Cajun French in "The Katres' Summer"

Summer Whitney, our intrepid heroine in The Katres' Summer, uses some Cajun French expressions that readers may not be able to look up easily in standard dictionaries.  I provided these to Laura Jo from my memories of growing up in South Louisiana with a 100% Cajun mother.  When the rush of getting the next book out slackens off, we are going to put them in the glossary on www.laurajophillips.com.  Until that happens, I thought it might be helpful to some readers to provide some informal definitions and discussion here.

chierie.  This is one of my favorite Cajun insults.  It literally means "little spot of diarrhea" which is doubly insulting because the term says that the person in question both disgusting AND insignificant.  This term is not used very widely.  Pity.

fils de putain.  This one, on the other hand, is one of the more common Cajun epithets.  The literal translation is "son of a whore" but it is used where an English speaker would say "bastard" or "son of a bitch."  I heard this one a lot on the playground.

gardez donc.  This expression is probably more correctly written "regardez donc" but when Cajuns say it in normal conversation you almost never hear the "re" in "regardez."  I never knew it was supposed to be "regardez" until I read it in a novel set in Louisiana.  The literal meaning is "look at that." Cajuns say "gardez donc" when an English speaker would say something like "wow" or "isn't that amazing."  It is an expression of wonder and astonishment, but it applies only to something that you can actually see.  You don't say "gardez donc" to express astonishment at something that you hear or smell.

By the way, if you use this expression, you've got to do it right--there is a special way to say it.  You say it slowly, like it's three words, not two, with a bit of emphasis on each syllable.  Plus, remember that you don't pronounce the "nc" in "donc."  So, phonetically, it's close to "gar day doh."  And, there's a trick to pronouncing the last syllable if you aren't used to French vowel sounds.  It sounds like "dong" without the "ng."  

When would you hear it used in the heart of Acadiana (the region of Louisiana inhabited by the Cajuns)?  Well, if the Royal Princes of Jasan shifted into their Dracon forms in the parking lot of the Northgate Mall in Lafayette, Louisiana, most of the astonished bystanders would exclaim "gardez donc!"  Then they would probably start looking for their shotguns and ask each other whether Dracons taste good in gumbo (grin).

The Cajuns are a wonderful people with a fascinating culture, and it was fun to help Laura Jo use her writing to put them (us) in a bit of a spotlight for a moment.  Because Cajun culture has proved to be so resilient, I believe and hope that even centuries in the future when these books are set, there will still be Cajuns in Louisiana, speaking French, eating crawfish and gumbo and jambalaya, and dancing the two step.