Someone asked on Facebook page dedicated to Cajun French what is the difference between Cajun French and The French spoken in France. This was my answer based on my experiences growing up in a Cajun family in Lafayette Louisiana.

I can only give you a personal perspective. My mother and father, as well as all of my many aunts and uncles, grew up speaking Cajun French as their first language. However, at the time there was great social pressure to speak in English. For instance, when my parents were in elementary school the teachers were forbidden to teach in French, even though they were themselves native French speakers. My mother was the only student in her class that also spoke English, so she had to translate what the teacher was saying for her classmates until they learned English. So all my relatives spoke perfect English as well French, but with a Cajun accent, which they did their best to tone down.

Being Cajun wasn’t cool back then, and those who spoke English with a heavy Cajun accent were considered to be the Cajun equivalent of red necks. Growing up I tried with some success to mimic the flat mid-western accents of broadcasters like Walter Cronkite, etc. However, some Cajun can be detected in my speech patterns to this day by the discriminating listeners along with a bit of a southern drawl I have also developed during my long stay here in Alabama.

Members of my extended family spoke to their children (I was the first grandchild of many) only in English. However, they often spoke in French among themselves, and especially when they didn’t want me to know what they were saying. As will any young child, I quickly picked up on the language and I soon understood everything they were saying in French though I had no reason to speak in the language out loud.

Kids pick up languages so easily. I remember when I was about five, two of my aunts were talking about me in French, thinking I couldn’t understand what they were saying. One of my aunt said to the other, “Il est pourre” – “He is spoiled rotten”. Imagine their surprise when I replied, “I am not!”.

My grandfather could speak English, but he much preferred conversing in French. By the time I was six (in the early 1950’s) my conversation with him must have sounded a bit odd to others. He spoke to me only in French, and I replied only in English, but we understood each other perfectly.

Later in high school I took two years of classical or Parisian French and that is when I started to notice the most prominent differences between Cajun French and the French I was learning at school. I can’t speak the sounds of verbs and such because I strongly suspect that my teacher, Brother Bernard, originally learned his French in a Cajun home. As such he probably used the Cajun version of the sounds.

I can also speak to other differences. Those speaking in French Cajun tend to refer to almost everyone using the French personal pronoun “Tu” (you) rather than using the French impersonal pronoun, “Vous”. Someone from France would only use a personal pronoun, “Tu” to address someone close, a relative or a friend. For anyone else they would use the impersonal pronoun. I guess a Frenchman would probably think a Cajun was being overly familiar.

Another thing I noticed was that Cajuns sometimes use nouns to refer to certain items while the French  use totally different ones.  For instance Cajuns refer to a car as a “charre” (I hope I spelled that right) while those in France use the word “automobile”. It soon became obvious that this word usage difference was inevitable. Since the two dialects are separated by 400 years, when the automobile was invented the Cajuns in Louisiana had no idea what their long lost cousins in France called the new contraption so they called it a “charre” because to them the early automobiles looked like a type of small horse drawn carriage. On the other hand, the people back in France simply used the original English word “automobile”, giving the word a French pronunciation.

There are a number of similar word differences between Cajun French and Parisian French. As a fairly young man I had a job in Houma, Louisiana, a mostly Cajun community south of New Orleans. In the early morning a local radio station broadcasted the news in French, probably for the local farmers. I used to listen to the program in order to polish up on my French which by then had grown very rusty. The announcer’s fluent Cajun French was always peppered now and then with English words.

It quickly became obvious that most of these words had evolved into use well after the Acadians left France and ended up in Louisiana. While those in France developed new French equivalent words, the Cajuns simply adopted the original English words and inserted them into their Cajun language. So a Cajun might use the word “airplane” with a French pronunciation, while a Frenchman would instead use the French word “avion”.

As others have contributed, I’m sure that there are some basic differences in how certain letter combinations are pronounced in the two distinct dialects of French, but then you have to add the differences on which I have elaborated. Taken all together I wouldn’t be surprised if a Frenchman and a Cajun would have trouble communicating with another in French. 

However, I’m afraid that my Cajun French language heritage may eventually be lost. After years of oppression of the local dialect, the vast majority of young Cajuns are growing up in environments where Cajun French is not spoken at home. If they learn French in school, it will very likely be the classical Parisian variety.

CODOFIL, the “Council for the Development of French in Louisiana”, was formed in 1968, dedicated to saving the the French language in Louisiana. Today they sponsor a number of total immersion schools where everything is taught in French. Unfortunately, they are often forced to depend on teachers from French speaking countries who speak metropolitan or Parisian French. I can understand why they would have trouble teaching their Cajun French speaking students in their own native dialect. Louisiana may continue to embrace the French language, but it probably won’t be the Cajun French I grew up with.

However, I am very happy with one of the changes I have observed in Cajun culture on recent trips to the land were I was born – those of Cajun heritage are now proud to be Cajun.  As I stated earlier, that wasn’t the case when I was growing up many years ago in Lafayette.  To some extent it may be due to the spread of the popularity of Cajun cooking and the acceptance by much of the rest of the country of Cajun as a unique and interesting culture.  However, I think it mostly stems from the realization by Cajuns that they have ample cause to be proud of their heritage.  

I for one am now a proud Cajun living in Alabama who has fully embraced his Cajun heritage. My car’s Alabama license plate bears the word KAJUN. (The plate CAJUN has long be in use somewhere in South Alabama.)  Among some of my friends I am known by my nickname “Cajun” and I often use “CajunBlazer” as an ID on internet sites.  (It honors both my heritage and my allegiance to UAB athletics, the university where I received my masters.)  I also have a blog you can visit called Cajun Comments – https://www.cajunscomments.com  So along with my fellow Cajuns back in Louisiana, nous sommes venus un long bébé – we have come a long baby.

Cajun (Rick Guilbeau)