Louisiana and Quebec are both settler-colonial territories at the mouths of major navigable rivers, and both have a history of Francophony. But why was French broadly displaced by English in Louisiana, while this has not happened in Quebec? What are the different historical factors that led to these different outcomes? In particular, what were the roles of the rivers, if any? What is the present language situation in these regions, and what would you predict the future language situations of these regions to look like?
South Louisiana native here with a few Cajun and Creole friends:
French language and culture eradication was official government policy into the 1980s. Teachers were instructed to punish students who spoke French in class (the canonical punishment was kneeling on uncooked rice). Only with the rise of cultural tourism did this policy end and did revitalization attempts begin. They’ve had limited success, have been racist in their implementation, and have largely just resulted in more Metro French education, rather than either main branch of Louisiana French. As a result, I think rates of French speaking are continuing to decline, and the unique dialects themselves are definitely declining.
For a bit of background here, Louisiana is generally considered by most residents to have two “distinct” groups of historical French-speakers: the Cajuns and the Creoles. Conventional wisdom has been that the Cajuns were descended from the Acadians expelled from the Canadian Maritimes, whereas the Creoles are descended from French colonists and imported African French colonial slave labor, along with some admixture from Native Americans. Cajun and Creole cultures are considered distinct, with Cajuns generally living in the southwest of the state, centered around Lafayette, and Creloes living in the southeast. More bluntly put, to most Louisianians, if your grandparents spoke French and you are black, you’re Creole, and if you are white, you’re Cajun. There’s been a lot of scholarship around this lately to try to unify these identities, arguing that this bifurcation is pretty ahistorical, but that’s still not widely accepted. (The more fun way to say whether someone is Creole or Cajun is if they put tomato in their gumbo.)
If I had to guess, I’d say the fact that the French-speaking bloc was generally always poor, but then also split along racial lines greatly diminished any capacity it would have had to advocate for itself throughout the 20th century. Racial politics more likely trumped ethnolinguistic unity.
Anyway, the end result is that vanishingly few young people are native Louisiana French speakers. Anecdotally, I had a friend from Cut-Off (real place name) who could understand a little when spoken to him, his dad had full comprehension, and his grandparents were first-language French speakers.
Dying to know which group uses tomato in their gumbo.
Creoles put tomato in their dishes, Cajuns generally do not. Creoles also tend to use more seafood while Cajuns will use more chicken + pork, on account of the former generally living in the coastal areas while the latter live more inland.
As the other poster said, Creole cooking generally contains tomatoes. In most places outside of New Orleans when you get “gumbo”, it’s generally Cajun-style. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen Creole gumbo at a restaurant outside of the New Orleans area.
Which is good, because it’s worse.
People can think whatever they want but all im saying is creole seasoning is just cajun seasoning with oregano, thyme and basil
Idk if this means you disagree or if you don’t but you’re sad about it
Confession i use creole seasonings in all my cajun dishes. Why would i want less flavor
It’d Ben Sisko’s dad from stsr trek ds9, he owns a restaurant in New Orleans and would give you such a chewing out for not caring about the difference