Haitian Creole

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.^[27]

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.^[28]

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.^[29]

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.^[30][31] 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.^[32] 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.^[7] Additionally, Haitian Creole possesses different phonetics from standard French; however, it is similar in phonetic structure.^[30] The phrase-structure is another similarity between Haitian Creole and French but differs slightly in that it contains details from its African substratum language.^[30]

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.^[7] 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".^[7]

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.^[33]

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:^[34]

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.

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.^[11] 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.^[36] Its orthography was standardized in 1979. That same year Haitian Creole was elevated in status by the Act of 18 September 1979.^[37] 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.^{[38]: 131 [15]: 185–192} The only accent mark retained is the grave accent in ⟨è⟩ and ⟨ò⟩.^[15]: 433

Becoming an official language

The Constitution of 1987 upgraded Haitian Creole to a national language alongside French.^[39] 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.^{[40]: 263 [41]} French is spoken by only a small percentage of citizens.^[11][17]

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.^[42] 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".^[43]: 556 Haitian Creole writers often use different literary strategies throughout their works, such as code-switching, to increase the audience's knowledge on the language.^[17] Literature in Haitian Creole is also used to educate the public on the dictatorial social and political forces in Haiti.^[17]

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.^[32] 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.^[44]

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^[45]: 192

Use in educational system

In most schools, French is still the preferred language for teaching. Generally speaking, Creole is more used in public schools,^[46] 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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[47] The use of Creole has grown; after the earthquake in 2010, basic education became free and more accessible to the monolingual masses.^{[citation needed]} In the 2010s, the government has attempted to expand the use of Creole and improve the school system.^[48][49]

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.^{[15]: 434 [51]}

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.^[15]: 436 Another criticism was of the broad use of the letters ⟨k⟩, ⟨w⟩, and ⟨y⟩, which Pressoir argued looked "too American".^{[15]: 431–432} This criticism of the "American look" of the orthography was shared by many educated Haitians, who also criticized its association with Protestantism.^[15]: 432 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.^[15]: 431

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.^[15]: 435 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.^[52]: 191

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.^[53] 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.^[53][54]

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.

Pronouns

There are six pronouns: first, second, and third person, each in both singular, and plural; all are of French etymological origin.^[55] There is no difference between direct and indirect objects.

Possessive pronouns

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.^[60]

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,^[61]: 28 and it is placed after the noun it modifies. The final syllable of the preceding word determines which form the definite article takes.^[62]: 20 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:

Sample

This section does not cite any sources. (February 2017)

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).^[66] 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.^[66][67]

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.

Salutations

Proverbs

Expressions

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.^[78] 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.^[79]

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.^[80] Indiana University's Albert Valdman founded the country's first Creole Institute^[81] 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^[82] also offer Haitian Creole classes, and Columbia University and NYU have jointly offered a course since 2015.^[83][84] The University of Chicago began offering Creole courses in 2010.^[85]

As of 2015^[update], 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.^{[86]: 19–20} 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.^[87]

Cuba

Haitian Creole is the second most spoken language in Cuba after Spanish,^[88][89] 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.^[89]

Dominican Republic

As of 2012^[update], the language was also spoken by over 450,000 Haitians who reside in the neighboring Dominican Republic,^[90] 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.^[91]

The Bahamas

As of 2009, up to 80,000 Haitians were estimated residing in the Bahamas,^[92] where about 20,000 speak Haitian Creole. It is the third most‑spoken language after English and Bahamian Creole.^[93]