Cajun 101
resources for learning louisiana french at home |
These Cajun French lessons are a work in progress. I'm teaching my son French at home; he's eight. I still think of myself as a student of French, but trying to teach French is a really good way to learn it. I figured since I'm doing all this work to get lessons ready for my son, then I'd share the materials with everyone, in case it's useful.
The lessons are organized into units of increasing difficulty. The new lessons are highlighted below.
Le Nouveau Leçon
Unité 2, Leçon 2 - Mets les assiettes sur la table.
jeudi, 5 mai 2011Mets les assiettes sur la table,
s'il vous plaît.
met lay-z-ass-ee-ets sir la tab, see-voo-play
Put the dishes on the table, please.
We going to start learning some useful structures so that we can start saying things that we want with the vocabulary we will learn in this section. Imagine it's evening and it's time for supper, le souper (recall that le dîner, dinner, is the noon-time meal in Cajun French). My son might say, Papa, j'ai faim, Papa, I'm hungry. If I'm already making dinner I might ask my son to put the dishes on the table using the sentence above.
Note that s'il vous plaît is invariant and is used in most situations. The informal s'il te plaît is rarely used.
Here are some other useful constructions:
- Allons souper. - Let's eat supper.
- Quoi tu veux? - What do you want?
- Je veux - I want
- Donne-moi donc - Give me (polite)
- Lave tes mains. - Wash your hands.
- Le souper est paré? - Is supper ready?
- J'ai besoin de - I need
- Prends le. - Take it.
- Quoi t'aimerais - What would you like?
- Tu veux une goûtée. - Do you want a taste?
- Tu t'as passé de ton souper? - Did you do without your supper?
Here is the Quizlet set for the above phrases.
Watching and Listening
mardi, 22 février 2010In order to train my ear and improve my accent, I try to listen to some real Cajun French each day. Thanks to the Internet it's not too hard to find some recordings of people speaking Cajun French. One of my favorite series is Le Chausson Show and it's available on Y*uT*be. In a recent show, the Sock chats with Dudley Escheté. Watch the video and see if you can answer the questions.
New BYKI List
samedi, 20 février 2010On va se revoir plus tard.
vendredi, 19 février 2010On va se revoir plus tard.
ahn vah s'reh-vwar plu tar
We'll see each other again later.
At the end of a conversation, you might have to go some where, so you'll say au revoir (good-bye). But good-byes shouldn't be so abrupt, so you'll add on va se revoir plus tard or on va se revoir demain.
There are a couple of things to note about this sentence. The word va here is used as an auxiliary verb, to indicate future tense. I've translated the sentence as "we will see each other again"; I could have translated it this way: "We are going to see each other again." The "are going" part indicates that the seeing each other will take place in the future. One thing to remember: when using forms of aller as an auxiliary for the futur proche tense, you'll typically (always?) use the infinitive form of the base verb.
The verb se revoir is a pronominal or reflexive verb. That means there's always a pronoun attached to the verb. The pronominal form of a verb usually differs slightly in meaning from the base verb. The base verb revoir means "to see again." The pronominal form se revoir means "to see each other again." Pronominal verbs are used when the subject and object of the sentence are the same. In general when forming pronominal verbs, the pronoun must match in gender and number the subject of the sentence.
N.B. You could say, On va se revoir, by itself to mean "see you later" or "good-bye for now."
More Cajun 101 Lessons
More Lessons on the Web
Cajun French Language Tutorials
vendredi, 19 février 2010Jim Léger's Cajun French Language Tutorials is back online. With any luck we'll get a new lesson from Jim soon.
LSU Department of French Studies
- A beginner's introduction: What is Cajun French?
- Le français cadien par thèmes: Cajun French by Themes
- Faux amis: How to Speak French in Louisiana Without Getting in Trouble
- Glossaire Français Cadien-Français Européen: Cajun-Standard French Glossary
- L'interrogatif en français cadien: Forming questions in Cajun French
- Les pronoms personnels cadiens: Cajun personal pronouns
- Les pronoms sujets et le système verbal: The Basics of Verb Conjugation
- Les animaux dans la métaphore populaire: Cajun animal metaphors
- Un glossaire cadien-anglais: Cajun French to English glossary

