Alternate History

The Dream That Didn’t Fade: A French Louisiana That Could Have Been

In 2025alt Louisiana, French is not forgotten—it’s lived. Étienne Marchand remembers a dream of heritage, language, and the homeland that wasn’t lost.

The Archivist of Bayou Elsewhere

— 2 min read

by Étienne Marchand

They told me Louisiana was once part of France, but when I came here, I couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t see it. It was like someone had buried it beneath strip malls and drive-thrus, paved over old prayers with asphalt and slogans. I came here hoping for something else—hoping to find a place where the language of my grandmother still danced through the air, where café au lait wasn’t just on the menu but in the morning mist.

I dreamed of a place where French wasn't a memory—it was a melody. Where signs still carried the curl of a cedilla and children learned their "bonjour" before their "hello." A place that didn’t apologize for its accent.

That dream didn’t come true. Not in this Louisiana. But I never gave up on it.

In the 2025alt timeline, that Louisiana exists.

After World War II, when France reached out to its former colonies with the Francophonie Française initiative—offering cultural and language centers in consulates around the world—Louisiana didn’t just shrug and sip its sweet tea. The state legislature embraced it. They passed a bill requiring French language instruction for all students before graduation, and not just French: Spanish was encouraged too, as a nod to the layered heritage of the state.

It started small: schools offering French alongside English, public libraries with shelves of bilingual books, state-sponsored festivals that honored the Acadian, Caribbean, and African threads woven into Louisiana’s cultural braid.

And it grew.

By the 1980s, news broadcasts opened in both English and French. Cajun music saw a golden age—not as a novelty, but as a norm. Kids in Baton Rouge could switch between languages without blinking. In Lafayette, trilingual signage was common—English, French, and Spanish.

Tourists came for the food, but they stayed for the soul.

And me? In that timeline, I didn’t feel like an outsider. My grandmother's voice echoed in the classroom. My children brought home poems in the language she used to sing. And for once, the dream didn’t feel like longing. It felt like home.

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