Louisiana Spanish

Since the arrival of the first Spanish speakers nearly five hundred years ago, diverse Spanish-speaking communities have called Louisiana home. Researchers have identified three distinct dialects of Spanish that arose during the colonial period and endured into the late twentieth century, preserving traditions like songs, foodways, and place names.

In St. Bernard Parish, communities of Isleños, the descendants of colonists from the Canary Islands, preserved their unique dialect of Spanish, together with a local tradition of songs, known as décimas, well into the twenty-first century. Canary Islanders also settled along Bayou Lafourche, in Ascension and Assumption Parishes, where their Spanish dialect was influenced by their French and indigenous neighbors, and came to be called Bruli Spanish, named lands they inhabited which had been cleared by burning (from the French, “brûlé,” for “burned”). Preceding both of these settlements were colonists at Los Adaes, in present-day Natchitoches Parish, whose descendants maintained a unique dialect derived from Mexican Spanish, known as Adaeseño, in communities along both sides of the Sabine River.

Louisiana Spanish is intended to engage public audiences with these three Spanish-language traditions in a fun, creative, and engaging format that connects users directly with our digital collections featuring the voices and lived experiences of the last generations of speakers of Louisiana’s Spanish dialects. There are also organized efforts by researchers, members of the Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb, and other community members to support the revitalization of Adaeseño Spanish in Natchitoches and Sabine Parishes; and the Los Isleños Heritage and Cultural Society of St. Bernard maintains this webpage on Isleño Spanish. Please get in touch with us at the Institute for Public Ethnomusicology for more information and with any questions.