Proof that "Cajun" = "Brooklynese"

[Paul Frank]

At 10:41 AM 2/21/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>I am a dilettante, and I hardly need prove it to this group. But just in
>case anyone occasionally got the idea that I had some vague idea what I
>was talking about, I pass on the following story.
>
>I was in New Orleans and struck up a conversation with a man in Jackson
>Square. His speech was strange, sounding to my ear like a polyglot of
>several NYC borough accents.I finally asked him what part of New York he
>had originally come from, and he informed me that he had spent his entire
>life in Louisiana.
>
>In defense, I subsequently had some experience with pure Cajun, and that
>isn't what he was speaking, though there was certainly a Cajun influence.
>Whatever it was, it sounded more like the Bronx than Georgia.
>
>D


Hi Duane,

Glad to (virtually) meet a fellow dilettante. I thought that it was common
knowledge that the accent of New Orleans itself was closer to Brooklynese
than to any Southern accent or any other accent in Louisiana for that
matter. I also thought that there was nothing Cajun or French about it...I
just reread your post and saw that you weren't equating New Orleans with
Cajun. Hollywood movie makers seem to think that everybody in New Orleans
is a Cajun. How about the pronunciation of New Orleans? Most dictionaries
claim that the stress goes on the last syllable of Orleans, but nobody in
New Orleans ever pronounces it that way. Or do they?


Paul
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Paul Frank
Business, financial and legal translation
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