|
a CREOLE article
Cultures
of Acadiana |
Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, May 25, 1999
There are debates about Creole language, too
It is kin to other Louisiana French languages. The question is: How close?
by Jim Bradshaw
This Creole language is commonly accepted as the French language spoken mostly by black people in south Louisiana. But, as with the definition of the word Creole, there are also questions about its origin and scope.
According to the "Dictionary of Louisiana Creole," published in 1998. "Louisiana Creole is one of three French-related varieties spoken in what is referred to as Acadiana. ...Unlike the other two varieties-Cajun French and Colonial French-(Louisiana Creole) is not a variety of French but a separate language. It is spoken by an estimated 20,000-30,000 persons, mostly African-Louisianians but also some whites."
In this 1992 essay, "From La Tortue to La Louisiane: An Unfathomed Legacy," historian Thomas Fiehrer writes, that "through the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, many European groups sought slaves and mineral wealth (in the basins of the Congo and Senegal river in Africa) to trade in Europe and the Americans. In time ... a(n) ... elementary pidgin language based on fragments of Portuguese, French, and the African languages emerged in trading posts and aboard ship. Known as Crioullo or Creole, it diversified into a complete language as it diffused from the Indian Ocean to Cape Verdes to Senegal, and from the Guianas to Martinique, Saint-Domingue and New Orleans- a sort of lingua franca of the South Atlantic, binding the French maritime world together across great expanses of land and sea. The carriers of the Creole language, from the Indian Ocean to the recesses of Louisiana, were correspondingly new people- the product of trade contacts among three continents, and the vanguard of the French empire in the tropics."
Fiehrer continues, "... the antiquity and eventual complexity and maturing of the Creole language testify to the existence of a language community dispersed over an immense space, linked by sailing ships, and sharing a common life and reference to core cultural assets derived from various regions of France, and Africa-east and west."
But, according to Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, who has extensively researched the evolution of the Creole language and culture in Louisiana, "Linguistic as well as historical evidence has established that the Louisiana creole language was created by early slaves (in Louisiana) and was not imported from the French islands. The language became a vital part of the identity, not only of Afro-creoles, but of many whites of all classes. ...Although slaves from various African nations created new language communities in Louisiana based on their native tongues, the African slaves gradually learned Louisiana creole, and their children were socialized into the Afro-creole language and culture."
Albert Valdman, Thomas Klingler, Margaret M. Marshall, and Kevin J. Rottet, compilers of the "Dictionary of Louisiana Creole," also say that the language evolved in Louisiana. They say that the Creole spoken in Louisiana may have borrowed form Caribbean Creole and this other language that Fiehrer describes, but that Louisiana Creole was "no doubt created by African slaves as part of ... their acculturation into (Louisiana) French colonial society." According to conventional wisdom, the dictionary authors say, as these slaves "tried to communicate with French speakers they would be expected to retain French words," but incorporate the grammar and rhythms of their native African languages.
The dictionary researchers think the conventional wisdom is wrong, and that there "is no overwhelming evidence of grammatical features transferred directly from African languages." Instead, they argue, the Creole French spoken in Louisiana evolved from other forms of Louisiana French-because Africans in Louisiana mixed closely with many different French speakers.
"Unlike Martinique, Guadeloupe, and especially Saint-Domingue ... colonial Louisiana ... was evenly divided between whites and blacks. By contrast, at that time, colonial Saint-Domingue counted about 600,000 African slaves, 60,000 freed slaves or persons of mixed race, and 40,000 whites." Because of the equal numbers in the population and relatively small size of the Louisiana plantations, the slaves heard a variety of French dialects and Louisiana Creole developed from them.
The dictionary researchers say, "The linguistic input to slaves was highly variable: It was influenced by regional dialects very distant from the speech of the court in Versailles and the elite; it was vernacular; and it was spoken as a foreign language by many people, for instance, the German immigrants on the German Coast (the area around Des Allemands on the Mississippi River). Although colonial French ... was probably more uniform than that of the French provinces, the arrival of the Acadian refugees, who spoke highly deviant ... dialects rendered (sources for Louisiana Creole even) more diverse."
According to the dictionary's authors, all of this, and the Creole spoken elsewhere, particularly the Caribbean where many Louisiana slaves were first sent, influenced the Louisiana Creole language that we hear today.
However, Hall argues that there is a larger African component to Louisiana Creole than the dictionary researchers acknowledge.
"The Louisiana creole language was created by the African slaves brought to Louisiana and by their creole children," she says. "It belongs to a special language group ... which are markedly similar in grammatical structure, in pronunciation, and in literal translations of African idioms, though the vocabulary is largely that of the language of the respective European colonizers.
"The vocabulary of Louisiana Creole is overwhelmingly French in origin," she argues, "but its grammatical structure is largely African. There has been no systematic study of African words that survived in Louisiana Creole, but some immediately come to mind. In the proverb Bouki fait Gombo, Lapin mange li (The stupid hyena makes the gumbo, the rabbit eats it), bouki is a Wolof (African) word meaning a loudmouthed, stupid hyena. Bouki does not meant he-goat, though that is the way it has been translated from Louisiana creole folklore. Gombo ... means okra in Bambara and many other African languages.
Hall does agree, however, that "It has been established, through linguistic as well as historical evidence, that Louisiana Creole was created in Louisiana and was not derived from Haitian or other West Indian varieties of French-based Creoles."
However it was formed, new slaves coming from African apparently learned Louisiana Creole rather than regular French or Spanish (depending upon their time of arrival), and it was a language known and used at least occasionally by many white people. In a trial in 1972, the commandant of the Pointe Coupee post said that slaves testimony had been given in "the Creole language," which he described as "a mixture of that of the blacks, and of French which is pronounced with great diversity."
He said the slaves "do not understand either the real French language or English but they all understand and can explain themselves perfectly well in Creole, which is a mixture ... of the language of their nations and of French which is badly pronounced and even more badly conjugated, which language is not known by all the French and English settlers of the province, but I, the witnesses, and the notary who assisted a the interrogation know it very well."