Amer(Usa) New Orleans (1866)LIFE Photo Collection
I was 17 years old when I decided that enough was enough; I would be a victim of circumstance no longer. That antiquated, played-out script that you often hear younger Creoles use, “My grandmother spoke Creole”, or “I have a cousin who spoke it”, and the age-old excuses that always accompanied it like, “they didn’t teach it to us” or “they only spoke it when they didn’t want us to know what they were saying”, would no longer suffice for me. I had made up my mind. I decided I was going to learn Kouri-Vini, known to the world as Louisiana Creole.
House with Cast Iron Grill Work, New Orleans, Louisiana (1936) by Walker EvansThe J. Paul Getty Museum
I was so far removed from the language. No one in my immediate family spoke it nor cared to and there were some, still, that didn’t know that we came from such a linguistic heritage. The ones that did speak Kouri-Vini, we didn’t know them very well and had little access to them. Still, this could not be an excuse as to why I did not speak it.
Old Creole Days: A Story of Creole Life. (1899) by George W. Cable and H.M. BeachThe J. Paul Getty Museum
I remember a time when the only resources to learn my family’s heritage language were in the reference section of the library. I took myself to the Goodwood library branch in East Baton Rouge Parish every day after school and all day on the weekends and submersed myself for hours in the Valdman’s Dictionary of Louisiana Creole, The Louisiana Creole Dialect by James F Broussard and many more.
New Orleans Mardi Gras (1939-06) by William VandivertLIFE Photo Collection
I had spent so much time learning from written materials that I had become a fluent reader and writer of the language. But the very first time someone spoke to me in Kouri-Vini, I was like a deer caught in headlights. I soon realized that for maybe a year, the only Kouri-Vini speaker I’d ever talked to was myself! This was a whole new ball game.
‘Palace of Education’ (?) op het terrein van de Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 1904, te St. Louis (?) (1904 - 1905) by onbekendRijksmuseum
It’s been 15 years now and what began with a determination to learn my family’s heritage language has dramatically grown. Since then, I’ve been translating documents for the government, pharmaceutical vendors, novelists, children’s book authors, movie scripts and more. I graduated from teaching Kouri-Vini on a conference call to teaching at Louisiana State University and online after developing my own curriculum.
Since my time in this movement, I’ve taught upwards of 200 people to speak Kouri-Vini and in my music, I’ve begun to write and perform songs in Kouri-Vini; in fact I plan to release two versions of my upcoming sophomore project in both English and Kouri-Vini.
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Fast forward 20 years later to 2022, after much hard work and diligence, I’ve become not only a fluent speaker – and reader/writer – but also one of its most notable names in our preservation efforts; an honor I accept with humility and graciousness.
Creole woman, Mansura (between 1973 and 1974) by Douglas Baz and Charles H. TraubThe Historic New Orleans Collection
I can’t begin to describe the feelings that bubble up inside when I think of all of the people who thought it an impossible to feat to reclaim their heritage language and pass it on.
[The French Quarter. New Orleans, LA] (1938) by Medellin, OctavioSouthern Methodist University Libraries Digital Collections
Live and Learn Louisiana Creole with Woolaroo
One opportunity to Louisiana Creole is at your fingertips with Woolaroo, the app that turns the camera on your phone into a portal for learning endangered languages. Start exploring the world in Louisiana Creole by pointing your camera at your surroundings, and seeing the world translated into an ancestral language before your eyes.
Text and audio by Clif St. Laurent.
