VTF Newsletter - April 2016

Notre Premier Bulletin

Louisiana French
Le Virtual Table Français

April 2016

Let's start this off with a huge thank you to everyone who is helping to make the VTF what it is. The contributors, the admins, the people who are willing to ask questions and the ones who answer the questions.  We are all missing the days of our youth and the people who made it special.

We recognize that the burden of keeping our language and culture alive and prospering, lands squarely on each of our shoulders. We realize too, we can no longer say, "Someone should do something". There is no someone. There is only us. If we (the people who are living it today) don't do it, it won't get done and it all fades away.

If you would like to receive our monthly bulletin, please subscribe with your email address on the right side of the screen. There is a brief verification process so make sure you validate it with the verification email in your inbox.

We've experienced several waves of new members. From the looks of things, we're on track to exceed 20,000 members by our April 14, 2016 two year anniversary of the opening of our group. This, to me, is indicative of how many of us yearn to see our language and culture preserved and to prosper.

For our new members who may not have watched it yet, please watch our group introductory video. (Yes, it's getting time to remake it, I know. :-) )

We only have a few rules on the page, please take a minute to read them and the page description.

Announcements

We're pleased to announce that Boisy Pitre and Wade Falcon have joined our admin team. Wade also writes a blog http://earlycajunmusic.blogspot.com. We're coordinating efforts to match up a word / phrase of the day with lyrics from cajuns songs he and friends have transcribed.

Please welcome them!

In the news

Article on Myrtle Place Elementrary and their French Immersion Program
http://www.crt.state.la.us/cultural-development/codofil/news/myrtle-place-elementary-establishes-french-immersion-program

Latest on learning materials

As many of you know, we put forth volunteer efforts to produce materials to help people in their quest for knowledge. Everything from word lists, meme's, link lists, audio and video's.

Our latest video is an attempt to be a little more visual in the lesson and makes use of a model of a 3D hand naming the parts of the hand in French. Thank you, Ms. Phoebe Trotter, for narrating the video.

Because of how frequently people are asking, we have also created a document which lists some sources for Louisiana / Cajun French audio. Hope it helps.

In the works

We have been working with some of our motivated young up and coming French speakers and the future torch holders of our Language and Culture to put together somethings to target a younger audience. (While making the information still relevant to the adults.)

Some of the things we have been working on are social media "Meme's" with Louisiana French / Cajun French captioning and a few instructional youtube video's identifying parts of the human body. We're incorporating 3D images and popular characters in hopes of capturing and keeping the attention of the youth.

Research

Our friend Christophé Landry has a brief survey he's doing for some research he's doing related to language, culture and identity. It's very brief and does not require any identifying information. If you haven't taken the survey yet, please do: https://kwiksurveys.com/s/fShcdxmj#/

French Tables

Here is a list of the known area French Tables. If you know of a French Table not on our list, please notify us either by comment here or via our Facebook Group.

Upcoming Events

UL is having a "History Harvest"
History Harvest on April 9 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Here is the link to the article in TheAdvocate discussing it: http://theadvocate.com/news/acadiana/15279698-123/harvesting-history-ul-lafayette-students-seek-artifacts-for-online-archive-of-acadianas-french-herit

The Louisiana Travel web page has an excellent Louisiana Events section and I highly recommend checking it out as well as the Louisiana Association of Fairs and Festivals.

Facebook Group Page: www.facebook.com/groups/cajunfrench
Our affiliated site pages: 
https://sites.google.com/site/learningcajun/ 
https://sites.google.com/site/louisianafrenchaplacetostart/