SEMANTIC DIFFERENCES 07/17/01 By Ron Thibodeaux Staff writer/The Times-Picayune Cultural evolution They're in their late 70s or 80s now, and their numbers are dwindling, but it's still possible to find at Acadiana's VFW and American Legion halls Army veterans who served as interpreters between their commanding officers and the French citizenry during World War II. For a Cajun GI, the gulf between the French of his upbringing in south Louisiana and the variety he encountered from the Cherbourg Peninsula to the streets of Paris proved to be choppy, but navigable. After all, it had been 340 years since the first Acadians arrived in the New World from the French countryside. While the mother tongue had been standardized in one direction, the language had taken a slightly different track in Acadie, diverging further in Louisiana as the Acadians absorbed other cultures into their own and transformed over time into Cajuns. As with other living languages, Cajun French continues to be influenced by regional variations, yet its basic framework of words and structures can be understood by fluent French speakers from other parts of the world. Here are a few examples of how Cajun French differs from standard French. CAR Standard French: voiture (vwa-choor) Cajun: char (shar) (People in France used the word that originally referred to carriages; Cajuns borrowed the word that originally referred to a horse drawn cart or wagon.) AIRPLANE Standard French: avion (ahv-yawn) Cajun: aeroplane (air-uh-plane) (Another product of the 20th century: the French devised their own word, while Cajuns adapted the English term used in America.) RAIN Standard French: pleuvoir (plue-vwahr) Cajun: mouiller (moo-yay) (An example of what linguists refer to as "semantic shift": mouiller means "to wet" in standard French.) NOW Standard French: maintenant (mehnt-naw) Cajun: asteur (es-toor) (The 17th century French phrase a cette heure, literally "at this hour," was retained by the Acadians and eventually shortened to a single word. Today, asteur is considered an archaic term in most of France.) RACCOON Standard French: NONE Cajun: chaoui (shah-wee) (Raccoons do not exist in France, and thus not in the French language; Cajuns borrowed the word from the Choctaw Indians.) RECEIVE Standard French: recevoir (res-vwahr) Cajun: recoir (res-wahr) (Cajuns shortened the standard French word.) SHRIMP Standard French: crevette (crev-et) Cajun: chevrette (shev-ret) (Cajuns use the original French word for shrimp; the modern standard French usage derives from the Norman regional variant, which developed after the Acadians relocated from France.) MOSQUITO Standard French: mousstiqque (moos-teek) Cajun: maringouin (The standard French word is used to some extent in Louisiana, but the more common Cajun term is believed to have been corrupted from a similar Indian word. In 1831, surveyors mapping an area of Iberville Parish were attacked by a swarm of huge black mosquitoes and decided to call that area Maringouin; the town founded nearby when the Texas & Pacific Railroad came through half a century later retained the name. CATFISH Standard French: poisson chat (pwa-saw shat) Cajun: barbue (bar-boo) (In standard French, the words for fish and cat are combined; the Cajun term means "bearded one," a reference to the fish's "whiskers.") BULLFROG Standard French: grenouille taureau (gren-wee tah-roe) Cajun: ouaouaron (wah-wah-rawn) (In standard French, the words for frog and bull are combined; the Cajun term derives from the sound of the bullfrog's low-toned croak.) © The Times-Picayune. Used with permission. » Send This Page | » Print This Page