Cajun Country slang: regional words, sayings, and how locals talk.
This page collects regional vocabulary from Cajun Country: slang you'll hear in conversation, sayings that travel through families, and pronunciations that mark a person as a local. Pick a city to narrow the list, or keep "All cities" to see the full Cajun Country picture.
20 words
To do the grocery shopping.
A Cajun dance party.
Cajun: how to eat a boiled crawfish.
New Orleans: greeting meaning 'how are you?'
A Louisiana corn dish tied to Cajun and Native foodways.
Cajun Country — the Acadiana region of south Louisiana — speaks an English seasoned by French. Descendants of Acadian exiles from Canada built a culture where Louisiana French and English have traded words for two centuries, and the result is unmistakable: "lagniappe" (a little something extra), "cher" as an endearment, "making groceries" for shopping, and "pass a good time." Food, family, and music carry much of the vocabulary, from boudin and étouffée to fais do-do. Even speakers who never learned French use its rhythm and its words every day.
Cajun English is the dialect of south Louisiana's Acadiana region, spoken by descendants of French Acadian settlers. It carries heavy Louisiana French influence in vocabulary ("lagniappe", "cher", "make groceries"), pronunciation, and sentence rhythm.
"Lagniappe" (LAN-yap) means a small extra gift or bonus given for free — the thirteenth doughnut in a baker's dozen, a little something thrown in. It came into Louisiana English from Louisiana French, which borrowed it from Spanish.
They are related but not identical. "Cajun" refers to the Acadian-descended culture and its French/English; "Louisiana Creole" describes a separate French-based creole language and the broader Creole community. Their vocabularies overlap but have distinct histories.
