Rediscovered 1935 recordings capture earliest spoken Louisiana Creole

Cambridge linguist Oliver Mayeux has uncovered 1935 field recordings by Black scholar Lorenzo Dow Turner, the earliest known spoken audio of Louisiana Creole and the only recordings of its New Orleans variety. The aluminium discs, labelled simply 'Louisiana', feature voices like sharecropper Emma Benoit, born 1868. Only a few thousand elderly native speakers remain today.