Cajun French is not Parisian French. It is a dialect that developed over 200 years in isolation from France, shaped by Acadian, Native American, Spanish, and African influences, and spoken in kitchens and dancehalls across the Louisiana prairie long after it disappeared from schools and public life. In the mid-20th century, children in Louisiana were beaten for speaking French at school. By the 1960s, a generation had grown up deliberately not teaching their language to their children — ashamed of what made them different. The 1974 revival that produced Festivals Acadiens also produced CODOFIL, the Council for Development of French in Louisiana, which began fighting to bring the language back into schools and public life. Today French immersion programs operate in Lafayette Parish public schools. The University of Louisiana at Lafayette offers the only francophone PhD program in the Western Hemisphere. The language is not dead. It is battered and diminished and fighting back. When you hear an old man in a dance hall give instructions to the band in French, you are hearing something that almost didn't survive.