Michael speaking Kouri-Vini

This video was recorded by Michael Gisclair in the U.S. state of Florida, where he lives. Kouri-Vini, also known as Louisiana Creole French or simply as Louisiana Creole, is spoken by as many as 10,000 people, primarily in the southern parishes of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is also spoken by small communities in Texas, Illinois, and California. A creole language of French origin, Louisiana Creole is closely related to other languages throughout the Caribbean, including Haitian, and the Antillean creoles of St. Lucia, Dominica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique — all languages that emerged at the 18th-century convergence of French, Spanish, and West African languages, especially Wolof, Yoruba, Ewe, Kikongo, and the Mande languages. Thanks in part to English-only policies in the twentieth-century United States, Louisiana Creole faced a steep decline; today, it is considered an endangered language by UNESCO. However, thanks to the work of activists like Michael, who leverages YouTube to create freely available content in the language, Louisiana Creole persists.