VILLE PLATTE, La. — “Qui c’est qui parle?” Jim Soileau asked, his baritone filling the studio of radio station KVPI and traveling across the Cajun prairie.
Who’s speaking?
It was a Monday morning, and the phone lines were open for “La Tasse de Café” (“The Cup of Coffee”), one of the last vestiges of French-language talk programming on Louisiana radio.
Mr. Soileau, 77, arrived at the station before daybreak to announce the news in French. At 8 a.m., he joined the station’s general manager, Mark Layne, to welcome the voices that began trickling in from the rice farms, tiny towns and two-lane highways in and around Evangeline Parish.
“Qui c’est qui parle?”
Some callers were senior citizens, eager to reminisce in the fluent French they had learned around their parents’ breakfast tables. Some were younger, and clumsier with the language. There were the regular callers, like Buffy from Mamou, who riffed on the news and the weather. There were the merely bilingual-curious and the clever conteurs telling wry tales of Louisiana life and often flip-flopping, like Mr. Soileau, from French to English and back.
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Another caller told a story about the country music star Porter Wagoner. Someone else recalled a former sheriff, and how well he cooked a duck.
“Un autre call, Jim,” Mr. Layne said.
“Qui c’est qui parle?”
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
A version of this article appears in print on February 15, 2015, on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Working Toward a French Renaissance in Louisiana. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
