Josh McNeill

Tag: louisiana french (Page 3 of 3)

Ayoù sont les téléphones?

September 17, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Bec Doux et Ses Amis, from Cajun Héritage

It appears that a Paris-based outsourcing company will be creating some jobs in Shreveport, Louisiana:

French outsourcing giant Teleperformance has announced that it will create 740 jobs in Shreveport, Louisiana, in addition to its 1,260 existing employees there.

I found this story through NOLA Française and, when I read it, I immediately thought of a French-language call center, but I imagine a call center, particularly one that would be hiring Louisiana French speakers, is not all that likely. Just because the company is French doesn’t mean they need Francophone employees.

But it got me thinking, “Why not?” Part of what holds a language back can certainly be chalked up to a lack of meaningful uses and that would include not needing it to work or, in this case, really needing a different language altogether to get any work. Jobs in the tourism industry can be obvious exceptions but relying on one industry for all the French-based employment in the state probably doesn’t go too far. The possibility of grabbing outsourcing jobs that really do require Francophones would be an interesting addition.

Of course, there’s a definite dialect issue. It’s probably akin to using Filipinos for English-language call center outsourcing, or possibly worse. English in the Philippines is almost definitely going to be heavily influenced by American English as we’ve been fiddling around with their country in a big way up to some 50 years ago while French in Louisiana may not have received a significant amount of influence from International French in a very long time–according to Carl Brasseaux in French, Cajun, Creole, Houma, immigration declined a great deal after the Civil War. Instead of just being pronounced differently or phrased a little different, entirely different verbs and pronouns are also used.

Still, it seems worth it for someone to look into this possibility.

Finding the bayou.

August 12, 2013 / / 0 Comments

I’m not exactly sure what the hell happened here, but The Lost Bayou Ramblers did not sound anything like this a couple years ago. Their last album was essentially traditional song and songs that sound like traditional songs. But this is a great example of modernizing the sound of Cajun music without losing the roots of the genre and I think it has a lot to do with Louis Michot’s vocals. He often wails in a way reminiscent of Iry Lejeune:

And even further back to Amédé Ardoin:

Of course, the language helps maintain the connection as well but I’m not really able to discern Louisiana French by ear yet. He clearly has some notable features like the tapped /ɾ/, though. Either way, I kinda just wanted to share this album because it’s pretty amazing.

Les fous.

August 11, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Around 48 seconds in, Murray Conque, imitating one of the characters he’s describing, delivers a punchline in French. The crowd, or at least part of it, gives a good laugh before he gets to any sort of English punchline or explanation. I missed what he said myself, other than calling the umpire an idiot at the end.

I was initially struck by this because it seemed as though the crowd knew what he was saying. I thought maybe this was a local Louisiana crowd that still had enough speakers that the joke worked or maybe the audience had some French speakers in general in it. Then I realized that people were probably just laughing at the obvious communication barrier between the two characters he was portraying. In that sense, the line almost seems almost like a mockery, with people laughing at the character, not with him.

This is possibly a direct contrast to what I described in a previous post with the bilingual joke in The Simpsons. That joke involved Spanish, which is certainly more widespread in the US than French and so likely to be understood. The Simpsons wasn’t mocking Hispanic people, they were simply banking on the idea that enough people would literally know what’s being said that it would be funny. Conque’s joke doesn’t seem to rely on that. In fact, his whole routine in that clip seems sort of like a mockery. It’s not that suspenders and small wooden houses don’t exist in Louisiana, it’s that those aren’t the only things that exist. They’re stereotypical, which I suppose is (or was) at least somewhat necessary for connecting to a wider audience, which is a bit of a shame.

When I saw the title, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I figured there was no way someone was doing comedy in Louisiana French, although comedy seems like a great arena for enriching and spreading the language. I also wasn’t expecting the comedian to be the butt of the jokes. It feels a little too self-deprecating and maybe Conque came to the same conclusion later on: in more recent clips he’s standing on typical stages wearing plain red suits.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that the intention was to convert any negative bias attached to these stereotypes as opposed to proving that Cajuns are respectable because they assimilate easily. I guess this is where the fine line is drawn between maintaining one’s identity and surviving within the larger culture.

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