French and Creole in Louisiana, 2010-2022: A Very Brief Analysis

As a follow up to my recent essay “Disappearing Cajuns and Creoles? Ethnic Identity and the Limits of Census Data,” I have produced line charts representing data for two Louisiana languages, French and Creole, as spoken at home by persons aged five and older. The statistics used to construct these charts derive from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS), compiled annually from 2010 to 2022. (Stats for 2023 and 2024 are not yet available.)

Each language is represented by two charts: one chart is based a one-year estimate, and the other, on a five-year estimate.(1)

On viewing these charts one feature becomes immediately clear: a general decline in the number of Louisiana’s French and Creole speakers.

In particular, for the twelve years ending in 2022, data indicates a 50- or 53-percent decline in the number of French speakers in Louisiana's homes (depending on whether one consults the one-year or five-year estimate). For speakers of French Creole/Haitian, the data shows a 45- or 61-percent drop over the same period (again, depending on which estimate is used; see my below analysis of the ACS's use of the terms “French Creole” and “Haitian”).

Discussing this with others who share my interest in all things Cajun and Creole, the consensus, though speculative, is that the decline stems largely if not solely from the demise of older French- and Creole-speaking persons, combined with an insufficient number of younger French- and Creole-speakers to replace them.

This downward trend — perceptible today even through impressionistic data (such as the dearth of French or Creole heard on the street, in commerce, or in other workday contexts) — explains the fervent “call to arms” among Louisiana’s sizeable corps of language and cultural activists. “Nowadays, our language is flooded, buried, not yet dead but above all desperate,” notes recently founded activist group l’Assemblée de la Louisiane. It goes on: “Language is not the only marker of our collective identity, but it is probably one of the most important and undoubtedly the most threatened.”(2)

Clearly there is no time to lose, yet, as esteemed folklorist and linguist Barry Jean Ancelet has often pointed out, “Chaque fois que l’on s’apprête à fermer le cercueil sur le cadavre de la culture cadienne et créole, il se lève et commande une bière!” Or, in translation, “Every time we prepare to close the coffin on Cajun and Creole culture, the corpse gets up and orders a beer!”(3)

It should be kept in mind that the stats in question are estimates derived from sampling and not the result of direct inquiry of all possible census respondents. Moreover, while it is fact that the U.S. Census Bureau reports the results shown on the following charts (assuming, of course, I convey the data accurately, and I think I do), readers with a healthy measure of skepticism might rightly ask, “Does this census data actually reflect the reality of language use in Louisiana?” That, however, is a topic for another day. (I will, however, give one example of how this census data cannot tell the entire story: My adult daughter, who attended French Immersion schools as a child in the early 2000s, speaks French very well — but she does not speak French “at home,” mainly because she has no one with whom to speak it. As such, the Census Bureau would not count her (or others like her, from children to the elderly) as speaking French. Because of the narrow wording of the language question, the answers it solicits no doubt underrepresent the number of French speakers in Louisiana — though by how much, who can say?)

Regarding the terms “French Creole” and “Haitian” as used by the U.S. Census Bureau: from 2010 to 2015 the Bureau collected language data on “French Creole.” From 2016 onward, however, it apparently ceased to collect data on that language or dialect, and instead began to collect data on what it referred to as “Haitian.” (A vertical red line on the ”French Creole/Haitian” charts indicates where in time this change occurred.) 

It is unclear if, in Louisiana’s case, the Census Bureau regarded “Haitian” as merely “French Creole” by another name. There does, however, appear to be some continuity in the numbers reported before and after the change in terms. It is therefore possible that census respondents considered “Haitian” a reasonable substitute for “French Creole,” especially given historic links between Louisiana and the people and culture of Haiti. I refer to large numbers of Haitians, both free and enslaved, who came to Louisiana in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

I leave it to others to determine why the Census Bureau made this switch and if, in the context of these ACS results, it is valid to interpret “Haitian” as synonymous with (or at least a close approximation to) “French Creole.” Regardless, “French Creole” is now viewed as a misnomer because it implies a dialect of continental French: rather, the tongue is now viewed as its own distinct standalone language called Creole, Kreyòl, or Kouri-Vini. (For more about census stats and language in Louisiana, see my earlier essay “Tracking the Decline of Cajun French”.)

Notes

(1)As the Census Bureau explains regarding the difference between 1-year and 5-year ACS estimates, “Each year, the U.S. Census Bureau publishes American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates for geographic areas with populations of 65,000 or more. . . . For geographic areas with smaller populations, the ACS samples too few housing units to provide reliable single-year estimates. For these areas, several years of data are pooled together to create more precise multiyear estimates. Since 2010, the ACS has published 5-year data (beginning with 2005–2009 estimates) for all geographic areas down to the census tract and block group levels. . . . This means that there are two sets of numbers — both 1-year estimates and 5-year estimates — available for geographic areas with at least 65,000 people. . . [while] Less populous areas . . . receive only 5-year estimates. . . . There are no hard-and-fast rules for choosing between 1-year and 5-year data.” “Understanding and Using ACS Single-Year And Multiyear Estimates,” U.S. Census Bureau, 2018 [PDF document (excerpt)], https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/acs/acs_general_handbook_2018_ch03.pdf, accessed 30 July 2024.

(2)“Declaration of St. Martinville, Louisiana, at the Founding of the Assembly of Louisiana, September 16, 2023,”  l’Assemblée de la Louisiane, https://www.assemblee.la/our-vision, accessed 1 August 2024.

(3)Ancelet is quoted in Jean-Benoît Nadeau, “Mardi gras en Louisiane,” Le Devoir (Montreal), 24 February 2020, https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/chroniques/573560/mardi-gras-en-louisiane, accessed 30 July 2024.

Tracking the Decline of Cajun French

The history of the Cajuns in the twentieth century often touches on the subject of language — that is, the decline of Cajun French as more and more young Cajuns learned to speak English as their first and often their only language. As I wrote in my book The Cajuns: Americanization of a People

As I grew older, I became increasingly aware of the cultural rift between [my Bernard family’s] generations. How was it, I wondered, that after more than three hundred years in the New World, our family had suddenly lost the ability to speak French? What had occurred between my generation and that of my grandparents to bring about this significant change?

Americanization, I asserted, is what had occurred. And that Americanization was spurred along, more than any other factor, by the punishment of Cajun children for speaking French at school. As I noted:

The consequences [of punishment] were disastrous for Cajun French, pushing the dialect to the brink of extinction. For the first time [1946-1950], a minority of the ethnic group's children spoke French as their primary language. The percentage would plummet to 21 percent for those born between 1956 and 1960, a woeful decline from the 83 percent for Cajuns born at the dawn of the century. . . . [Furthermore] Among Cajuns born between 1966 and 1970 . . . only about 12 percent grew up speaking French as their primary language; for those born between 1971 and 1975, the figure dropped to about 8 percent.

I arrived at these figures by using census data — in particular, Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS), available mainly to scholars through academic institutions. PUMS offers raw census data extrapolated from 5 percent of households in specific geographic regions.

In my case, I used PUMS data to track the decline of Cajun French throughout the twentieth century. This is shown in the below chart, which I made in the 1990s and now publish for the first time.

Click to enlarge chart.

A word of caution:

The chart does not measure the percentage of Cajuns who spoke French in any given year. It does, however, measure the percentage of Cajuns who spoke French as their first language in 1990 according to their dates of birth (broken into five-year age groups).

So the chart reveals, for example, that for the five-year age group born between 1921 and 1925, approximately 76% spoke French as their first language in 1990.

(Some may wonder why I placed the dark vertical line denoting the start of the World War II era with the 1936-40 age group and not the 1941-45 age group. I did this because children born in the mid- to late 1930s would not have exhibited linguistic traits until they actually began to speak and they would not have exhibited permanent linguistic traits until they entered school at age five or six — and by that time the US would have entered World War II.)