User:DoubleBachelorBreau/sandbox

Language shift, endangerment and revitalization[edit]
' In the case of Louisiana Creole, a diglossia resulted between Louisiana Creole and Plantation Society French (PSF) also known as Colonial French. The latter was frequently associated with plantation owners, plantation overseers, small landowners, military officers/soldiers and bilingual, free people of color. Over the centuries, Louisiana Creole's negative associations with slavery have stigmatized the language to the point where many speakers are reluctant to use it for fear of ridicule. In this way, the assignment of "high" variety (or H language) was allotted to PSF and that of "low" variety (or L language) was given to Louisiana Creole (please refer to diglossia for more information on H and L languages). '

 The social status of Louisiana Creole further declined as a result of the Louisiana Purchase.  ' The promise of upward socioeconomic mobility prompted many speakers of Louisiana Creole to abandon their stigmatised language in favor of English. Additionally, the development of industry, technology and infrastructure in Louisiana reduced the isolation of Louisiana Creolophone communities and resulted in the arrival of more English-speakers, resulting in further exposure to English. Because of this, Louisiana Creole exhibits extensive influence from English, including loanwords, code-switching and syntactic calquing. '

' Today, Louisiana Creole is spoken by fewer than 10,000 people.   Though national census data includes figures on language usage, these are often unreliable in Louisiana due to respondents' tendencies to identify their language in line with their ethnic identity. For example, speakers of Louisiana Creole who identify as Cajuns often label their language 'Cajun French', though on linguistic grounds their language would be considered Louisiana Creole. '

' Efforts to revitalize French in Louisiana have placed emphasis on Cajun French, to the exclusion of Creole. However, community organisations such as CREOLE, Inc. have led a handful of community-level efforts to promote the language. CREOLE, Inc., for example, has organised a 'Creole Table' in St. Martinville, as well as a number of other language-focused events. In addition, there is an active online community of language-learners and activists engaged in language revitalization, led by language activistChristophe Landry. These efforts have resulted in the creation of a semi-standardized orthography and a digitalized version of Valdman et al.'s Louisiana Creole Dictionary. A first language primer was released in 2017.  'EDIT SUGGESTION:

Louisiana, itself, has been influenced by many historical ethnicities such as French (France) & French Canadian colonists (beginning 1699); Indigenous Americans (beginning after 1699); African slaves (beginning 1719; mostly from the Senegambian Region); German settlers (beginning in the 18thCentury); Spaniard colonists (beginning 1762); Acadians (beginning 1764); American settlers (beginning 1803) and Saint-Domingue Indigenous immigrants (beginning 1809). The colony was established by brothers Iberville, from Canada, in 1699. Early colonists mostly consisted of French and French Canadians, with the introduction of German-speakers in the 18thcentury. The French had little success enslaving the American Indigenous that inhabited the territory of Louisiana, which was historically larger than contemporary boundaries. The demand to import African slaves commenced in 1719, with an estimated 5,500 total individuals brought in from the Senegambian Region. The French Regime imported African Slaves until 1743. These slaves spoke mostly Mande, a language in contact with other African Indigenous languages, examples being Ewe, Yoruba, Kikongo. This has led to an etiological belief that Louisiana Creole arose as a contact pidgin via interactions between French landowners and African slaves. At some point during this time, the Louisiana pidgin french was intergenerationally transmitted to offspring and resulted in generations of native speakers. This essential shift from a domain-specific language to a mother-tongue resulted in the Louisiana Creole. The website, Endangered Languages, classifies Louisiana Creole as a “pidgin or a creole”.

There were a very small number of plantation estates in Louisiana at this time; slavery was practiced on a small-scale by (the mostly) homesteading French. It wasn’t until the colony surrendered power to Spain in 1762 that large-scale slavery was practiced in order to participate in a plantation economy that mostly subsisted of the cash crops cotton and sugarcane. This shift in the demand for labour, and the fact that very few Spaniard Colonists actually settled in Louisiana, lead to what has been called the “re-Africanization of Louisiana”. By as early as 1720, many areas existed where slaves were the majority demographic of the population.

It is known from transcripts of a murder trial that involved a slave in 1758, that the genesis of Louisiana Creole was sometime during the French occupation of Louisiana and predates the Spaniard colonists (1762-1800) and Saint-Domingue Indigenous immigrants (1809-1810) by years to decades. The statements collected from the slave showed linguistic features that are now known to be typical of Louisiana Creole. In a document that is dated from 1807, a grammatical description of the language is included in the experiences of a woman named Robin, prior the arrival of Saint-Domingue Indigenous immigrants. The word “Creole” first appeared in its Spanish form “Criollo” in a legal court document dated 1972; in this document it states that it is a language used by slaves and a great number of whites.

'  In the case of Louisiana Creole, [A] diglossia resulted between Louisiana Creole and Plantation Society French (PSF) also known as Colonial French. The latter was frequently associated with plantation owners, plantation overseers, small landowners, military officers/soldiers and bilingual, free people of color. Over the centuries, Louisiana Creole's negative associations with slavery have stigmatized the language to the point where many speakers are reluctant to use it for fear of ridicule. In this way, the assignment of "high" variety (or H language) was allotted to PSF and that of "low" variety (or L language) was given to Louisiana Creole (please refer to diglossia for more information on H and L languages). '

 The social status of Louisiana Creole further declined as a result of the Louisiana Purchase.  ' The promise of upward socioeconomic mobility prompted many speakers of Louisiana Creole to abandon their stigmatised language in favor of English. Additionally, the development of industry, technology and infrastructure in Louisiana reduced the isolation of Louisiana Creolophone communities and resulted in the arrival of more English-speakers, resulting in further exposure to English. Because of this, Louisiana Creole exhibits extensive influence from English, including loanwords, code-switching and syntactic calquing. '

Following the end of the Civil War in 1865, it is theorized that the lower prestige of the language, decline of French influence (culture & language), and an increased restriction of its domain use to the waterways that connected large plantations are associated with the creation of the diasporas found within this speech community. ' Today, Louisiana Creole is spoken by fewer than 10,000 people.   Though national census data includes figures on language usage, these are often unreliable in Louisiana due to respondents' tendencies to identify their language in line with their ethnic identity. For example, speakers of Louisiana Creole who identify as Cajuns often label their language 'Cajun French', though on linguistic grounds their language would be considered Louisiana Creole. '

A revitalization initiative of Louisiana Creole has been undertaken by the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity through “The Endangered Languages Project”. The site reiterates that the language is severely endangered with numbers estimated between less than 50,000 (with 100% certainty) and less than 5,000 (with 80% certainty), established through available evidence. By all accounts, Louisiana Creole is an endangered to severely endangered language whose domain use has been limited some home use and its enduring association with Louisiana’s many Parish’s.

The language is said to be endangered because it is no longer being intergenerationally transmitted to children. Contemporarily, most speakers are bilingual elders that can speak Louisiana Creole and English fluently. It is thought that speakers who under the age of 60 are rare. The fact that children do not learn this language is associated with the introduction of compulsory schooling after 1916. The remaining domains where the language is used are at home and with family; it is likely that even in this domain that is it not the primary language spoken.

On the page dedicated to the revitalization of the Louisiana Creole language, found at The Endangered Languages Project website, is a link to an OLAC Language Resource Catalog, a service delivered from Penn Libraries. On there are 8 resources regarding the language. OLAC is a company dedicated to the cataloguing of non-material data representing a language; it can be organized to search by: subject language (Louisiana Creole French, French, Saint Lucian Creole French); language family (Creoles, Pidgins, French-based, Indo-European, Italic, Romance); geographic region (Americas, Europe); countries (US, East Timor); linguistic type (lexicon, language description); and linguistic field (computational linguistics, lexicography, text and corpus linguistics, writing systems).

'Efforts to revitalize French in Louisiana have placed emphasis on Cajun French, to the exclusion of Creole. However, community organisations such as CREOLE, Inc. have led a handful of community-level efforts to promote the language. CREOLE, Inc., for example, has organised a 'Creole Table' in St. Martinville, as well as a number of other language-focused events. In addition, there is an active online community of language-learners and activists engaged in language revitalization, led by language activistChristophe Landry. These efforts have resulted in the creation of a semi-standardized orthography and a digitalized version of Valdman et al.'s Louisiana Creole Dictionary. A first language primer was released in 2017. '