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.

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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”)

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