Native understanding of spoken English
Australian and Irish accents can be nigh impenetrable to this American English speaker (but then, my own dialect is non-standard; I'm from the Deep South).
African American Vernacular English (AAVE)—also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular,
The thing about songs, and colloquial expressions, is that it is not always important whether the listener totally understands what is being said or just gets the drift.
Sometimes the whole point of a dialect or accent, is that people can talk in a secret language that other people do not understand.
"Only a brother can understand AAVE"
"Only a linguist can understand what AAVE means"
"get the drift": understand the meaning
"gets the drift"
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"The public gets the drift on DUI".
Here's to people getting the message that drinking and driving are unacceptable. The days of having one more for the road are over.
DUI: Drinking under the Influence (of alcohol)
I can see where people might have trouble understanding people (especially the older ones who barely speak English if at all) in Acadiana.
here is a typical conversation from where I grew up. (I can understand, but speak fairly standard English as most younger people can with outsiders):
ey, I calt ya earlier nonc and n'answer.
mo chagren ami, but waz in deh magasin and deh signal wen dead. quo faire?
were havin a brol by deh lehk dis weekend. Allez?
soun right
great, you tink you cehn bring a schwegmans a' beignets.
f'sure
verit? Wanna b'sho it's no prob.
alors pas. I'll av'm
doesn't even scratch the surface on unique Acadiana lexicon (well unique to English), but highlights some of the pronunciation oddities. "th" is pronounced "t" or "d" depending on the word. The vowel on words like lake is more like "lehk". Difficulty with dipthongs in general actually "broil"- "brol". Local custom and references "schwegmans" is an old local grocer, and somehow their shopping bag became a recognized unit of measure.
some other lexicon:
lagniappe- an extra something given, probably the most crucial word as it is important to local culture- where it is consider very rude and bad for your fortunes not to offer a lagniappe.
dodo- sleep
cher- dear, light hearted term of endearment for woman
make groceries- shop for food
gout?- offering somebody a taste
and many more.
Ooh .... beignets....mmmmmm.
No cajuns in my family, but half of it's from Louisiana, so I grew up on "The Cajun Night Before Christmas" (where Santa wears a suit of muskrat and his skiff is pulled through the bayous by eight alligators with French names -- good stuff!). And I may not have a southern accent, but I still say LOOziana, and not LouEEziana.
Louisiana has one of the highest concentrations of different accents in the USA. One example is the different way place names are pronounced. UP staters with typical southern accent say na-WA-lins or NAW-Lins. Y'ats (working class Orleanians) usually say New ah-LEH-ens, Garden District and upper class say New ORlens, most black Orleanians I've heard say NEW Ollens. Cajuns pronounce as New Or-leh-ANZ, which is similar to how most Afro-Creoles say it though they tend to stretch vowels longer. The other is Louisiana, Afro-Creoles and Orleanians say it like LOOziana, up stater sound like LooSIana, and Cajuns say LooziANN; that said the standard American Loueeziana is also heard among people in all parts, and usually what I use now that I live outside of the region.
I haven't even distinguished the Lowland Cajuns and the Upland Cajun.
*I use Afro-Creole as a historical reference to the decendants of gens de couleur libres.
Then in addition to the different English accents you have 3 dialects of French, although the Creole Patois is more or less gone. Cajun French existed as an only spoken language and was discouraged by the Anglos it went into remission, and now most young Cajuns (like myself)who learn French actually wind up learning "Standard French".
<<I use Afro-Creole as a historical reference to the decendants of gens de couleur libres. >>
Which I had never heard of until I read some Anne Rice.
I get what you say about the plethora of La. accents -- my grandmother and uncle from Shreveport have that sort of soft, southern-belle accent (and inexplicably avoid all SH-sounds; Shreveport becomes "Sreveport"), while my cousins from Coushatta have that hard country twang. My grandfather is semi-non-rhotic, but his family is from New Orleans-- which I and they call "New Orlins". I've only been down there once to meet other relatives, and I don't remember much about what they sound like.