French Influence On Louisiana Dialect

The Impact of the French on Louisiana Dialects In Louisiana culture, the Creole and Cajun dialects dominate the language. In Connie Eble’s article “The Louisiana Purchase and American English”, she states that the event that has had the biggest influence on the dialects today is the Louisiana Purchase. In December of 1803, The Louisiana Purchase took place and America grew. Up to that point, areas in Northern America belonged to whomever was controlling the land at that time. In 1762, the French were losing and therefore had to give up the Louisiana territory to Spain. In the 1763 Treaty of Paris, the Louisiana Territory was split around Mississippi, reducing its size. By a secret treaty in 1800, Louisiana was given back to France (Eble 347-48). From this wide range of events, Louisiana has seen lots of different languages and cultures come through the area. In English is the …show more content…
Because of this, other languages were pushed out of the area, including French. In William Evan’s article “French-English Literary Dialect in The Grandissimes”, he discusses how the 1880 book by George Washington Cable portrays the people of the time after the Louisiana Purchase. To captivate how willing the people are to switch languages, a character says that there are “men in this city [New Orleans] would rather eat a dog than speak English” (qtd. in Evans 211). This shows how rough the transition is on the Louisiana people; they are extremely unwilling to change. Evans also discusses how Cable observes the phonology of the Creole dialect. One of the changes it makes from Standard American English is the dropping of final consonants, such as the change from “innocent” to “innocen’” (Evans 212). The French language has majorly impacted the Creole dialect, especially in terms of vowel usage and