I am unfamiliar with New Orleans' history and am confused by the article: "The Second Municipality, which the Americans controlled..." and "The First Municipality included all of the French Quarter..."

Then I read "In the First Municipality, English was the language of commerce and government; in the other two, French dominated."

Did the Second Municipality, American-controlled, have the French language dominate? Or is one of the preceding sets of statements off a bit?

The second set of statements is in error...it should read "In the Second Municipality, English...".

Thanks.

A quirk resulting from this is that New Orleanians refer to medians as "neutral grounds," as there was a median separating the american sector from the french quarter where trade between the two occured(this is now canal st.).

Isn't "neutral ground" for "median" a British usage?

I'm British and I didn't recognise either term. I had to head for Wikipedia to translate to British English ("central reservation").

I was wrong. My thinking seems to have been "I've seen that before; the British have a different term; ergo it's British." In fact, "neutral ground" was familiar from Walker Percy's novel The Moviegoer, which is set in New Orleans.

Good to see the verb "whap" getting an outing. Is that a word with which American readers are familiar?

In the south it is a colloquialism used by older generations. I heard it all the time when I was a child, but it has fallen out of favor (even in the south) with the rise of TV English.

Grew up in Northeast Ohio, never knew there was anything unusual about it until your comment.

I don't know if I should be impressed by their ingenuity or disgusted by their reasoning.

Divide & Conquer is an old trick, no ingenuity there.