I went on down to de Audubon Zoo
An’ dey all axt fuh you;
Dey all axt fuh you, (fuh who?)
Well dey even inquired aboutcha
I went on down to de Audubon Zoo
An’ dey all axt fuh you
Da monkeys axt, da tiguhs axt
An’ da elephant axt me too. – The Meters
I went on down to New Orleans the first week of this month, and while I didn’t have time to get to the Audubon Zoo this trip, I did manage to make it to a few of my old haunts (such as Harbor Seafood, Mona’s and Danny & Clyde’s, all described in my column of one year ago today). I also managed to get down to the French Market to buy a few new dresses (including one that looks a lot like the picture in my June 6th column), but spent most of the time visiting friends (including Denise, whom I honestly think gets more beautiful every time I see her). And as usual, I did a lot of talking to complete strangers, including the attendant who tended the breakfast setup on the concierge floor of my hotel. And though the local accents were familiar to me, I could hear them all the more clearly for having been away for some time and I thought y’all might be interested in hearing a little about them.
Probably the best introduction to the accents, dialects and distinctive speech patterns of New Orleans and its environs is Yeah You Rite!, a 1985 documentary by Louis Alvarez and Andy Kolker. It incorporated their earlier “A New Orleans Lexicon”, a short which I saw dozens of times as filler on WYES-TV (New Orleans’ PBS station) when I was in high school and university (my epigram comes from the song featured in the film). Incidentally, George Reinecke, the scholar featured in that film, taught my “History of the English Language” course at UNO. Another clip featured on that linked page, “Multiplicity”, explains and shows examples of the major New Orleans accents; the very first one we hear in the video is an example of the “Yat” dialect, the Brooklynish lower class white patois spoken by the escort I’ve called Linda; it is named for its speakers’ characteristic greeting, “Where y’at?” My own accent is a fairly general American one, but those with very good ears can detect traces of Uptown (where I was educated) pronunciation and perhaps an occasional Cajun French word such as couillon (silly person) or frisson (goose bumps) besides the more usual New Orleans terms as featured in the video.
One term which is mentioned in the documentary but not really fully explained is lagniappe, a peculiar New Orleans term meaning basically “bonus”, something extra given by a merchant to good customers; for example, the man from whom I buy my dresses always throws an extra skirt, scarf or shawl of his choosing into my bag (an unusually generous lagniappe, to be sure). The word isn’t French; as Professor Reinecke explained in our class, it’s originally from the Quechua yapay (to add), which is to this day used in much the same way in the Andes. The Spanish, finding it a useful term, used it in their New World colonies as la ñapa, and when the largely-French inhabitants of New Orleans borrowed it in turn from their Spanish rulers (Spain held New Orleans from 1769-1801), the pronunciation and spelling were Gallicized to lagniappe.
Yeah You Rite! was made in the early ‘80s, long before Hurricane Katrina, and though all those old accents are still prominent I also heard many non-New Orleanian accents on my recent trip: Vietnamese accents, general Southern accents, and lots of American Standard due partly to the omnipresence of television and partly to the large influx of outsiders who moved in post-Katrina. Globalization and mass media tend to promote homogenization, and the Katrina disaster sped up the process; in a few more decades the old accents, terms and customs of New Orleans will be nothing but a memory, a parade of ghosts second-lining into history along with the culture which once made the Crescent City unique.
I will never forgive myself for failing to visit Nawlins before Katrina. It’s the birthplace of my Spanish harlot grandmother and though her accent faded when she moved west, it was quite pronounced when she was tired or had a bit to drink.
New Orleans’ image in the eyes of Northerners is summed up by Disneyland’s New Orleans Square:
http://disneyland.disney.go.com/disneyland/new-orleans-square/
It’s the only place in the North where I’ve ever seen the New Orleans drink the mint julep – I tried it and it’s sweet and pungent.
I would have liked to have seen the old New Orleans.
Yes, I regret not going pre-Katrina too. I thumbed down in 1988 and just missed the Mardi Gras celebrations I was aiming for. Remember, thumbing several thousand miles is not like driving that far. If you get behind schedule when you’re driving, you can make it up. You can lose days or weeks hitchhiking from Toronto to Louisiana. So I missed all the fun stuff, had very little money left, and no passport bc I was underage. Hanging around in a cheap motel was out of the question, so I rushed off to try to catch the last hockey game at the Calgary Olympics. I missed that too.
At least I got to see my first gator, and eat some nice Cajun chili. The man I ate with wouldn’t tell me what the strange meat was. I suspect it was crayfish bc it was close in texture to crab&lobster, but the pieces were shredded so small. I didn’t mind it. I might even try it again sometime.
Next time, I want to check out a riverboat blues fest. LOVE the blues. I mean, beyond just the sound of the music itself. I’m Canadian, and I notice things about American life that some Americans don’t. Many of you see the legacy of the Black Holocaust as commonplace, like a zookeeper gets used to the smell of shit. But the way some white Americans treat their black brothers and sisters sickens me like watching disaster footage. I am truly horrified and appalled by it. That such exquisite music was first sung by people in chains, in defiance of their pain, hunger and suffering, really moves me. The blues is one of the most awe inspiring things about our humanity, imo. Blues on a riverboat is on my list of things I absolutely MUST do before I die.
I don’t mind jazz either. I could check out the jazz scene, too. But I LOVE the blues.
Unfortunately, New Orleans has been doomed for some time. Just like Venice, Italy. New Orleans used to be further inland than it is now? It’s right on the Gulf of Mexico now. That isn’t just the city expanding down to the sea; the coast has moved in. The wetlands have been whittled away until they no longer offer the protection from hurricanes they once did. There are things that could have been done, but were not. Something like Katrina was going to happen sooner or later, and the city wasn’t going to be ready for it.
And I don’t see a lot to indicate that we’ve learned any real lessons from it. We’re building higher levees, maybe.
Bst thing the ever could have done is not to have fucked wih the Mississippi in the first place,
With all that silt being dumped of the edge of the continent into the dep watrs off the glf its no wonder the wetlands are shrinking
Yep.
If you want to know about our New Orleans Yat language and how it all began, read the book “The YAT language of New Orleans.” THE WHO DAT NATION
It is a fun book to read about our great city. Also a dictionary of all the YAT words used in New Orleans.