AHNVEE, COSHON AND MY CAJUN UPBRINGING

 

While going through some of my ancestry papers a few days ago, I came across a page of cajun french expressions. I had written these down a few years back when I was making notes of some of the words and phrases I learned as a child. Most of my family spoke French to each other, especially when they did not want the children to know what they were talking about. In fact, my brother and I were the first generation that was not taught to speak French. However, though we weren't schooled in speaking French we did grow up using many of the cajun french words and colloquialisms. 

When we longed or hankered for something, especially food, we had an awn vee (ahnvee).  We did not vacuum or mop, we passed the vacuum or we passed the mop. We also passed a good time. We ate sandwiches with mynez (mayonnaise) on them, we put on our drawz (drawers), and a kitty cat was known as a meenoo. When something tasted good our standard expression was May sha (mai cher) that was some good, yeh. My godmother was my nanan and my godfather was my paran.

People who did not know what we knew were cooyawn (couillon) which means stupid, when something was dirty it was coshawn (coshon) and we ro dah dayed (rodee') which means we ran the streets. We could say anything we wanted about anybody as long as we prefaced our remark with, "Bless her heart." Those who did not understand us were say-bet (ces't bet) which means uneducated. 

We also used the word me in a lot in our sentences. For instance, "I'm going to eat me some crayfish, or "I'm going to buy me some groceries. Our favorite card game was a cajun game called  Bourre', pronounced booray. When we went to bed we were going to make dodo (dough dough). When we beat someone by a lot we pelayed them and when we wanted to get even with someone we put the gree-gree (gris gris) on them. 

Growing up in southeast Louisiana surrounded by Cajun French people, in a Cajun French family, made an impression on me. A big part of my heritage that was passed on to me, and still sticks with me, was the art of celebrating life and family. There was always a large contingency of family gathered at our house and there was usually joke telling, laughter, dancing, cocktails and a lot of food. This obviously made an impression on me because I still love celebrating life and loved ones. There is nothing that is more fun for me than being surrounded by loved ones eating, drinking and enjoying each other. Paul and I love it when family and friends come over and we get out the board games or a deck of cards and play games into the wee hours of the morning. I sometimes worry we will wake the neighbors with our hilarious laughter and loudness.

I am the only one left in the family from the "old guard" and I sometimes get nostalgic for those times when the house rocked with laughter and song, while the youngsters (that would be me) played with our cousins till we were worn out, or till the older generation made us go to bed. Bed for us, at those times, was what we called making a pallet on the floor. The children all slept on the floor so the adults could have the beds.

I call my growing up years, a Cajun way of life, and as I look back on those times I have come to appreciate the area, the people, and the uniqueness of it all. There was a time when I was embarrassed to be Cajun because people called us coon asses, but as I grew up I began to understand and appreciate my heritage. My people's motto for life is "Laizze les bon temps rouler", let the good times roll. Now, that has to be a good thing, don't you think?