Sweet story...

[MTL]

I actually don't understand why "proper" French people make such a big deal of them. I think they're unnecessary, except in distinguishing important syntax or meaning, like the difference between a and à.

I can understand making a big deal out of such things.  Without the proper accents, it is wrong.  Imagine if someone typed words in English, but did not use English letters all of the time, but sometimes used letters that only somewhat resembled the correct letters.  Like imagine the letter "n" without the first vertical stroke.  It would not look right, and it would likely annoy most native English speakers, even though it would not thereby look like some other letter leading to confusion.

but look at how we bastardize english. 
Night .. Nite
Drive-Through .... Drive-Thru
Even the American spellings of certain words, like "honor" is less British than the Canadian "honour", etc
and nowadays, we replace whole sentences with a few letters, as in text messaging,
and it has become positively trendy to replace certain letters with numbers, like in the movie,
"Se7en"
or "5ive"
and consider the trademark backwards "N" in the Nine Inch Nails logo:






...not to mention how drastically I hear english changed in modern American TV, movies and music:
" Where you at? "
" He disrespected me " etc
and most North Americans are completely oblivious to the fact that we are, as a continent, almost entirely pronouncing "aluminium" incorrectly.  Listen again to Evie's Accent Tag video if you don't believe me, and listen to how an Englishman pronounces it.
We don't even SPELL it correctly, here.  We leave out an "i"
AluminIum
Aluminum

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I can understand making a big deal out of such things.  Without the proper accents, it is wrong.  Imagine if someone typed words in English, but did not use English letters all of the time, but sometimes used letters that only somewhat resembled the correct letters.  Like imagine the letter "n" without the first vertical stroke.  It would not look right, and it would likely annoy most native English speakers, even though it would not thereby look like some other letter leading to confusion.

but look at how we bastardize english. 
Night .. Nite
Drive-Through .... Drive-Thru
Even the American spellings of certain words, like "honor" is less British than the Canadian "honour", etc
and nowadays, we replace whole sentences with a few letters, as in text messaging,
and it has become positively trendy to replace certain letters with numbers, like in the movie,
"Se7en"
or "5ive"
and consider the trademark backwards "N" in the Nine Inch Nails logo:

...not to mention how drastically I hear english changed in modern American TV, movies and music:
" Where you at? "
" He disrespected me " etc
and most North Americans are completely oblivious to the fact that we are, as a continent, almost entirely pronouncing "aluminium" incorrectly.  Listen again to Evie's Accent Tag video if you don't believe me, and listen to how an Englishman pronounces it.
We don't even SPELL it correctly, here.  We leave out an "i"
AluminIum
Aluminum

That was sort of my point. I'm an American, only half-Cajun in the first place, but even my full-blooded relatives don't bother with accent marks except in places where the distinct sound difference makes a distinct difference in the meaning of two identically-spelled words. Our language was deliberately wiped out by the American Anglophones, and what remains is heavily bastardized in the first place-- we'll throw words from English, Spanish, and even some Native American phrases in the middle of a French sentence, if going at full speed, when speaking aloud.

Cajun culture has a lot of things that are "traditional", but language is just a tool, to us.

[Pyrrho]

I can understand making a big deal out of such things.  Without the proper accents, it is wrong.  Imagine if someone typed words in English, but did not use English letters all of the time, but sometimes used letters that only somewhat resembled the correct letters.  Like imagine the letter "n" without the first vertical stroke.  It would not look right, and it would likely annoy most native English speakers, even though it would not thereby look like some other letter leading to confusion.

but look at how we bastardize english. 
Night .. Nite
Drive-Through .... Drive-Thru
Even the American spellings of certain words, like "honor" is less British than the Canadian "honour", etc
and nowadays, we replace whole sentences with a few letters, as in text messaging,
and it has become positively trendy to replace certain letters with numbers, like in the movie,
"Se7en"
or "5ive"
and consider the trademark backwards "N" in the Nine Inch Nails logo:

---

---

...not to mention how drastically I hear english changed in modern American TV, movies and music:
" Where you at? "
" He disrespected me " etc
and most North Americans are completely oblivious to the fact that we are, as a continent, almost entirely pronouncing "aluminium" incorrectly.  Listen again to Evie's Accent Tag video if you don't believe me, and listen to how an Englishman pronounces it.
We don't even SPELL it correctly, here.  We leave out an "i"
AluminIum
Aluminum

Two things:  It is quite different when one mangles one's own language and when one mangles someone else's.  This is not entirely dissimilar to the fact that a black person can call a black person a "nigger" without it being the same as a white person calling a black person a "nigger."  Or a Jew can tell Jewish jokes that nonJews would be well-advised to not tell.

As a non-native speaker of French, I would personally not try to innovate the French language much, and, the vast majority of the time, would try to conform to the proper standards, insofar as I reasonably can.  Of course, you are free to offend the French as much as you wish to do.


Second, "aluminum" is correctly spelled and pronounced by many Americans, according to Oxford:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defini...h/aluminum

You can hear it pronounced there if you click on the little symbol next to the written pronunciation.

And notice, Oxford indicates that it is a different pronunciation for British English (as well as a different spelling as you note):

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defini.../aluminium

The fact that American English is different from British English does not make either wrong.  Both have evolved since America was started.  And according to scholarly research, in some ways, the British have altered the language more than the Americans have:

The differences between American and British are not due to Americans changing from a British standard. American is not corrupt British plus barbarisms. Rather, both American and British evolved in different ways from a common sixteenth-century ancestral standard. Present-day British is no closer to that earlier form than present-day American is. Indeed, in some ways present-day American is more conservative, that is, closer to the common original standard than is present-day British.

Some examples of American conservatives versus British innovation are these: Americans generally retain the r-sound in words like more and mother, whereas the British have lost it. Americans generally retain the ‘flat a’ of cat in path, calf, class,whereas the British have replaced it with the ‘broad a’ of father. Americans retain a secondary stress on the second syllable from the end of words like secretary and dictionary, whereas the British have lost both the stress and often the vowel, reducing the words to three syllables, ‘secret’ry’. Americans retain an old use of the verb guess to mean ‘think’ or ‘suppose’ (as in Geoffrey Chaucer’s catch-phrase ‘I gesse’). Americans have retained the past participle form gotten beside got, whereas the British have lost the former. (The British often suppose that Americans use only gotten, in fact they use both, but with different meanings: ‘I’ve got a cold’ = ‘I have a cold’ and ‘I’ve gotten a cold’ = ‘I’ve caught a cold’). Americans retain use of the subjunctivein what grammarians call ‘mandative’ expressions: ‘They insisted that he leave,’ whereas the British substituted for it other forms, such as ‘that he should leave’ or ‘that he left’.

http://www.pbs.org/speak/ahead/change/ruining/

The idea that Americans have bastardized the English language is just silly propaganda that has more to do with bitterness over losing the colonies than it has truth to it.

Oxford is right in their dictionaries about "aluminum" and "aluminium."  Both are correct, though the one is correct in Britain, and the other is correct in the U.S.  In many cases with words in English, different spellings and pronunciations are correct in the same place.


I believe that there are differences between French as spoken in France versus French as spoken in Québec, for the same reasons.  Languages evolve, and when they are evolving in relatively isolated areas, they tend to diverge.  Modern communication is helping to reunite languages, as Americans are both influenced by British TV and films, and the British are influenced by American TV and films.  And, of course, there is also such mutual influence with Australia, New Zealand, Canada (which, being close to the U.S., is and has been more like the U.S. than the others tend to be), and other places where English is spoken, which communicate with each other in the modern world.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Two things:  It is quite different when one mangles one's own language and when one mangles someone else's.  This is not entirely dissimilar to the fact that a black person can call a black person a "nigger" without it being the same as a white person calling a black person a "nigger."  Or a Jew can tell Jewish jokes that nonJews would be well-advised to not tell.

As a non-native speaker of French, I would personally not try to innovate the French language much, and, the vast majority of the time, would try to conform to the proper standards, insofar as I reasonably can.  Of course, you are free to offend the French as much as you wish to do.


Second, "aluminum" is correctly spelled and pronounced by many Americans, according to Oxford:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defini...h/aluminum

You can hear it pronounced there if you click on the little symbol next to the written pronunciation.

And notice, Oxford indicates that it is a different pronunciation for British English (as well as a different spelling as you note):

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defini.../aluminium

The fact that American English is different from British English does not make either wrong.  Both have evolved since America was started.  And according to scholarly research, in some ways, the British have altered the language more than the Americans have:

The differences between American and British are not due to Americans changing from a British standard. American is not corrupt British plus barbarisms. Rather, both American and British evolved in different ways from a common sixteenth-century ancestral standard. Present-day British is no closer to that earlier form than present-day American is. Indeed, in some ways present-day American is more conservative, that is, closer to the common original standard than is present-day British.

Some examples of American conservatives versus British innovation are these: Americans generally retain the r-sound in words like more and mother, whereas the British have lost it. Americans generally retain the ‘flat a’ of cat in path, calf, class,whereas the British have replaced it with the ‘broad a’ of father. Americans retain a secondary stress on the second syllable from the end of words like secretary and dictionary, whereas the British have lost both the stress and often the vowel, reducing the words to three syllables, ‘secret’ry’. Americans retain an old use of the verb guess to mean ‘think’ or ‘suppose’ (as in Geoffrey Chaucer’s catch-phrase ‘I gesse’). Americans have retained the past participle form gotten beside got, whereas the British have lost the former. (The British often suppose that Americans use only gotten, in fact they use both, but with different meanings: ‘I’ve got a cold’ = ‘I have a cold’ and ‘I’ve gotten a cold’ = ‘I’ve caught a cold’). Americans retain use of the subjunctivein what grammarians call ‘mandative’ expressions: ‘They insisted that he leave,’ whereas the British substituted for it other forms, such as ‘that he should leave’ or ‘that he left’.

http://www.pbs.org/speak/ahead/change/ruining/

The idea that Americans have bastardized the English language is just silly propaganda that has more to do with bitterness over losing the colonies than it has truth to it.

Oxford is right in their dictionaries about "aluminum" and "aluminium."  Both are correct, though the one is correct in Britain, and the other is correct in the U.S.  In many cases with words in English, different spellings and pronunciations are correct in the same place.


I believe that there are differences between French as spoken in France versus French as spoken in Québec, for the same reasons.  Languages evolve, and when they are evolving in relatively isolated areas, they tend to diverge.  Modern communication is helping to reunite languages, as Americans are both influenced by British TV and films, and the British are influenced by American TV and films.  And, of course, there is also such mutual influence with Australia, New Zealand, Canada (which, being close to the U.S., is and has been more like the U.S. than the others tend to be), and other places where English is spoken, which communicate with each other in the modern world.

Good response!! (And very useful article.)

But I have to warn you... you're starting to sound an awful lot like you're justifyin' EVILution.

(Actually, I wrote a very fun paper for one of my English 102 course requirements, documenting how language evolves in almost the exact same way as genes flow within a population. Prof was fascinated, but only gave me an A- because it was my major, and I "should have picked something I had to entirely research". Which is funny, because the research I did for that paper, on the non-biology linguistics side led me to the works of Noam Chomsky, who remains one of my favorite historical writers; he began his career as a linguist).

[MTL]

but look at how we bastardize english. 
Night .. Nite
Drive-Through .... Drive-Thru
Even the American spellings of certain words, like "honor" is less British than the Canadian "honour", etc
and nowadays, we replace whole sentences with a few letters, as in text messaging,
and it has become positively trendy to replace certain letters with numbers, like in the movie,
"Se7en"
or "5ive"
and consider the trademark backwards "N" in the Nine Inch Nails logo:

...not to mention how drastically I hear english changed in modern American TV, movies and music:
" Where you at? "
" He disrespected me " etc
and most North Americans are completely oblivious to the fact that we are, as a continent, almost entirely pronouncing "aluminium" incorrectly.  Listen again to Evie's Accent Tag video if you don't believe me, and listen to how an Englishman pronounces it.
We don't even SPELL it correctly, here.  We leave out an "i"
AluminIum
Aluminum

That was sort of my point. I'm an American, only half-Cajun in the first place, but even my full-blooded relatives don't bother with accent marks except in places where the distinct sound difference makes a distinct difference in the meaning of two identically-spelled words. Our language was deliberately wiped out by the American Anglophones, and what remains is heavily bastardized in the first place-- we'll throw words from English, Spanish, and even some Native American phrases in the middle of a French sentence, if going at full speed, when speaking aloud.

Cajun culture has a lot of things that are "traditional", but language is just a tool, to us.

There's a big controversy in Montréal about some youth utilizing "Frenglish".

neither side likes it.

As a Francophile Anglo in Montréal, I will always encounter SOME Francos who don't like ANY Anglos
(even Francophile Anglos), but if you speak french fluently and willingly, it helps.

but worse, I encounter Anglos who treat me as a traitor,
because I try to speak French whilst in Montréal;

they feel that English is discriminated against in Montréal,
and they're right, it is,

but even though I am Anglo,
I think, given the history of  British assimilation of the city,
I don't much blame Québécois for wanting to insist on French being spoken.

They are the minority (despite being here before the British and establishing cities and exploring most of North America and striking various treaties with the Mi'kmaq and Iroquois)
...and are just trying to keep their language, heritage, and culture alive.

what Anglo Montrealers don't understand is that if the Francos were to be lenient about English being spoken,
it is like water dripping on a stone, it wears away over a long time;
in a few generations it erodes the use of French in Québec in younger generations;
their goodwill is basically taken for granted.

I actually admire the crusty, unapologetic nature of French Canada in Québec for refusing to be politically correct and telling Anglo Canada to go fuck themselves because the french are stubbornly insisting on their heritage in Québec being upheld and the language being used....lest it be lost.

but probably 98% of Anglo Canada doesn't agree with me on this,
and would even roll their eyes and consider it obnoxious, stupid, and traitorous for me to say so.

And I am even from mostly British/Celtic descent, myself...more than many "Anglo" Canadians are.

("Anglo" in Canada refers mainly to using English as your mother tongue.  It does NOT necessarily mean descended from Anglo-Saxon ancestry).

[Rhondazvous]

Ouais, il est une histoire vraiment encourageant, surtout avec un jeune homme.

D'accord. Les bonhommes Canadien sont intelligents et surtous gentils, au moins!

Je suis allé au Canada il y a longtemps quand vous n'aviez pas besoin de passeport. S'il vous plaît excuser mon Français. Ce n'est pas natif, mais j'aime les langues de toutes sortes.

[Rhondazvous]

When I lived in Los Angeles, I was waiting for the bus one night at a depot that was a long concrete strip where the buses pulled up on either side. I could see pretty well then but was profoundly deaf. So this bus pulled up on the other side of the strip. Somehow the bus driver got my attention and got me to come over. Now it’s night and I’m a young woman and there was no one else on the strip. So I was cautious but went over to see what he wanted. He communicated to me that the bus I was waiting for had stopped running for the night. He was an honest man who did not try to take advantage of my situation. So he let me sit on his and delivered me right in front of my house.

Another time, I was on a crowded bus in New York City. A man say me standing there with my white cane and got up to let me sit down. This is New fucking York. If that doesn't raise your hope, I know not what will.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

That was sort of my point. I'm an American, only half-Cajun in the first place, but even my full-blooded relatives don't bother with accent marks except in places where the distinct sound difference makes a distinct difference in the meaning of two identically-spelled words. Our language was deliberately wiped out by the American Anglophones, and what remains is heavily bastardized in the first place-- we'll throw words from English, Spanish, and even some Native American phrases in the middle of a French sentence, if going at full speed, when speaking aloud.

Cajun culture has a lot of things that are "traditional", but language is just a tool, to us.

There's a big controversy in Montréal about some youth utilizing "Frenglish".

neither side likes it.

As a Francophile Anglo in Montréal, I will always encounter SOME Francos who don't like ANY Anglos
(even Francophile Anglos), but if you speak french fluently and willingly, it helps.

but worse, I encounter Anglos who treat me as a traitor,
because I try to speak French whilst in Montréal;

they feel that English is discriminated against in Montréal,
and they're right, it is,

but even though I am Anglo,
I think, given the history of  British assimilation of the city,
I don't much blame Québécois for wanting to insist on French being spoken.

They are the minority (despite being here before the British and establishing cities and exploring most of North America and striking various treaties with the Mi'kmaq and Iroquois)
...and are just trying to keep their language, heritage, and culture alive.

what Anglo Montrealers don't understand is that if the Francos were to be lenient about English being spoken,
it is like water dripping on a stone, it wears away over a long time;
in a few generations it erodes the use of French in Québec in younger generations;
their goodwill is basically taken for granted.

I actually admire the crusty, unapologetic nature of French Canada in Québec for refusing to be politically correct and telling Anglo Canada to go fuck themselves because the french are stubbornly insisting on their heritage in Québec being upheld and the language being used....lest it be lost.

but probably 98% of Anglo Canada doesn't agree with me on this,
and would even roll their eyes and consider it obnoxious, stupid, and traitorous for me to say so.

And I am even from mostly British/Celtic descent, myself...more than many "Anglo" Canadians are.

("Anglo" in Canada refers mainly to using English as your mother tongue.  It does NOT necessarily mean descended from Anglo-Saxon ancestry).

I don't think the Québecois had a treaty with the Mi'kmaq; but we Acadiens did. My ancestor, Alexandre Broussard dit Beausoleil, was actually put on trial for "consorting" with native women. He was relatively wealthy because of his cattle herds, and the father of a girl to whom he had been expected to wed filed the complaint, and withdrew the charges when he "agreed" to marry her after all. 

During the Seven Years War, he and his brother and their children fought alongside a band of Mi'kmaq to decimate British supply lines in the area, guerrilla style. Toward the end of the war, when surrender became a foregone conclusion, he surrendered along with a few hundred civilians they had been protecting in-hiding, in exchange for the promise that they would be cared for by the British (a promise they mostly kept). But the Acadiens were not allied with the Québecois French, and indeed, their refusal to join in combat on the French side originally is what led to our near-extermination when the British found that we would not fight for them, either. We maintained a peaceful and mainly-isolated colony for 150 years prior to the war, entirely without loyalty to one of the competing empires, and at friendly peace with our native neighbors.

I know the bitter struggle of the Québecois to maintain their culture and identity, and that it has led to a lot of bitterness and even violence on both sides, but that is not a part of Cajun history. From the very beginning, we have always been seen as "low-brow" French peasantry, even after being expelled from Acadie and coming to Louisiana, first by the Québecois and English before expulsion, then by the Creoles in southeast Louisiana (prior to becoming part of the USA) and later by the Americans who set about to "educate" us and eradicate our language like they did to Native Americans here, and so we just don't bother to maintain "fancy" traditions of any sort, even with language.

[MTL]

and most North Americans are completely oblivious to the fact that we are, as a continent, almost entirely pronouncing "aluminium" incorrectly.  Listen again to Evie's Accent Tag video if you don't believe me, and listen to how an Englishman pronounces it.
We don't even SPELL it correctly, here.  We leave out an "i"
AluminIum
Aluminum

Two things:  It is quite different when one mangles one's own language and when one mangles someone else's.  This is not entirely dissimilar to the fact that a black person can call a black person a "nigger" without it being the same as a white person calling a black person a "nigger."  Or a Jew can tell Jewish jokes that nonJews would be well-advised to not tell.

As a non-native speaker of French, I would personally not try to innovate the French language much, and, the vast majority of the time, would try to conform to the proper standards, insofar as I reasonably can.  Of course, you are free to offend the French as much as you wish to do.

I will readily agree that mangling your own language is a different proposition from mangling someone else's.

As far as my being "free to offend the French as much as (I) wish to do"....I wish to do no such thing, and I think I spelled that out when I said that I try to specifically use accents as much as possible out of sensitivity to French Canadian feelings.

My good friend in France overlooks my lack of use of typed accents because of the keyboard difficulty, he just laughs at me and he knows I love French, besides, we speak it, on video, rather than just typing it, much of the time.

The fact that American English is different from British English does not make either wrong.  Both have evolved since America was started.  And according to scholarly research, in some ways, the British have altered the language more than the Americans have

Again, I don't disagree with that.  The same is true, yet again, for Québec French.  It is, in many ways, closer to "Old French" than the french that is spoken in France, today, because the speakers of Colonial french were, in large measure, isolated from France after emigrating to the New World, and the french spoken in France, today, evolved along different lines.

Languages evolve, and when they are evolving in relatively isolated areas, they tend to diverge.  Modern communication is helping to reunite languages, as Americans are both influenced by British TV and films, and the British are influenced by American TV and films.  And, of course, there is also such mutual influence with Australia, New Zealand, Canada (which, being close to the U.S., is and has been more like the U.S. than the others tend to be), and other places where English is spoken, which communicate with each other in the modern world

You're kind of preaching to the choir, here, Pyrrho.

I will be the first to defend the "living" nature of languages as they evolve; I have done so, repeatedly.

I think your response is due to the fact that I utilized the term "bastardized"
which sounds like it has a negative connotation;

but I'm merely acknowledging that bastardization of language DOES occur;
I am not necessarily saying it is entirely a bad thing.

Bastardizing a language is part of what makes it a "living" language.

Now, I DO dislike to see literacy, grammar, vocabulary, and comprehension being lost, as language evolves;
I wish it could be said that ALL linguistic evolution occured without something being sacrificed, along the way.

But the mere fact of evolution of different dialects does NOT make a language invalid, to me.

I've posted this video, before, I will re-post it to make my point,
it is a husband and wife couple who play music together at a francophone festival in Missouri.

He is Missouri French, himself, by birth,
she is not, but she studied Standard French for years before meeting him,
and she had to open her mind to the differences between the french she had studied,
versus the french she heard her husband and his family, speaking,
and realize the legitimacy of the french of his dialect:





So, that being said, I must object to this part of your reply:

The idea that Americans have bastardized the English language is just silly propaganda that has more to do with bitterness over losing the colonies than it has truth to it.

bold, mine.

If you want to argue the legitimacy of American English vs British English....fine.  I'll acknowledge that.

If you want to argue that the Brits bastardize their own language....fine.  I've acknowledged that, too.

But that part of your reply (above) was an OPINION, and is entirely a matter of perspective.

The Americans HAVE bastardized the English language.

It didn't bastardize itself.

And I'm okay with it.

I bastardize the English language, myself, all the time, and not always on purpose.

But at least I own it.

I would never suggest that the idea that the bastardization of English
of which I myself, am guilty,
is nothing more than mere "propaganda" born of someone else's bitterness.

[MTL]

There's a big controversy in Montréal about some youth utilizing "Frenglish".

neither side likes it.

As a Francophile Anglo in Montréal, I will always encounter SOME Francos who don't like ANY Anglos
(even Francophile Anglos), but if you speak french fluently and willingly, it helps.

but worse, I encounter Anglos who treat me as a traitor,
because I try to speak French whilst in Montréal;

they feel that English is discriminated against in Montréal,
and they're right, it is,

but even though I am Anglo,
I think, given the history of  British assimilation of the city,
I don't much blame Québécois for wanting to insist on French being spoken.

They are the minority (despite being here before the British and establishing cities and exploring most of North America and striking various treaties with the Mi'kmaq and Iroquois)
...and are just trying to keep their language, heritage, and culture alive.

what Anglo Montrealers don't understand is that if the Francos were to be lenient about English being spoken,
it is like water dripping on a stone, it wears away over a long time;
in a few generations it erodes the use of French in Québec in younger generations;
their goodwill is basically taken for granted.

I actually admire the crusty, unapologetic nature of French Canada in Québec for refusing to be politically correct and telling Anglo Canada to go fuck themselves because the french are stubbornly insisting on their heritage in Québec being upheld and the language being used....lest it be lost.

but probably 98% of Anglo Canada doesn't agree with me on this,
and would even roll their eyes and consider it obnoxious, stupid, and traitorous for me to say so.

And I am even from mostly British/Celtic descent, myself...more than many "Anglo" Canadians are.

("Anglo" in Canada refers mainly to using English as your mother tongue.  It does NOT necessarily mean descended from Anglo-Saxon ancestry).

I don't think the Québecois had a treaty with the Mi'kmaq; but we Acadiens did. My ancestor, Alexandre Broussard dit Beausoleil, was actually put on trial for "consorting" with native women. He was relatively wealthy because of his cattle herds, and the father of a girl to whom he had been expected to wed filed the complaint, and withdrew the charges when he "agreed" to marry her after all. 

During the Seven Years War, he and his brother and their children fought alongside a band of Mi'kmaq to decimate British supply lines in the area, guerrilla style. Toward the end of the war, when surrender became a foregone conclusion, he surrendered along with a few hundred civilians they had been protecting in-hiding, in exchange for the promise that they would be cared for by the British (a promise they mostly kept). But the Acadiens were not allied with the Québecois French, and indeed, their refusal to join in combat on the French side originally is what led to our near-extermination when the British found that we would not fight for them, either. We maintained a peaceful and mainly-isolated colony for 150 years prior to the war, entirely without loyalty to one of the competing empires, and at friendly peace with our native neighbors.

I know the bitter struggle of the Québecois to maintain their culture and identity, and that it has led to a lot of bitterness and even violence on both sides, but that is not a part of Cajun history. From the very beginning, we have always been seen as "low-brow" French peasantry, even after being expelled from Acadie and coming to Louisiana, first by the Québecois and English before expulsion, then by the Creoles in southeast Louisiana (prior to becoming part of the USA) and later by the Americans who set about to "educate" us and eradicate our language like they did to Native Americans here, and so we just don't bother to maintain "fancy" traditions of any sort, even with language.

You are absolutely right.  No arguments.  I was painting in rather broad strokes to get my point across about Anglos and Francos, in Canada, today.
I could go into the entire history of New France, Creole, Acadien/Cajun,
....and even Huguenots...but we'd be here, awhile 

EDIT: I sincerely hope I didn't offend you with my generalization. I know the story of the Acadiens and the Mi'kmaq; I know the story of New France and the British Colonies and Québec....I actually have Huguenot ancestry, myself, and THAT's a whole nother story, too.