----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, April 24, 2000 1:42
AM
Subject: [phoNet] Language in
General
Karen, would you mind joining the game and
giving us a few Cajun curiosities? Not necessarily phonetic ones, though if
you could elaborate on the differences between Cajun pronunciation and
standard French, I, for one, would be delighted. I've never met a native
speaker of Cajun before, and all I know about it comes from books. What
you say about local lexical differences also sounds fascinating.
Piotr
I have learned a great deal about language
from reading your messages. I have a better understanding as to why it
is so difficult for people, like my child and husband, who have language
processing disorders. I am from southwest Louisiana, and I am a
Cajun. I am bilingual also. I learned French and English
together. Although the French we speak is an archaic dialect of 17th
century French. We have also incorporated Spanish and Indian words into
our language. What makes the Cajun language a challenge is the fact that
different areas may use a different word for the same thing. I may use
one word for towel, but 15 miles south of where I live, in Arnauldville, for
example, another word might be used for towel. Therefore, the French
spoken in the prairie regions is a completely different language than the
French spoken in the river land regions that are farther south and east
of here. I thing that one of the
reasons people have a hard time with English, or any language for that matter,
is due to the cultural diversity of a
country. Each country adds or corrupts words which become part of the
lexicon. A text book version of a language is vastly different from the
language that is spoken by the population of a country. Indeed, when I
taught English at the local high school, I had a hard time understanding the
African American students. They spoke a language that is now called
Ebonics. They used the infinitive form of the verb to be
rather than the proper present progressive
form: I be going to the store instead of I am going to the
store. The English many of them spoke is a
completely different language than standard American English. Actually,
I guess it would be considered a substandard language. I don't know if this will mean anything, but I just wanted to
share my thoughts with the group.
Karen
Rougeau