And now it's my turn to be embarassed. I don't speak French. Not even a little bit. And if you're familiar with the Parisian form of the language, it wouldn't do us any good if I did. The Acadian, or Cajun, French of South Louisiana is many hundreds of years and two nations removed from Europe. People from French Canada generally do better than Europeans, but in general none of them can understand the language when they visit. It really is a whole new language.

And as a tidbit, when I say it's a new language, I mean it. There was no writen form of the language until a Catholic priest in South Louisiana (Lafayette to be precise) wrote and published a book entitled Cajun French I in 1977. Until then, the Cajun French peoples were, by definition, illiterate.