Notes on Louisiana-French

Abstract

I have chosen to call the type of French which is spoken by the greater portion of the negro population of French Louisiana simply NegroFrench. This dialect belongs of course to that category of languages known usually in both popular and scientific discussions as Creole or creolized languages. Although actually a misnomer (since the adjective Creole applies properly to persons of pure white race), long usage has fixed the term as a denominator under which we include a great many languages, scattered all over the globe, which actually differ widely among themselves as to linguistic pedigree, but which have arisen under similar conditions. The Dutch scholar, Hesseling, has defined Creole languages as 'those languages which have arisen out of European languages in the mouths of Africans, Asians, Australians or Americans (i.e. aboriginal Americans) in overseas provinces, and then later are also frequently spoken by Europeans or their descendants'. The first serious study of Creole dialects was that of Addison van Name, 'Contributions to Creole Grammar', published in the first volume of The Transactions of the American Philological Association (Hartford 1871). Van Name there made several observations on the comparative grammar of different forms of Negro-French from the Antilles and Louisiana, of the Negro-Spanish of Curagao, the NegroDutch of the Virgin Islands, and the Negro-English of Surinam. From then on studies of importance appear. In 1881 came the work of the Portuguese scholar Coelho, Dialectos romanicos ou neo-latinos na Africa, Asia e America2, and in 1882 Hugo Schuchardt embarked upon his famous Kreolische Studien3 in which he examined various languages