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Preserving Louisiana French | ||
Tags: United States | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 17 of 23 07 June 2012 at 9:58am | IP Logged | ||
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I partially disagree with lecavaleur. It has been already done in some places. The
Welsh had English, they still have it with all it can offer, but about 600 000 among them found a place in their lives for Welsh. I'm not that naive to think all of them have moved most of their lives from English to Welsh, surely not, they are bilingual. But the language lives. If about half a milion people is enough to keep a language alive and give it a chance to grow, it would mean just every ninth inhabitant of Luisiana. And the languages in Central Europe, which I used as the other example (but there are surely more exemples in the world), the people had German, a larger language which served in anything. But they chose their own because they felt it right and because they found it an important part of their cultural identity. This might work well for people in Luisiana, which is now getting more and more new inhabitants from hispanophone Central and South America. Perhaps there would be in general less bad feelings towards these immigrates if the region had a strong ties to their own culture, represented by the French language. The English is their native language, representing their culture but it is as well the language of globalisation and the language of shared pieces of culture with a lot foreign influences, so it may not feel as the glue sticking together this particular region. The obvious fault of the immersion schools is, that there are no native French students, from what you say. If there was just one third, perhaps even a bit less would suffice, the others would become bilingual. I can see a good exemple at my friend who went to such school in Prague. Her spoken French is something I'll probably never be able to compare myself to. But what lecavaleur is right about is that saving Luisiana French would need a lot of work. It would need people to want it. It would need people to create demand for it. It doesn't necessarily mean need for unilinguals. Just want regional news and tv in your language. Want the French translations of books, support your own authors to write in French, if they are able to do it. Go to concerts of bands singing in French. Teach it to your own children. Make it look cool that you speak with a friend in French in public even though you are not old. It doesn't mean "reject the anglophone culture with all the assets and become unilingual. It just means "open enough hearts and wallets and it will come". The question is not "would it be possible?", it is "do people want it?". If they don't (as lecavaleur seems to suggest), it will just die out and no harm is done. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rivere123 Senior Member United States Joined 4828 days ago 129 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 18 of 23 08 June 2012 at 12:38am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with you guys quite a bit.
I know for sure, though, that this language CAN be saved. We just need the culture to be available, as Cavesa has suggested. We have Lenty of music, as I've observed, and no shortage of resources. We have a nice little organization called CODIFIL to push the growth of French, but it is probably somewhat underfunded. I know the language would get a major boon if we enabled natives and learners by having a local French channel. We are proud of our culture, and if we give people the ability, the language is fully capable of making a rebound. I agree, it would be tough, but not impossible. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lecavaleur Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4775 days ago 146 posts - 295 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish | Message 19 of 23 08 June 2012 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welsh, even at its most dire moment, was still spoken by about a quarter of the Welsh
population. It was far healthier than is French in Louisiana. I'm not saying that Louisiana French can't maintain some level of survival, but it will never again be the normal language of work, business, education, government, spontaneous conversation in mixed company, etc. It will, at best, be a community heritage language. We have problems even in Quebec keeping French in Montreal as the normal language of business, etc... and it's the second largest mother tongue French city on Earth. That's how strong English is. If we have trouble doing it in a place where the majority of the population is French-speaking, what kind of chances do you think these 17,000 native speakers are going to have in Louisiana? A realistic goal is to ensure the language is passed on the the next few generations at least. They should arrange bursaries so that Francophone students can study abroad in places like France or Québec. Get them in touch with the rest of the French-Speaking world. That is their best chance. Then the youth will not associate the language with a backwater existence and will be able to concretely see the importance and the immense opportunity being able to speak French is. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JeremyS Newbie United States Joined 4742 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Irish | Message 20 of 23 20 January 2013 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Is anyone here actively learning Cajun/Louisiana French? I am from the state and would love to learn more
about this unique dialect. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4620 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 21 of 23 20 January 2013 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Irish Free State was founded in 1922, long before English became the global langua franca it is today.
Although Irish was already in steady decline and confined mainly to the western parts of the Emerald Isle, there was still a healthy amount of native speakers and no doubt plenty near-monoglots among them. The newly-written constitution proclaimed Irish as the "first and official" language of Eire. Bilingual signs were erected everywhere, the language became a compulsory subject for all schoolchildren, many civil service jobs required a working knowledge of the language, stamps and coinage carried Irish inscriptions, prominent state bodies were given Irish names. Yet the number of native speakers continued to fall, a trend still in evidence today. Spoken Irish today can only be heard in very remote communities and the bulk of the population have not embraced the language, although they will have varying degrees of passive comprehension. Tellingly, there is also significant resentment towards the language, stemming from negative school experiences. There seems to be a fine line between reviving a language and giving people the impression that it is being forced down their throat. Yes, Welsh has defied all the odds to not only survive, but positively thrive. I remember waiting for a bus in Carnaerfon and hearing a group of kids all nattering away in Welsh. The language has a bright future. Irish (and Scots Gaelic) less so. Hebrew seems to have been resurrected from near extinction so it is obviously possible to pull a language up by its bootstraps, but only if the will of the population is there. There was strong determination in Israel, as the majority language among the inhabitants was probably German. One final point, people talk about all these "artificial" methods of propping up a language. But wasn't having a foreign tongue foisted upon a society in he first place also artificial? Edited by beano on 20 January 2013 at 1:25pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4602 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English* | Message 22 of 23 20 January 2013 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was recently in Wales and had the pleasure of visiting both primary and secondary
schools where Welsh was the language of instruction. It was an incredible experience to see the bright future of the language. When talking to a group of second level students they made the interesting, and (I believe) relevant point that because Wales is a part of the UK, they need to work harder to maintain a unique culture, and that is why so many people speak Welsh. I've heard in the past people saying that when Ireland attained its independence the nation no longer felt compelled to strive for a uniquely Irish identity and so the Gaelic League fell out of the public's eye. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4770 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 23 of 23 20 January 2013 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | ||
From what I hear, it's precisely the fact that the Zionist settlers had no other common language to fall back on that contributed to the success of Hebrew. The majority (or at least a plurality) of settlers had Yiddish as their native language, but plenty of them were native speakers of standard German, Polish, Russian and other languages, Indo-European or otherwise. In contrast, the Irish were nearly all proficient speakers of English, and thus didn't need Irish to make themselves understood by most of their fellow countrymen. Edited by vonPeterhof on 20 January 2013 at 5:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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