Louisiana
A French immersion school in Louisiana teaches kids the state's unique local dialects
Most Louisianans no longer speak French but more and more schools in the state are teaching it. One small school, southwest of New Orleans, is immersing students in the state’s local dialects.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Louisiana has a long history with the French language, and while most Louisianans no longer speak French, a growing number of schools are immersing students in it – all kinds of it. Member station WWNO’s Aubri Juhasz takes us to a school down the bayou, southwest of New Orleans. It’s teaching students to speak some of the state’s local dialects.
JULIET VERDIN: Je m’appelle Juliet.
LANA LECOMPTE: Je m’appelle Lana.
AUBRI JUHASZ, BYLINE: Juliet Verdin and Lana LeCompte are in the second grade at a new public French immersion school, Ecole Pointe-au-Chien. Ecole means school in French. And the name of this community, Pointe-au-Chien, or point of the dog, comes from the name of the bayou across the street.
LANA: Le chat, mignon.
JUHASZ: Juliet and Lana sit at a table covered with flashcards. The cards are for words that have multiple French translations in Louisiana.
Can you tell me both ways to say alligator?
LANA: Un alligator. Un crocodi (ph).
JUHASZ: Which one do you like more?
LANA: Crocodi.
JUHASZ: That’s the Cajun word. It’s actually pronounced cocodri. And there’s another way people who speak French in this part of the state might say alligator, caiman. It’s a native word. Ecole Pointe-au-Chien focuses on local French first. Its founders believe that’s a unique approach for a French immersion school.
JULIET: (Speaking French).
JUHASZ: Juliet and Lana’s parents don’t speak French. But like most of their classmates, they have an older family member who does. Most people used to speak French in the Pointe-au-Chien community and in Louisiana, dating back to when it was a French colony. Nathalie Dajko teaches linguistics and anthropology at Tulane University.
NATHALIE DAJKO: We have the French that is spoken by these people who came directly from France.
JUHASZ: That early influence led to many dialects. In the late 1700s, more French speakers – descendants of early French settlers – arrive from what is today Canada.
DAJKO: We have a bunch of Acadians who’ve now shown up speaking something very similar but nonetheless distinct.
JUHASZ: With time, the Acadians in Louisiana became known as the Cajuns, and that’s where Cajun French comes from. There’s also Creole, which was in part created by enslaved Africans. Native people also learned the language and made it their own.
CHRISTINE VERDIN: We all spoke French. That’s the only way not to lose it.
JUHASZ: Christine Verdin is the principal of Ecole Pointe-au-Chien and is a member of the Pointe-au-Chien Indian tribe. She’s also a distant cousin of Juliet’s, the student you heard at the top. We sat down in a small office just off a classroom, where students can easily pop in, which a little boy did in the middle of our conversation.
VERDIN: What’s going on?
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: I got in a fight.
JUHASZ: Verdin, a longtime teacher, is in her 60s and grew up speaking what she calls Indian French. She describes how in the 1920s, state lawmakers tried to Americanize Louisiana by requiring English to be the only language spoken in public schools. The ban was in place until the 1970s. By then, most children had stopped speaking French at home.
VERDIN: When you lose the language which is part of your culture, then you’re losing your culture.
JUHASZ: Verdin says because Native students were initially kept out of public schools, they held onto their French longer. She learned Indian French from her parents. That put Verdin and others in her community in the position to open this school, focused on local dialects, about a year-and-a-half ago.
VERDIN: Indian French, Cajun French. We don’t have any Creoles here, but I mean, we’re not opposed.
JUHASZ: They also teach standard French, so their students – they have about 30 so far – can be part of the larger French-speaking world.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: (Counting in French).
JUHASZ: The school’s older kids spend more than half of the day learning in French, while its youngest students are taught entirely in French. In Camille Revillet’s pre-K class, her 4-year-olds are working on a math worksheet, counting boxes and drawing a line to the correct number.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #3: This is deux.
CAMILLE REVILLET: Oui.
JUHASZ: At lunch, a teacher makes small talk with the older kids in French by asking them questions about what they’re eating.
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER: (Speaking French).
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Yeah.
JUHASZ: Dajko, the Tulan professor, says people have long predicted the demise of Louisiana French, but it keeps surviving.
DAJKO: So, I’m not going to predict anything, but I think there’s a lot of hope these days in younger generations who are choosing to speak to their children in French at home, who are sending them to French immersion schools, who are excited about speaking French.
JUHASZ: In all its many varieties.
For NPR News, I’m Aubri Juhasz, in Pointe-au-Chien, Louisiana.
(SOUNDBITE OF MITCH LANDRY AND CAJUN RAMBLERS’ “PORT ALLEN TWO-STEP”)
Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – South Louisiana’s coast has long served as a natural buffer between communities and rising water.
But since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost nearly 2,000 square miles of coastal land.
Dr. Torbjorn Tornqvist, a professor at Tulane University, said Louisiana is one of the most vulnerable coastal areas in the world because of climate change, sea level rise and subsidence.
“Louisiana is arguably one of the most vulnerable… perhaps the most vulnerable coastal zones in the world when it comes to climate change and sea level rise… and there are several reasons for that but one important reason is that we have high subsidence rates, and that means sea level rise here is a lot faster than the average around the world,” Tornqvist said.
Tornqvist is the lead author of a recently published study examining the long-term impacts of sea level rise across south Louisiana.
He said the issue is no longer limited to communities closest to the Gulf Coast.
“People are leaving the coast of Louisiana, but it’s going to accelerate over the course of the century. And those people are going to have to go somewhere, and it’s likely that a significant number are going to look at a place like Baton Rouge to move to,” Tornqvist said.
Since Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana has invested billions of dollars in large-scale restoration projects designed to reduce flood risk and strengthen the coast.
Some researchers believe those projects are important but not permanent fixes.
“We have…right now we have a pretty high-quality flood protection system that’s obviously way better than it was during Katrina and we should certainly keep investing in upkeep, but we also have to recognize that’s only going to take us so far,” Tornqvist said.
State officials say those investments remain critical as Louisiana adapts to future flood risks.
Micheal Hare, executive director of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said the state’s coastal plan is designed to balance restoration work with protection projects, including levees.
“Our 2023 master plan certainly incorporates the best science available to us to then come up with a balanced approach between how do we effectively spend money on restoration as well as money on protection projects like levees,” Hare said.
Hare said those projects will continue to evolve as future risks change. CPRA and the Army Corps of Engineers are re-evaluating portions of the West Bank and Vicinity levee system in New Orleans to meet projected future flood risks within the next half-decade.
“Morganza to the Gulf is a great example, location communities came together, they started funding it…so that protection is critical…It will constantly be maintained and constantly elevated to meet the new levels of threats and risks that are out there,” Hare said.
Coastal officials and researchers agree that what happens along Louisiana’s coast will continue to affect communities far beyond the shoreline for generations.
“And so maybe you don’t live behind the levee, but I promise you want those coastal communities to stay there and to keep working, and to stay productive and engaged…so that we don’t have to have these flood fights further north or lose parts of our economy,” Hare said.
Tornqvist said the decisions made now could shape the future of Louisiana communities.
“What’s really important to recognize is that the next few decades are basically going to decide the long-term future of cities like Baton Rouge,” Tornqvist said.
Louisiana has always lived with water. As the coast changes and sea levels rise, the challenge is how communities across south Louisiana continue adapting for generations to come.
From the Gulf Coast to Baton Rouge, the future of Louisiana’s coastline is a conversation that impacts the entire state.
Click here to report a typo. Please include the headline.
Click here to subscribe to our WAFB 9 News daily digest and breaking news alerts delivered straight to your email inbox.
Watch the latest WAFB news and weather now.
Louisiana ranks among the top 10 most affordable states to retire, according to a new study from Retirement Living, a national journal of retirement research.
Researchers analyzed each state’s housing costs, living expenses and tax friendliness to compile the ranking. Louisiana, they say, is the eighth most affordable state for retirees.
In Louisiana, the median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $932, the median home sale price is $255,000, monthly grocery spend per capita is $272, the average price per gallon of regular gas is $4, the average Medicare Advantage monthly premium is $13.35 and the average effective property tax rate is 0.55%.
West Virginia is the most affordable state to retire, followed by Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Louisiana, Indiana and Kansas. Researchers describe the South as “the sweet spot for an affordable retirement.”
The most expensive state to retire, meanwhile, is California, followed by Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Utah, New York and Minnesota.
Read Retirement Living’s full report here.
BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – With hurricane season approaching, the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority is bringing the community together to prepare before a storm forms.
“We can’t stop disasters from happening. We can’t stop hurricanes from happening. But what we can do is equip our communities with the resources that they need to prepare for these storms ahead of time,” said Jayda Morris, CPRA outreach manager.
The agency hosted an event featuring interactive storm simulations and a full model of the Mississippi River.
“If you do it now, like on a sunny day like today, you’re ready to go for the rest of the season,” Jay Grymes said.
El Niño may reduce storms, but Louisiana still at risk
State Climatologist Jay Grymes said an El Niño pattern may reduce the number of storms in the Atlantic but warned against a false sense of security.
“In those 25 years, Louisiana, some part of the state has been impacted by 29 storms. That’s one a year, regardless of El Niño. So that should tell you something,” Grymes said.
He said the bigger concern is storms that can form in the Gulf with little warning.
“If we’re going to get a storm, it very possibly could be one that bubbles up in the Gulf and doesn’t give us five or seven days to track it coming our way. It gives us 40 hours to get ready for a landfall. So it’s imperative that you go ahead and do it now,” Grymes said.
Preparation goes beyond stocking water
Preparing now includes walking through yards, checking trees, and knowing whether everyone in the family can survive two weeks without power.
PhD students with the LSU College of the Coast and Environment gave the community a virtual reality experience that puts users inside a storm.
“If they wear the goggles or play with the Apple Vision Pro, they can understand how high will the flood be, and they can know how dangerous is the hurricane scenario,” said Yixuan Wang.
The VR simulation uses real historical data to show users what compound flooding looks like in New Orleans and surrounding areas. The goal is to make the science real for people who can’t picture what a flood map means.
“It’s just to let you understand the environment. We will add the audios, the different sound of the wind and the storm. And you can see how tense of the rainfall around you,” Wang said.
Organizers said the event is about making sure that when a storm threatens the area, families already know their plan.
Information from the event is available on CPRA’s website. Hurricane season runs through Nov. 30.
Click here to report a typo. Please include the headline.
Click here to subscribe to our WAFB 9 News daily digest and breaking news alerts delivered straight to your email inbox.
Watch the latest WAFB news and weather now.
-
Politics1 minute agoJared Kushner’s overseas luxury resort project faces anti-corruption investigation amid violent protests
-
Health4 minutes agoVeterans face surprising threat after cancer diagnosis, study reveals
-
Sports9 minutes agoRick Adelman, architect of some of the NBA’s best offenses and Hall of Famer, dead at 79
-
Technology16 minutes agoYour Microsoft text codes are going away
-
Business19 minutes agoCompany wants to revive Primm, the gambling spot turned ghost town. Owners say: Not so fast
-
Entertainment24 minutes agoMarcia Lucas, Oscar-winning film editor of ‘Star Wars,’ dies at 80
-
Lifestyle31 minutes agoWant to feel more loved? You’re probably going about it the wrong way
-
Politics34 minutes agoNBC News will put ‘Kornacki Cam’ on the L.A. mayoral, California gubernatorial races
