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.

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 .

Presents 3,800 terms in English and Cajun French and includes a historical overview of Cajun French, frequently asked questions about the language, a pronunciation guide, basic grammar, and essential phrases.

A short compilation of Cajun pronunciations of English words. Each entry includes an example of word usage. Intended to be humorous.

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.

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.

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£