In the mid ‘70s I worked for a short time in Ireland. That was just at the start of the Gaelic language movement. Most all I talked to thought it was a stupid move.
Fast forward to Catalan. We just finished the brilliant Netflix series called “If I hadn’t Met You”. We hate dubbed movies, so we listened in Catalan.
I “get by” in Spanish and am awful in French. My wife is fluent in Spanish and “gets by” in French. We were both pretty much lost for most of the movie and impressed the hell out of ourselves whenever we could pick out a Spanish or French phrase.
Good - just what we need - another patois. We’re already bombarded with French Creole in Florida.
I live in Florida, but in North Florida, where we have few Haitians.
Bizarrely enough, Gen. Georges Biassou, leader of the bloody and hideous Haitian rebellion, is buried in St Augustine. He had fled to the Dominican Republic after his bloody rebellion failed, and the Spanish took him in because they were being attacked by the French and hated the French and because they were afraid that Biassou would be disruptive to their own relationships with the African population. Many of the Africans were free and most could be, since the Spanish did not practice chattel slavery, as did the British. The French had technically been forbidden to practice chattel slavery, but they did.
So we had Haitian visitors come up all the time. They were always very nice and fun to meet because they arrived in wildly painted jitneys...but I felt bad for them. Between the normal corruption and dysfunctional Marxism of their country and the destruction the Clinton Foundation had brought in, these poor folks had no chance.