Haitian Creole

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

Main article: Creole language#Creole genesis

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{{nbsp}}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.

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 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.}}

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 bon, oublié tout. Papas nous révoltés contre yo, papas nous tués papas yo, fils yo, gérens yo, papas nous brûlées habitations yo. Bagasse, eux viennent trouver nous! et dis nous, vous donner trente millions de gourdes à nous et nous laisser Haïti vous? Vous venez acheter du sucre, du café, de l’indigo chez nous? Mais vous payez la moitié du droit à nous. Vous pensez, chère maman, que nous avons accepté le marché. Le président nous a embrassés, 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 Haïtiens. 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. Il est bien content si vous pouvez mener la blanche France pour épouse. Dis-lui, si ben heureuse. Nous plus tuer blancs, frères, amis, et camarades à nous.

Fils à vous, embrassez-vous, chère maman, moi.

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

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 beautiful and noble all of this is.

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.}}

Differences 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".

Claire 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:

Taíno influence

There are a number of Taíno 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 Taíno 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 and .

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?{{nbsp}}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 (1936–2025), 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 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:

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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and . The letters and are always associated with another letter (in the multigraphs , , , and ). The Haitian Creole alphabet has no or ; when is used in loanwords and proper nouns, it represents the sounds , , or .

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• There are no silent letters in the Haitian Creole orthography.
• àAll sounds are always spelled the same, except when a vowel carries a grave accent before , which makes it an oral vowel instead of a nasal vowel:
  • for and for ;
  • for and for ; and
  • for and for .
• When immediately followed by a vowel in a word, the digraphs denoting the nasal vowels (, , , and sometimes ) are pronounced as an oral vowel followed by .
• There is some ambiguity in the pronunciation of the high vowels of the letters and when followed in spelling by . Common words such as moun ("person") and machin ("car") end with consonantal , while very few words, mostly adopted from African languages, contain nasalized high vowels, as in houngan ("vodou priest").
• The diphthong 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 , 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 , , and , 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 and seemed too Anglo-Saxon and American imperialistic, and 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 HaitianCreole to written French, a language whose spelling has a complicated relation to pronunciation. Unlike the phonetic orthography, French orthography of HaitianCreole 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 HaitianCreole, 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.

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.Tézil, David. 2019. The nasalization of the Haitian Creole determiner La in non-nasal contexts: a variationist sociolinguistic study. PhD dissertation, Indiana University.

(Têzil 2019, p. 9, notes: "[T]his variety is frequently subject to depreciative [sic] attitudes, as Capois speakers face the predominance of Port-au-Prince Creole...")

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 and ) 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

Main article: Copula (linguistics)#Haitian Creole

The concept expressed in English by the verb "tobe" 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 ("tobecome") is used instead of se.

Ye also means "tobe", 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 "tobe" 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{{nbsp}}a ("rightnow"):

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

{{lang|ht|Nèg}} and {{lang|ht|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 black 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, 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.

, 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

, 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.

References

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