I was pleasantly surprised today that my blog was linked to by Michael Hébert in Evangeline Parish, writer of the blog CreoleCajun and that I got a subsequent bump in visitors from Louisiana, visitors that took a considerable and gratifying amount of time to read through my blog. Thanks for stopping by, y'all, and as Michael said, if you can help me out with Cajun French, I'd appreciate it.
Just to let folks know, both sides of my family were from Houma and those parts, but because of the stigma attached to speaking Cajun French in 1940s, my parents weren't taught by their parents. In fact, my maternal grandfather went so far as to change the spelling of his name from Babineaux to Babino in an effort to make his name seem less Cajun. My aunt had her name changed back to the original spelling some time ago in an effort to reclaim her heritage, a gesture I fully support.
It is extremely unfortunate that I didn't learn Cajun French from my grandparents, especially since I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time around them as a kid. They of course used it as a language to secretly communicate in around the grandchildren, although my grandfather did try and teach me some choice obscenities to say to my grandmother when I was about 5. I quickly forgot all those phrases since my grandmother would get so shocked.
Anyway, once I get done wrasslin' these dissertation, I plan on studying Cajun French when I can. I actually minored in French in college, but most of it didn't stick since I focused on reading. Now that I've learned a fair bit of spoken Tibetan by having a tutor for 2 hours a day while I was in Nepal, I realize that the only way to learn to speak a language is a lot of practice so if anyone hears of a teaching job for someone to teach Buddhism and Hinduism in Louisiana, I'd gladly take the opportunity to take speaking lessons in Cajun French while teaching.
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2 comments:
Hey man, merci beaucoup. You have a very familar story concerning the French language. For whatever reason, my parents did not talk to me in French. A lot of us in French Louisiana experienced the same.
Anyway, I looked around and saw this article you might enjoy.
Take it easy, Mike.
http://www.theind.com/livingind2.asp?CID=-1191893944
A New Path
A Buddhist lama’s journey brings her to Lafayette.
By Mary Tutwiler | 11/29/2006
I know, it's a sad story that we didn't get taught French. I've seen the statistics, and the drop in French speakers after WWII is pretty bad.
Thanks for the article, Mike. It's funny, but I actually saw that article yesterday on a Buddhist website, and I joined the Yahoo group to find out a little bit more about them in Lafayette. I'm glad they have some diversity there.
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