place so often romanticized, demonized, adored, pitied, and patronized. Contributors were asked to write one page or less about one minute, anytime, anywhere, in Louisiana. Writers selected include award-winning writers such as John Biguenet, Andrei Codrescu, Barry Gifford, Bev Marshall, David Madden, Lee Meitzen Grue, and Fredrick Barton as well as novice writers of all ages. Passages cast Louisiana's diverse peoples as backdrop against the action that transpires within the minute. Authors and their stories' settings reflect the entire state, from the northeast corner near Lake Providence to Lake Charles in the southeast; from Monroe along the Ouachita River and Shreveport in the northwest to Lafayette, the heart of Cajun country; from the south-centrally located Alexandria on the Red River to the southernmost port of New Orleans.

Cajun and Creole Folktales

Author :
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496806565
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Cajun and Creole Folktales by :

Download or read book Cajun and Creole Folktales written by and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 1994-09-01 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This teeming compendium of tales assembles and classifies the abundant lore and storytelling prevalent in the French culture of southern Louisiana. This is the largest, most diverse, and best annotated collection of French-language tales ever published in the United States. Side by side are dual-language retellings--the Cajun French and its English translation--along with insightful commentaries. This volume reveals the long and lively heritage of the Louisiana folktale among French Creoles and Cajuns and shows how tale-telling in Louisiana through the years has remained vigorous and constantly changing. Some of the best storytellers of the present day are highlighted in biographical sketches and are identified by some of their best tales. Their repertory includes animal stories, magic stories, jokes, tall tales, Pascal (improvised) stories, and legendary tales--all of them colorful examples of Louisiana narrative at its best. Though greatly transformed since the French arrived on southern soil, the French oral tradition is alive and flourishing today. It is even more complex and varied than has been shown in previous studies, for revealed here are African influences as well as others that have been filtered from America's multicultural mainstream.

Creoles of South Louisiana

Author : Elista Istre
Publisher : University of Louisiana
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (31 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Creoles of South Louisiana by : Elista Istre

Download or read book Creoles of South Louisiana written by Elista Istre and published by University of Louisiana. This book was released on 2018 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "... examines past and present Creole culture through its history, food ways, oral traditions, music, and continued efforts to preserve Creole traditions"--

Louisiana Creole Peoplehood

Author : Rain Prud'homme-Cranford
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295749504
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (957 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Louisiana Creole Peoplehood by : Rain Prud'homme-Cranford

Download or read book Louisiana Creole Peoplehood written by Rain Prud'homme-Cranford and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the course of more than three centuries, the diverse communities of Louisiana have engaged in creative living practices to forge a vibrant, multifaceted, and fully developed Creole culture. Against the backdrop of ongoing anti-Blackness and Indigenous erasure that has sought to undermine this rich culture, Louisiana Creoles have found transformative ways to uphold solidarity, kinship, and continuity, retaking Louisiana Creole agency as a post-contact Afro-Indigenous culture. Engaging themes as varied as foodways, queer identity, health, historical trauma, language revitalization, and diaspora, Louisiana Creole Peoplehood explores vital ways a specific Afro-Indigenous community asserts agency while promoting cultural sustainability, communal dialogue, and community reciprocity. With interviews, essays, and autobiographic contributions from community members and scholars, Louisiana Creole Peoplehood tracks the sacred interweaving of land and identity alongside the legacies and genealogies of Creole resistance to bring into focus the Afro-Indigenous people written out of settler governmental policy. In doing so, this collection intervenes against the erasure of Creole Indigeneity to foreground Black/Indian cultural sustainability, agency, and self-determination.

Parle Creole French

Author : Denise Labrie
Publisher : Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN 13 : 9781439269299
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (692 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Parle Creole French by : Denise Labrie

Download or read book Parle Creole French written by Denise Labrie and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Product DescriptionParle Creole French: Southern Louisiana Dialect is a presentation of the unique indigenous language spoken by Inez Prejean Calegon.

Dictionary of Louisiana Creole

Author : Albert Valdman
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253334510
Total Pages : 668 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (345 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Dictionary of Louisiana Creole by : Albert Valdman

Download or read book Dictionary of Louisiana Creole written by Albert Valdman and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important reference work has been compiled from existing written sources dating back to 1850 and from material collected in Bayou Teche, the German Coast, Pointe Coupee, and St. Tammany Parish. The Dictionary Features: an informative User's Guide, including details on orthography and the design of the dictionary articles; a grammatical sketch of the language; a guide to variant pronunciations; English and French meaning equivalents; creole contextual examples; identification of where examples were collected, with special notation for historical items (i.e., pre-1960); two indexes: a French-Creole index and an English-Creole index; and rich cultural information, with many examples of folklore, traditional medicine, religious beliefs, and agricultural practices.

If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That

Author : Thomas Klingler
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807127797
Total Pages : 670 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (277 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That by : Thomas Klingler

Download or read book If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That written by Thomas Klingler and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2003-08-01 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That, by Thomas Klingler, is an in-depth study of the Creole language spoken in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, a community situated on the west bank of the Mississippi River above Baton Rouge that dates back to the early eighteenth century. The first comprehensive grammatical description of this particular variety of Louisiana Creole, Klingler's work is timely indeed, since most Creole speakers in the Pointe Coupee area are over sixty-five and the language is not being passed on to younger generations. It preserves and explains an important yet little understood part of America's cultural heritage that is rapidly disappearing. The heart of the book is a detailed morphosyntactic description based on some 150 hours of interviews with Pointe Coupee Creole speakers. Each grammatical feature is amply illustrated with contextual examples, and Klingler's descriptive framework will facilitate comparative research. The author also provides historical and sociolinguistic background information on the region, examining economic, demographic, and social conditions that contributed to the formation and spread of Creole in Louisiana. Pointe Coupee Creole is unusual, and in some cases unique, because of such factors as the parish's early exposure to English, its rapid development of a plantation economy, and its relative insulation from Cajun French. The volume concludes with transcriptions and English translations of Creole folk tales and of Klingler's conversations with Pointe Coupee's residents, a treasure trove of cultural and linguistic raw data. This kind of rarely printed material will be essential in preserving Creole in the future. Encylopedic in its approach and featuring a comprehensive bibliography, If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That is a rich resource for those interested in the development of Louisiana Creole and in Francophony.

A Cajun Dictionary

Author : John C Rigdon
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (12 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis A Cajun Dictionary by : John C Rigdon

Download or read book A Cajun Dictionary written by John C Rigdon and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We've all been introduced to Cajun speech and strain to understand it, catching just a word here and there. Louisiana French or Creole is spoken by several hundred thousand people in southern Louisiana, but until recently the language has not gotten its due as a serious language, distinct from both French and English. Over the centuries, the language has incorporated some words of African, Spanish, Native American, Haitian and English origin, sometimes giving it linguistic features found only in Louisiana. Louisiana French is spoken across ethnic and racial lines by people who identify as Cajun or Louisiana Creole as well as Chitimacha, Houma, Biloxi, Tunica, Choctaw, Acadian, and French among others. For these reasons, as well as the relatively small influence Acadian French has had on the region, the label Louisiana French or Louisiana Regional French (French: français régional louisianais) is generally regarded as more accurate and inclusive than "Cajun French" and is preferred term by linguists and anthropologists. However, "Cajun French" is commonly used by speakers of the language and other inhabitants of Louisiana. Louisiana French should further not be confused with Louisiana Creole, a distinct French-based creole language indigenous to Louisiana and spoken across racial lines. In Louisiana, language labels are often conflated with ethnic labels. For example, a speaker who identifies as Cajun may call their language "Cajun French", though linguists would identify it as Louisiana Creole. Likewise, many Louisiana Creole people of all ethnicities (including Cajuns, who are themselves technically Creoles of Acadian descent, although most do not identify as such) do not speak Louisiana Creole, instead speaking Louisiana French. As in many other languages and people groups, we see this as a distinction without a difference. People who speak Louisiana French and those who speak Louisiana Creole have worked side-by-side, lived among one another, and have enjoyed local festivities together throughout the history of the state. As a result, in regions where both Louisiana French and Louisiana Creole are or used to be spoken, the inhabitants of the region often code-switch, beginning the sentence in one language and completing it in another. This dictionary primarily focuses on terms identified as Louisiana French. It contains over 7,000 terms with their English translation. We also publish a version paired with French. See our website for availability. This dictionary is extracted from our Words R Us system, a derivative of WordNet. English Wordnet, originally created by Princeton University is a lexical database for the English language. It groups words in English into sets of synonyms called synsets, provides brief definitions and usage examples, and records a series of relationships between these sets of synonyms. WordNet can be viewed as both a combination of dictionary and thesaurus.