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Haitian Creole
kreyòl ayisyen
Pronunciation	[kɣejɔl ajisjɛ̃]
Native to	Haiti
Ethnicity	Haitians
Native speakers	13 million (2020)
Language family	French Creole Circum-Caribbean French Haitian Creole
Writing system	Latin (Haitian Creole alphabet)
Official status
Official language in	Haiti
Recognised minority language in	Bahamas Cuba Dominican Republic Costa Rica
Regulated by	Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen (Haitian Creole Academy)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ht
ISO 639-2	hat
ISO 639-3	hat
Glottolog	hait1244  Haitian
Linguasphere	51-AAC-cb
IETF	ht
Distribution of Haitian Creole, areas in dark blue is where it is spoken by a majority, areas in light blue is where it is spoken by a minority.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Haitian Creole (/ˈheɪʃən ˈkriːoʊl/; Haitian Creole: kreyòl ayisyen, [kɣejɔl ajisjɛ̃]; French: créole haïtien, [kʁe.ɔl a.i.sjɛ̃]), or simply Creole (Haitian Creole: kreyòl), is a French-based creole language spoken by 10 to 12 million people worldwide, and is one of the two official languages of Haiti (the other being French), where it is the native language of the vast majority of the population. Northern, Central, and Southern dialects are the three main dialects of Haitian Creole. The Northern dialect is predominantly spoken in Cap-Haïtien, Central is spoken in Port-au-Prince, and Southern in the Cayes area.

The language emerged from contact between French settlers and enslaved Africans during the Atlantic slave trade in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in the 17th and 18th centuries. Although its vocabulary largely derives from 18th-century French, its grammar is that of a West African Volta-Congo language branch, particularly the Fongbe and Igbo languages. It also has influences from Spanish, English, Portuguese, Taíno, and other West African languages. It is not mutually intelligible with standard French, and it also has its own distinctive grammar. Some estimate that Haitians are the largest community in the world to speak a modern creole language, others estimate that more people speak Nigerian Pidgin.

Haitian Creole's use in communities and schools has been contentious since at least the 19th century. Some Haitians view French as inextricably linked to the legacy of colonialism and language compelled on the population by conquerers, while Creole has been maligned by francophones as a miseducated person's French. Until the late 20th century, Haitian presidents spoke only standard French to their fellow citizens, and until the 21st century, all instruction at Haitian elementary schools was in modern standard French, a second language to most of their students.

Haitian Creole is also spoken in regions that have received migration from Haiti, including other Caribbean islands, French Guiana, Martinique, France, Canada (particularly Quebec) and the United States (including the U.S. state of Louisiana). It is related to Antillean Creole, spoken in the Lesser Antilles, and to other French-based creole languages.

Etymology

The word creole comes from the Portuguese term crioulo, which means "a person raised in one's house" and from the Latin creare, which means "to create, make, bring forth, produce, beget". In the New World, the term originally referred to Europeans born and raised in overseas colonies (as opposed to the European-born peninsulares). To be "as rich as a Creole" at one time was a popular saying boasted in Paris during the colonial years of Haiti (then named Saint-Domingue), for being the most lucrative colony in the world. The noun Creole, soon began to refer to the language spoken there as well, as it still is today.

Origins

Haitian Creole contains elements from both the Romance group of Indo-European languages through its superstrate, French, as well as influences from African languages. There are many theories on the formation of the Haitian Creole language.

One theory estimates that Haitian Creole developed between 1680 and 1740. During the 17th century, French and Spanish colonizers produced tobacco, cotton, and sugar cane on the island. Throughout this period, the population was made of roughly equal numbers of engagés (white workers), gens de couleur libres (free people of colour) and slaves. The economy shifted more decisively into sugar production about 1690, just before the French colony of Saint-Domingue was officially recognized in 1697. The sugar crops needed a much larger labor force, which led to an increase in slave trafficking . In the 18th century an estimated 800,000 West Africans were enslaved and brought to Saint-Domingue. As the slave population increased, the proportion of French-speaking colonists decreased.

Many African slaves in the colony had come from Niger-Congo-speaking territory, and particularly speakers of Kwa languages, such as Gbe from West Africa and the Central Tano languages, and Bantu languages from Central Africa. Singler suggests that the number of Bantu speakers decreased while the number of Kwa speakers increased, with Gbe being the most dominant group. The first fifty years of Saint‑Domingue's sugar boom coincided with emergent Gbe predominance in the French Caribbean. In the interval during which Singler hypothesizes the language evolved, the Gbe population was around 50% of the kidnapped enslaved population.

Classical French (français classique) and langues d'oïl (Norman, Poitevin and Saintongeais dialects, Gallo and Picard) were spoken during the 17th and 18th centuries in Saint‑Domingue, as well as in New France and French West Africa. Slaves lacked a common means of communication and as a result would try to learn French to communicate with one another, though most were denied a formal education. With the constant trafficking and enslavement of Africans, the language became increasingly distinct from French. The language was also picked up by other members of the community and became used by the majority of those born in what is now Haiti.

Saint-Domingue Creole French

In Saint-Domingue, people of all classes spoke Creole French. There were both lower and higher registers of the language, depending on education and class. Creole served as a lingua franca throughout the West Indies.

L'Entrepreneur. Mo sorti apprend, Mouché, qué vou té éprouvé domage dan traversée.

Le Capitaine. Ça vrai.

L'Entr. Vou crére qué navire à vou gagné bisoin réparations?

Le C. Ly té carené anvant nou parti, mai coup z'ouragan là mété moué dan cas fair ly bay encor nion radoub.

L'Entr. Ly fair d'iau en pile?

Le C. Primié jours aprés z'orage, nou té fair trente-six pouces par vingt-quatre heurs; mai dan beau tem mo fair yo dégagé ça mo pu, et tancher miyor possible, nou fair à présent necqué treize pouces.

The Entrepreneur. I just learned, sir, that you garnered damages in your crossing.

The Captain. That's true.

The Entrepreneur. Do you believe that your ship needs repair?

The Captain. It careened before we left, but the blow from the hurricane put me in the position of getting it refitted again.

The Entrepreneur. Is it taking on a lot of water?

The Captain. The first days after the storm, we took on thirty six inches in twenty four hours; but in clear weather I made them take as much of it out as I was able, and attached it the best we possibly could; we're presently taking on not even thirteen inches.

Haïti, l'an 1er, 5e, jour de l'indépendance.

Chère maman moi,

Ambassadeurs à nous, partis pour chercher argent France, moi voulé écrire à vous par yo, pour dire vous combien nous contens. Français bons, oublié tout. Papas nous révoltés contre yo, papas nous tués papas yo, fils yo, gérens yo, papas nous brûlées habitations yo. Bagasse, eux veni trouver nous! et dis nous, vous donner trente millions de gourdes à nous et nous laisser Haïti vous? Vous veni acheter sucre, café, indigo à nous? mais vous payer moitié droit à nous. Vous penser chère maman moi, que nous accepté marché yo. Président à nous embrassé bon papa Makau. Yo bu santé roi de France, santé Boyer, santé Christophe, santé Haïti, santé indépendance. Puis yo dansé Balcindé et Bai chi ca colé avec Haïtienes. Moi pas pouvé dire vous combien tout ça noble et beau.

Venir voir fils à vous sur habitation, maman moi, li donné vous cassave, gouillave et pimentade. Li ben content si pouvez mener li blanche france pour épouse. Dis li, si ben heureuse. Nous plus tuer blancs, frères, amis, et camarades à nous.

Fils à vous embrasse vous, chère maman moi.

Congo, Haïtien libre et indépendant, au Trou-Salé.

Haiti, 1st year, 5th day of independence.

My dear mother,

Our ambassadors left to get money from France, I want to write to you through them, to tell you how much we are happy. The French are good, they forgot everything. Our fathers revolted against them, our fathers killed their fathers, sons, managers, and our fathers burned down their plantations. Well, they came to find us, and told us, "you give thirty million gourdes to us and we'll leave Haiti to you? (And we replied) Will you come buy sugar, coffee, and indigo from us? You will pay only half directly to us." Do you believe my dear mother, that we accepted the deal? Our President hugged the good papa Makau (the French ambassador). They drank to the health of the King of France, to the health of Boyer, to the health of Christophe, to the health of Haiti, to independence. Then they danced Balcindé and Bai chi ca colé with Haitian women. I can't tell you how much all of this is so beautiful and noble.

Come see your son at his plantation, my mother, he will give you cassava, goyava, and pimentade. He will be happy if you can bring him a white Frenchwoman for a wife. Tell her, if you please. We won't kill anymore whites, brothers, friends, and camarades of ours.

Your son hugs you, my dear mother.

Congo, free and independent Haitian, at Trou-Salé.

Difference between Haitian Creole and French

Haitian Creole and French have similar pronunciations and also share many lexical items. However, many cognate terms actually have different meanings. For example, as Valdman mentions in Haitian Creole: Structure, Variation, Status, Origin, the word for "frequent" in French is fréquent; however, its cognate in Haitian Creole frekan means 'insolent, rude, and impertinent' and usually refers to people. In addition, the grammars of Haitian Creole and French are very different. For example, in Haitian Creole, verbs are not conjugated as they are in French. Additionally, Haitian Creole possesses different phonetics from standard French; however, it is similar in phonetic structure. The phrase-structure is another similarity between Haitian Creole and French but differs slightly in that it contains details from its African substratum language.

Both Haitian Creole and French have also experienced semantic change: words that had a single meaning in the 17th century have changed or have been replaced in both languages. For example, "Ki jan ou rele?" ("What is your name?") corresponds to the French "Comment vous appelez‑vous ?". Although the average French speaker would not understand this phrase, every word in it is in fact of French origin: qui "who"; genre "manner"; vous "you", and héler "to call", but the verb héler has been replaced by appeler in modern French and reduced to a meaning of "to flag down".

Lefebvre proposed the theory of relexification, arguing that the process of relexification (the replacement of the phonological representation of a substratum lexical item with the phonological representation of a superstratum lexical item, so that the Haitian creole lexical item looks like French, but works like the substratum language(s)) was central in the development of Haitian Creole.

The Fon language, also known as the Fongbe language, is a modern Gbe language native to Benin, Nigeria and Togo in West Africa. This language has a grammatical structure similar to Haitian Creole, possibly making Creole a relexification of Fon with vocabulary from French. The two languages are often compared:

Taino influence

There are a number of Taino influences in Haitian Creole; many objects, fruit and animal names are either haitianized or have a similar pronunciation. Many towns, places or sites have their official name being a translation of the Taino word.

History

Early development

Haitian Creole developed in the 17th and 18th centuries in the colony of Saint-Domingue, in a setting that mixed speakers of various Niger–Congo languages with French colonists. In the early 1940s under President Élie Lescot, attempts were made to standardize the language. American linguistic expert Frank Laubach and Irish Methodist missionary H. Ormonde McConnell developed a standardized Haitian Creole orthography. Although some regarded the orthography highly, it was generally not well received. Its orthography was standardized in 1979. That same year Haitian Creole was elevated in status by the Act of 18 September 1979. The Institut Pédagogique National established an official orthography for Creole, and slight modifications were made over the next two decades. For example, the hyphen (-) is no longer used, nor is the apostrophe. The only accent mark retained is the grave accent in ⟨è⟩ and ⟨ò⟩.

Becoming an official language

The Constitution of 1987 upgraded Haitian Creole to a national language alongside French. It classified French as the langue d'instruction or "language of instruction", and Creole was classified as an outil d'enseignement or a "tool of education". The Constitution of 1987 names both Haitian Creole and French as the official languages, but recognizes Haitian Creole as the only language that all Haitians hold in common. French is spoken by only a small percentage of citizens.

Literature development

Even without government recognition, by the end of the 19th century, there were already literary texts written in Haitian Creole such as Oswald Durand's Choucoune and Georges Sylvain's Cric? Crac!. Félix Morisseau-Leroy was another influential author of Haitian Creole work. Since the 1980s, many educators, writers, and activists have written literature in Haitian Creole. In 2001, Open Gate: An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry was published. It was the first time a collection of Haitian Creole poetry was published in both Haitian Creole and English. On 28 October 2004, the Haitian daily Le Matin first published an entire edition in Haitian Creole in observance of the country's newly instated "Creole Day". Haitian Creole writers often use different literary strategies throughout their works, such as code-switching, to increase the audience's knowledge on the language. Literature in Haitian Creole is also used to educate the public on the dictatorial social and political forces in Haiti.

Notable Haitian Creole-language writers

• Louis-Philippe Dalembert (b. 1962), poet and novelist
• Frankétienne (b. 1936), poet, playwright, painter, musician, activist
• Ady Jean-Gardy (b. 1967), international press activist
• Josaphat-Robert Large (1942–2017), poet, novelist and art critic
• Félix Morisseau-Leroy (1912–1998), poet and playwright
• Elsie Suréna (b. 1956), writer and visual artist
• Lyonel Trouillot (b. 1956), poet and novelist

Sociolinguistics

Role in society

Although both French and Haitian Creole are official languages in Haiti, French is often considered the high language and Haitian Creole as the low language in the diglossic relationship of these two languages in society. That is to say, for the minority of Haitian population that is bilingual, the use of these two languages largely depends on the social context: standard French is used more in public, especially in formal situations, whereas Haitian Creole is used more on a daily basis and is often heard in ordinary conversation.

There is a large population in Haiti that speaks only Haitian Creole, whether under formal or informal conditions:

French plays no role in the very formal situation of a Haitian peasant (more than 80% of the population make a living from agriculture) presiding at a family gathering after the death of a member, or at the worship of the family lwa or voodoo spirits, or contacting a Catholic priest for a church baptism, marriage, or solemn mass, or consulting a physician, nurse, or dentist, or going to a civil officer to declare a death or birth.

— Yves Dejean

Use in educational system

In most schools, French is still the preferred language for teaching. Generally speaking, Creole is more used in public schools, as that is where most children of ordinary families who speak Creole attend school.

Historically, the education system has been French-dominant. Except the children of elites, many had to drop out of school because learning French was very challenging to them and they had a hard time to follow up. The Bernard Reform of 1978 tried to introduce Creole as the teaching language in the first four years of primary school; however, the reform overall was not very successful. The use of Creole has grown; after the earthquake in 2010, basic education became free and more accessible to the monolingual masses. In the 2010s, the government has attempted to expand the use of Creole and improve the school system.

Orthography

Haitian Creole has a phonemic orthography with highly regular spelling, except for proper nouns and foreign words. According to the official standardized orthography, Haitian Creole is composed of the following 32 symbols: ⟨a⟩, ⟨an⟩, ⟨b⟩, ⟨ch⟩, ⟨d⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨è⟩, ⟨en⟩, ⟨f⟩, ⟨g⟩, ⟨h⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨j⟩, ⟨k⟩, ⟨l⟩, ⟨m⟩, ⟨n⟩, ⟨ng⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨ò⟩, ⟨on⟩, ⟨ou⟩, ⟨oun⟩, ⟨p⟩, ⟨r⟩, ⟨s⟩, ⟨t⟩, ⟨ui⟩, ⟨v⟩, ⟨w⟩, ⟨y⟩, and ⟨z⟩. The letters ⟨c⟩ and ⟨u⟩ are always associated with another letter (in the multigraphs ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ou⟩, ⟨oun⟩, and ⟨ui⟩). The Haitian Creole alphabet has no ⟨q⟩ or ⟨x⟩; when ⟨x⟩ is used in loanwords and proper nouns, it represents the sounds /ks/, /kz/, or /gz/.

• There are no silent letters in the Haitian Creole orthography.
• All sounds are always spelled the same, except when a vowel carries a grave accent ⟨`⟩ before ⟨n⟩, which makes it an oral vowel instead of a nasal vowel:
  • ⟨en⟩ for /ɛ̃/ and ⟨èn⟩ for /ɛn/;
  • ⟨on⟩ for /ɔ̃/ and ⟨òn⟩ for /ɔn/; and
  • ⟨an⟩ for /ã/ and ⟨àn⟩ for /an/.
• When immediately followed by a vowel in a word, the digraphs denoting the nasal vowels (⟨an⟩, ⟨en⟩, ⟨on⟩, and sometimes ⟨oun⟩) are pronounced as an oral vowel followed by /n/.
• There is some ambiguity in the pronunciation of the high vowels of the letters ⟨i⟩ and ⟨ou⟩ when followed in spelling by ⟨n⟩. Common words such as moun ("person") and machin ("car") end with consonantal /n/, while very few words, mostly adopted from African languages, contain nasalized high vowels, as in houngan ("vodou priest").
• The diphthong /ɥi/ is extremely rare, and maybe only exists in the common word uit (← French huit) "eight". Most other instances of this diphthong have been replaced by /wi/, e.g. fwi (← fruit) "fruit", nwit (← nuit) "night".

Haitian orthography debate

The first technical orthography for Haitian Creole was developed in 1940 by H. Ormonde McConnell and Primrose McConnell, Irish Methodist missionaries. It was later revised with the help of Frank Laubach, resulting in the creation of what is known as the McConnell–Laubach orthography.

The McConnell–Laubach orthography received substantial criticism from members of the Haitian elite. Haitian scholar Charles Pressoir critiqued the McConnell–Laubach orthography for its lack of codified front rounded vowels, which are typically used only by francophone elites. Another criticism was of the broad use of the letters ⟨k⟩, ⟨w⟩, and ⟨y⟩, which Pressoir argued looked "too American". This criticism of the "American look" of the orthography was shared by many educated Haitians, who also criticized its association with Protestantism. The last of Pressoir's criticisms was that "the use of the circumflex to mark nasalized vowels" treated nasal sounds differently from the way they are represented in French, which he feared would inhibit the learning of French.

The creation of the orthography was essentially an articulation of the language ideologies of those involved and brought out political and social tensions between competing groups. A large portion of this tension lay in the ideology held by many that the French language is superior, which led to resentment of the language by some Haitians and an admiration for it from others. This orthographical controversy boiled down to an attempt to unify a conception of Haitian national identity. Where ⟨k⟩ and ⟨w⟩ seemed too Anglo-Saxon and American imperialistic, ⟨c⟩ and ⟨ou⟩ were symbolic of French colonialism.

French-based orthography

When Haiti was still a colony of France, edicts by the French government were often written in a French-lexicon creole and read aloud to the slave population. The first written text of Haitian Creole was composed in the French-lexicon in a poem called Lisette quitté la plaine in 1757 by Duvivier de la Mahautière, a white Creole planter.

Before Haitian Creole orthography was standardized in the late 20th century, spelling varied, but was based on subjecting spoken Haitian Creole to written French, a language whose spelling has a complicated relation to pronunciation. Unlike the phonetic orthography, French orthography of Haitian Creole is not standardized and varies according to the writer; some use exact French spelling, others adjust the spelling of certain words to represent pronunciation of the cognate in Haitian Creole, removing the silent letters. For example:
Li ale travay nan maten (lit. "He goes to work in the morning") could be transcribed as:

• Li ale travay nan maten,
• Lui aller travail nans matin, or
• Li aller travail nans matin.

Grammar

Haitian Creole grammar is highly analytical: for example, verbs are not inflected for tense or person, and there is no grammatical gender, which means that adjectives and articles are not inflected according to the noun. The primary word order is subject–verb–object as it is in French and English.

Many grammatical features, particularly the pluralization of nouns and indication of possession, are indicated by appending certain markers, like yo, to the main word. There has been a debate going on for some years as to whether these markers are affixes or clitics, and if punctuation such as the hyphen should be used to connect them to the word.

Although the language's vocabulary has many words related to their French-language cognates, its sentence structure is like that of the West African Fon language.

Pronouns

There are six pronouns: first, second, and third person, each in both singular, and plural; all are of French etymological origin. There is no difference between direct and indirect objects.

1. sometimes the French pronoun on ("one", "[generic] you", "[singular] they") is translated to Haitian Creole as ou and other times it is translated as yo
2. sometimes ou is written as w and in the sample phrases below, w indicates ou.
3. in the northern part of Haiti, li is often shortened to i as in Guadeloupe, Martinique and the other Lesser Antilles.
4. in southern Haiti, the second person plural is zòt
5. sometimes the French pronoun on ("one", "[generic] you", "[singular] they") is translated to Haitian Creole as yo and other times it is translated as ou

Possessive pronouns

Singular

Plural

Plural of nouns

Definite nouns are made plural when followed by the word yo; indefinite plural nouns are unmarked.

Possession

Possession is indicated by placing the possessor or possessive pronoun after the item possessed. In the Capois dialect of northern Haiti, a or an is placed before the possessive pronoun. Note, however, that this is not considered the standard Kreyòl most often heard in the media or used in writing.

Possession does not indicate definiteness ("my friend" as opposed to "a friend of mine"), and possessive constructions are often followed by a definite article.

Indefinite article

The language has two indefinite articles, on and yon (pronounced /õ/ and /jõ/) which correspond to French un and une. Yon is derived from the French il y a un ("there is a"). Both are used only with singular nouns, and are placed before the noun:

Definite article

In Haitian Creole, the definite article has five forms, and it is placed after the noun it modifies. The final syllable of the preceding word determines which form the definite article takes. If the last sound is an oral consonant or a glide (spelled 'y' or 'w'), and if it is preceded by an oral vowel, the definite article is la:

If the last sound is an oral consonant and is preceded by a nasal vowel, the definite article is lan:

If the last sound is an oral vowel and is preceded by an oral consonant, the definite article is a:

If the last sound is any oral vowel other than i or ou and is preceded by a nasal consonant, then the definite article is also a:

If a word ends in mi, mou, ni, nou, or if it ends with any nasal vowel, then the definite article is an:

If the last sound is a nasal consonant, the definite article is nan, but may also be lan:

Demonstratives

There is a single word sa that corresponds to English "this" and to "that" (and to French ce, ceci, cela, and ça). As in English, it may be used as a demonstrative, except that it is placed after the noun that it qualifies. It is often followed by a or yo (in order to mark number): sa a ("this here" or "that there"):

As in English, it may also be used as a pronoun, replacing a noun:

Verbs

Many verbs in Haitian Creole are the same spoken words as the French infinitive, but there is no conjugation in the language; the verbs have one form only, and changes in tense, mood, and aspect are indicated by the use of markers:

Copula

The concept expressed in English by the verb "to be" is expressed in Haitian Creole by three words, se, ye, and sometimes e.

The verb se (pronounced similarly to the English word "say") is used to link a subject with a predicate nominative:

The subject of a sentence with se might not be included. In which case, the sentence is interpreted as if the subject were sa ("this" or "that") or li ("he", "she" or "it"):

To express "I want to be", usually vin ("to become") is used instead of se.

Ye also means "to be", but is placed exclusively at the end of a sentence, after the predicate and the subject (in that order):

Haitian Creole has stative verbs, which means that the verb "to be" is not covert when followed by an adjective. Therefore, malad means both "sick" and "to be sick":

To have

The verb "to have" is genyen, often shortened to gen.

There is

The verb genyen (or gen) also means "there is" or "there are":

To know

The Haitian Creole word for "to know" and "to know how" is konnen, which is often shortened to konn.

To do

Fè means "do" or "make". It has a broad range of meanings, as it is one of the most common verbs used in idiomatic phrases.

To be able to

The verb kapab (or shortened to ka, kap or kab) means "to be able to (do something)". It refers to both "capability" and "availability":

Tense markers

There is no conjugation in Haitian Creole. In the present non-progressive tense, one just uses the basic verb form for stative verbs:

When the basic form of action verbs is used without any verb markers, it is generally understood as referring to the past:

Manje means both "food" and "to eat", as manger does in Canadian French; m ap manje bon manje means "I am eating good food".

For other tenses, special "tense marker" words are placed before the verb. The basic ones are:

Simple past or past perfect:

Past progressive:

Present progressive:

For the present progressive, it is customary, though not necessary, to add kounye a ("right now"):

Also, ap manje can mean "will eat" depending on the context of the sentence:

Near or definite future:

Future:

Other examples:

Recent past markers include fèk and sòt (both mean "just" or "just now" and are often used together):

A verb mood marker is ta, corresponding to English "would" and equivalent to the French conditional tense:

Negation

The word pa comes before a verb and any tense markers to negate it:

Lexicon

Most of the lexicon of Creole is derived from French, with significant changes in pronunciation and morphology; often the French definite article was retained as part of the noun. For example, the French definite article la in la lune ("the moon") was incorporated into the Creole noun for moon: lalin. However, the language also inherited many words of different origins, among them Wolof, Fon, Kongo, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Taino and Arabic.

Haitian Creole creates and borrows new words to describe new or old concepts and realities. Examples of this are fè bak which was borrowed from English and means "to move backwards" (the original word derived from French is rekile from reculer), and also from English, napkin, which is being used as well as tòchon, from the French torchon.

Sample

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Nèg and blan

Although nèg and blan have similar words in French (nègre, a pejorative to refer to black people, and blanc, meaning white, or white person), the meanings they carry in French do not apply in Haitian Creole. Nèg means "a person" or "a man" (like "guy" or "dude" in American English). The word blan generally means "foreigner" or "not from Haiti". Thus, a non-black Haitian man (usually biracial) could be called nèg, while a black person from the US could be referred to as blan.

Etymologically, the word nèg is derived from the French nègre and is cognate with the Spanish negro ("black", both the color and the people).

There are many other Haitian Creole terms for specific tones of skin including grimo, bren, roz, and mawon. Some Haitians consider such labels as offensive because of their association with color discrimination and the Haitian class system, while others use the terms freely.

Examples

Salutations

Proverbs and expressions

Proverbs play a central role in traditional Haitian culture and Haitian Creole speakers make frequent use of them as well as of other metaphors.

Proverbs

Expressions

Usage abroad

United States and Canada

Haitian Creole is used widely among Haitians who have relocated to other countries, particularly the United States and Canada. Some of the larger Creole-speaking populations are found in Montreal, Quebec (where French is the official language), New York City, Boston, and Central and South Florida (Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach). To reach out to the large Haitian population, government agencies have produced various public service announcements, school-parent communications, and other materials in Haitian Creole. For instance, Miami-Dade County in Florida sends out paper communications in Haitian Creole in addition to English and Spanish. In the Boston area, the Boston subway system and area hospitals and medical offices post announcements in Haitian Creole as well as English. North America's only Creole-language television network is HBN, based in Miami. These areas also each have more than half a dozen Creole-language AM radio stations.

Haitian Creole and Haitian culture are taught in many colleges in the United States and the Bahamas. York College at the City University of New York features a minor in Haitian Creole. Indiana University's Albert Valdman founded the country's first Creole Institute where Haitian Creole, among other facets of Haiti, were studied and researched. The University of Kansas, Lawrence has an Institute of Haitian studies, founded by Bryant Freeman. The University of Massachusetts Boston, Florida International University, and Indiana University Bloomington offer seminars and courses annually at their Haitian Creole Summer Institutes. Brown University, University of Miami, Tulane University, and Duke University also offer Haitian Creole classes, and Columbia University and NYU have jointly offered a course since 2015. The University of Chicago began offering Creole courses in 2010.

As of 2015, the New York City Department of Education counted 2,838 Haitian Creole-speaking English-language learners (ELLs) in the city's K–12 schools, making it the seventh most common home language of ELLs citywide and the fifth most common home language of Brooklyn ELLs. Because of the large population of Haitian Creole-speaking students within NYC schools, various organizations have been established to respond to the needs of these students. For example, Flanbwayan and Gran Chimen Sant Kiltirèl, both located in Brooklyn, New York, aim to promote education and Haitian culture through advocacy, literacy projects, and cultural/artistic endeavors.

Cuba

Haitian Creole is the second most spoken language in Cuba after Spanish, where over 300,000 Haitian immigrants speak it. It is recognized as a minority language in Cuba and a considerable number of Cubans speak it fluently. Most of these speakers have never been to Haiti and do not possess Haitian ancestry, but merely learned it in their communities. In addition, there is a Haitian Creole radio station operating in Havana.

Dominican Republic

As of 2012, the language was also spoken by over 450,000 Haitians who reside in the neighboring Dominican Republic, although the locals do not speak it. However, some estimates suggest that there are over a million speakers due to a huge population of undocumented immigrants from Haiti.

The Bahamas

As of 2009, up to 80,000 Haitians were estimated residing in the Bahamas, where about 20,000 speak Haitian Creole. It is the third most‑spoken language after English and Bahamian Creole.

Software

After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, international aid workers desperately needed translation tools for communicating in Haitian Creole. Furthermore, international organizations had little idea whom to contact as translators. As an emergency measure, Carnegie Mellon University released data for its own research into the public domain. Microsoft Research and Google Translate implemented alpha version machine translators based on the Carnegie Mellon data.

Several smartphone apps have been released, including learning with flashcards by Byki and two medical dictionaries, one by Educa Vision and a second by Ultralingua, the latter of which includes an audio phrase book and a section on cultural anthropology.

See also

• Afro-Brazilians
• Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen
• Antillean Creole French
• Creole language
• Louisiana Creole French
• Michel DeGraff
• Radio Haiti-Inter

References

1. Haitian Creole at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024)
2. ^ Gurevich, Naomi (2004). "Appendix A: Result Summary". Lenition and Contrast: The Functional Consequences of Certain Phonetically Conditioned Sound Changes. New York: Routledge. pp. 112, 301–304. ISBN 978-1-135-87648-7. LCCN 2004051429. OCLC 919306666. OL 5731391W. Name: ... Haitian Creole ...; Phylum: ... Indo‑European...
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7. ^ Valdman, Albert (2002). "Creole: The National Language of Haiti". Footsteps. 2 (4): 36–39. Archived from the original on 13 July 2015.
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34. ^ Lefebvre, Claire (1986). "Relexification in Creole Genesis Revisited: the Case of Haitian Creole". In Muysken, Pieter; Smith, Norval (eds.). Substrata Versus Universals in Creole Genesis. Creole Language Library. Vol. 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 279–301. doi:10.1075/cll.1.13lef. ISBN 978-90-272-5221-0. ISSN 0920-9026. LCCN 86018856. OCLC 14002046. OL 5268669W.
35. The modern French construction la maison‑là (roughly "that there house") instead of the standard la maison ("the house") is only superficially and coincidentally similar to the Haitian Creole construction.
36. Fontaine, Pierre-Michel (1981). "Language, Society, and Development: Dialectic of French and Creole Use in Haiti". Latin American Perspectives. 8 (1): 28–46. doi:10.1177/0094582X8100800103. ISSN 0094-582X. JSTOR 2633128. OCLC 5724884282. S2CID 145302665.
37. "Haïti: Loi du 18 septembre 1979" [Haiti: Act of 18 September 1979]. Chaire pour le développement de la recherche sur la culture d'expression française en Amérique du Nord (in French). Québec City: Université Laval. Archived from the original on 27 July 2015. L'usage du créole, en tant que langue commune parlée par les 90 % de la population haïtienne, est permis dans les écoles comme instrument et objet d'enseignement.
38. ^ Védrine, Emmanuel W. (2007) . "Òtograf ofisyèl la" (PDF). Yon koudèy sou pwoblèm lekòl Ayiti [Official spelling] (PDF) (in Haitian Creole) (2nd ed.). Boston. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-938534-28-0. LCCN 94-65943. OCLC 37611103. Archived (PDF) from the original on 7 April 2015. Nou suiv sa yo rele 'òtograf ofisyèl' la lan tout sa li mande. Tout liv oubyen dokiman Éditions Deschamps sòti respekte òtograf sa a alalèt. Yon sèl ti eksepsyon petèt, se kesyon apostwòf nou pa anplwaye aprè de gwoup kòm 'm ap' (m'ap); 'sa k ap fèt?' (sa k'ap fèt?){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
39. Valdman, Albert (1989). "The Use of Creole as a School Medium and Decreolization in Haiti". In Zuanelli Sonino, Elisabetta (ed.). Literacy in School and Society: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Topics in Language and Linguistics. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 59. doi:10.1007/978-1-4899-0909-1. ISBN 978-1-4899-0909-1. LCCN 89-35803. OCLC 646534330. OL 9382950W. In 1979, by a presidential decree, Haitian Creole was officially recognized as classroom medium and as school subject at the primary level. In the 1983 Constitution it was upgraded to the level of national language with French.
40. Hebblethwaite, Benjamin (2012). "French and underdevelopment, Haitian Creole and development: Educational language policy problems and solutions in Haiti" (PDF). Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages. 27 (2): 255–302. doi:10.1075/jpcl.27.2.03heb. ISSN 0920-9034. Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 July 2015. Article 5 of the ... Constitution of 1987 ... recognizes Creole as the sole language that unites all Haitians.
41. "La Constitution de 1987, Article 5" [Constitution of 1987, Article 5] (in French). 1987. Archived from the original on 12 September 2011. Retrieved 31 July 2015. Tous les Haïtiens sont unis par une Langue commune : le Créole.
42. Laraque, Paul (April 2001). Open Gate: An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry. Curbstone Press. ISBN 978-1-880684-75-7.
43. DeGraff, Michel (2005). "Linguists' most dangerous myth: The fallacy of Creole Exceptionalism" (PDF). Language in Society. 34 (4): 533–591. doi:10.1017/S0047404505050207 (inactive 1 November 2024). ISSN 0047-4045. S2CID 145599178. Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 April 2015.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
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50. Cadely, Jean‑Robert (2002). "Le statut des voyelles nasales en Créole haïtien" [The Status of Nasal Vowels in Haitian Creole]. Lingua (in French). 112 (6): 437–438. doi:10.1016/S0024-3841(01)00055-9. ISSN 0024-3841. L'absence d'opposition distinctive dans la distribution des voyelles hautes ainsi que le facteur combinatoire illustré ci-dessus amènent certains auteurs ... à considérer les voyelles nasales  et  comme des variantes contextuelles de leurs correspondantes orales. Toutefois, l'occurrence dans le vocabulaire des Haïtiens de nombre de termes qui se rattachent pour la plupart à la religion vaudou contribue à affaiblir cette analyse. Par exemple, dans la liste des mots que nous présentons ... il est facile de constater que les voyelles nasales hautes n'apparaissent pas dans l'environnement de consonnes nasales:
    [ũɡã] 'prêtre vaudou'
    [ũsi] 'assistante du prêtre/ de la prêtresse'
    [ũfɔ] 'sanctuaire du temple vaudou'
    [hũ] 'tambour'
    [oɡũ] 'divinité vaudou'
    [ũɡɛvɛ] 'collier au cou du prêtre vaudou'
    [bũda] 'derrière'
    [pĩɡa] 'prenez garde'
    [kaʃĩbo] 'pipe de terre'
    [jũ/ũ nɛɡ] 'un individu'
51. Andrews, Helen (2009). "Frances Elaine ('Primrose') McConnell in Beckett, George Francis". In McGuire, James; Quinn, James (eds.). Dictionary of Irish Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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56. Léger, Frenand (2011). Pawòl Lakay: Haitian-Creole Language and Culture for Beginner and Intermediate Learners. Coconut Creek, Florida: Educa Vision. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-58432-687-8. OCLC 742361935.
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58. ^ Damoiseau, Robert; Jean-Paul, Gesner (2002). J'apprends le créole haïtien [I'm Learning Haitian Creole] (in French and Haitian Creole). Port-au-Prince and Paris: 'Faculté de Linguistique Appliquée, Université d'État d'Haïti and Éditions Karthala. pp. 82–83. ISBN 978-2-84586-301-9. OCLC 50772881. OL 4553655W. Yo pa fè diferans ant « kawotchou » machin ak « wou » machin nan. Yo di yonn pou lòt. Gen kawotchou ki fèt pou resevwa chanm, genyen ki pa sèvi ak chanm. Yo rele kawotchou sa a tiblès... / On ne fait pas de différence entre « pneu » et « roue » d'une voiture. On dit l'un pour l'autre. Il y a des pneus conçus pour recevoir une chambre à air, il y en a qui s'utilisent sans chambre à air. On appelle ce dernier type de pneus « tubeless ».
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68. Rahill, Guitele; Jean-Gilles, Michele; Thomlison, Barbara; Pinto-Lopez, Elsa (2011). "Metaphors as Contextual Evidence for Engaging Haitian Clients in Practice: A Case Study". American Journal of Psychotherapy. 65 (2): 138–139. doi:10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.2011.65.2.133. ISSN 0002-9564. PMID 21847891. Archived (PDF) from the original on 31 October 2015. The importance of metaphors in Haitian storytelling is reflected in the value ascribed to proverbs as an important aspect of teaching and reinforcing practical wisdom and values to children and community members. The existence of two separate texts in which 999 to more than 3000 Haitian proverbs are documented serve as evidence of the importance of these proverbs and their centrality in traditional Haitian culture...
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70. McAlister, Elizabeth A. (2002). "6. Voices under Domination: Rara and the Politics of Insecurity". Rara!: Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora. University of California Press. p. 168. ISBN 978-0-520-22822-1. LCCN 2001005016. OCLC 5559545903. OL 7711139M. Aristide took ownership of the pwen and replied with another: 'Men anpil chay pa lou' ("With many hands, the burden is not heavy").
71. Cynn, Christine (2008). "Nou Mande Jistis! (We Demand Justice!): Reconstituting Community and Victimhood in Raboteau, Haiti". Women's Studies Quarterly. 36 (½): 42–57. doi:10.1353/wsq.0.0071. ISSN 1934-1520. JSTOR 27649734. OCLC 5547107092. S2CID 84608576. After Aristide announced his unexpected candidacy in the 1990 presidential elections, the American ambassador to Haiti, Alvin Adams, in a speech assured Haitians that the United States would support whichever candidate was elected but concluded his remarks with a proverb (or pwen) emphasizing the problems that would remain after the elections: 'After the dance, the drum is heavy [Apre bal, tanbou lou]'....
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Further reading

• Anglade, Pierre (1998). Inventaire Étymologique des Termes Créoles des Caraibes d'origine Africaine (in French). Editions L'Harmattan. ISBN 9782296352582.
• DeGraff, Michel (2001). "Morphology in Creole genesis: Linguistics and ideology" (PDF). In Kenstowicz, Michael (ed.). Ken Hale: A life in language. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 52–121. ISBN 978-0-262-61160-2. LCCN 00-061644. OCLC 44702224. Archived (PDF) from the original on 29 July 2015.
• Lang, George (2004). "A Primer of Haitian Literature in Kreyòl ". Research in African Literatures. 35 (2): 128–140. doi:10.1353/ral.2004.0046. ISSN 1527-2044. JSTOR 3821349. S2CID 162026210.

External links

• "Indiana University Creole Institute".
• Haitian Creole basic vocabulary (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
• Haitian Creole-English dictionary (PDF) Archived 16 December 2021 at the Wayback Machine

• Haitian Creole
• French-based pidgins and creoles
• Languages of Haiti
• Languages of the Bahamas
• Languages of Costa Rica
• Languages of Cuba
• Languages of the Dominican Republic
• Languages of the United States
• Subject–verb–object languages
• Languages of the African diaspora