French native finds similarities between Cajun and French culture

**~~Leo Iscariot~~** · 06-29-2015, 05:29 PM

Zoe Dupuis-Roy, of Loudun, France, poses Friday for a photo in the Laurel Valley Village Store.

By Maki Somosot
Staff Writer
Published: Friday, June 26, 2015 at 5:34 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, June 26, 2015 at 5:34 p.m.

French native Zoe Dupuis-Roy is a real-life example of the decades-long bond between the twin cities of Thibodaux and Loudun, France.

A recent high school graduate, Dupuis-Roy, 18, is in the middle of wrapping up a six-week tourism internship in Thibodaux, as required by her pre-college program in Loudun. She works as an assistant tour guide at the E.D. White Plantation Home and Museum and as an assistant storekeeper at the Laurel Valley Village Store.

Aside from helping show foreign visitors around both landmarks, Dupuis-Roy said she also enjoys translating their marketing materials from English to French, which helps her refine her verbal translation skills. She plans to study English full-time at college while taking up German and Italian so she can become a professional translator.

“I like the Cajun culture and food, and the fact that many people still speak French,” Dupuis-Roy said, adding that the similarities reminded her of home. “It’s so close to France that even New Orleans is translated to Nouvelle Orleans.”

However, she admitted it was a bit of a challenge to get used to Cajun French, which doesn’t involve accents and uses different words and grammatical rules compared to European French.

“It’s not the same thing at all. It’s really another language,” Dupuis-Roy added. “When I do my sentence, I’m going to use my verb at a certain time. They don’t. It’s always the infinitive part.”

Although she can understand Cajun French most of the time, the other day she thought she heard a man use the European French word for “gun” when he was simply saying that he was about to leave.

Herbert Adams, E.D. White Plantation Home caretaker and one of Dupuis-Roy’s supervisors, said she also taught him about the differences between two ostensibly similar languages

“We learned our French from speaking with people,” said Adams, who grew up speaking a specific Cajun dialect in Bayou Boeuf but had never written it out for himself. “She showed me what written French looked like and how different it was.”

Although Dupuis-Roy said she expected to see the typical Southern landscape with sugar cane fields and plantations, she did not expect the humidity, which she said is uncommon in temperate Loudun. And while Cajun food reminded her of what is served at home, she also didn’t expect that much of it would be fried.

Dupuis-Roy, who will be leaving Monday to go back to Loudun, said she will “always remember the sweetness of the people and that Louisiana is full of nice people.” She has been staying with a local family in Thibodaux for the last few weeks.

“That’s really human. I knew that people were going to help me, but not that much. So it’s really awesome,” she said.

http://www.dailycomet.com/article/20...9764?p=1&tc=pg