In France and other Francophone countries, patois has been used to describe non-standard French and regional languages such as Picard, Occitan and Franco-Provençal since 1643, and Catalan after 1700 when the king Louis XIV banned its use.
[3] The word assumes the view of such languages being backward, countrified and unlettered; thus the term patois is potentially considered offensive when used by outsiders.
"[4] In France and Switzerland, however, the term patois no longer holds any offensive connotation, and has become a celebrated and distinguished variant of the numerous local tongues.
Additionally, some islands have Creole dialects influenced by French, Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, German, Dutch, Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese and others.
Antillean Creole, in addition to French, is spoken in Lesser Antilles and includes vocabulary and grammar of African and Carib origin.