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Acadian French (le français acadien) is a variety or dialect of French spoken by francophone Acadians in the Canadian Maritimes provinces, the Saint John River Valley in northern Maine, the Magdalen Islands and Havre-Saint-Pierre, along the St. Lawrence's north shore (where the original Acadian is probably best heard due to the longtime isolation of these localities. A variant of Canadian French and like its sister dialect Quebec French, Acadian French started to diverge from what we now know as Metropolitan French about 400 years ago at the time of the French colonization of the Americas. Some francophones from overseas say that Acadian French sounds archaic, citing characteristics such as pronunciation and lexical items (vocabulary) reminiscent of the language of Rabelais and Molière. Cajun French, a regional dialect spoken in Southern Louisiana in the United States, is another off-shoot of older forms of Acadian French.