Haitian Creole (; Haitian Creole: kreyòl ayisyen, Haitian Creole pronunciation: [k?ej?l]; French: créole haïtien) is a French-based creole language spoken by 9.6-12 million people worldwide, and the only language of most Haitians. It is a creole language based largely on 18th century French with influences from Portuguese, Spanish, English, Taíno, and West African languages. Haitian Creole emerged from contact between French settlers and African slaves during the Atlantic slave trade in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). Haitians are the largest creole-speaking community in the world.
The usage and education in Haitian Creole--which is not mutually intelligible with French--has been contentious since at least the 19th century: where Haitians saw French as a sign of colonialism, Creole was maligned by francophone elites as a miseducated or poor person's French. Until the late 20th century, Haitian presidents spoke only French to their fellow citizens, and until the 2000s, all instruction at Haitian elementary schools was in French, a foreign language to most of the students.
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Etymology
The word creole is of Latin origin via a Portuguese term that means, "person (especially a servant) raised in one's house". It first referred to Europeans born and raised in overseas colonies, but later was used to refer to the language as well.
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History
Haitian Creole developed in the 17th and 18th centuries on the western third of Hispaniola in a setting that mixed native speakers of various Niger-Congo languages with French colonizers. 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?. 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. Even without government recognition, by the end of the 1800s, 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. 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".
Origins
Haitian Creole contains elements from both the Romance group of Indo-European languages through its superstratum French language, as well as African languages. There are many theories on the formation of the Haitian Creole language.
John Singler suggests that Creole was probably formed between the time the French colony of Saint-Domingue was founded in 1659 and 1740. During this period the colony moved from tobacco and cotton production to a mostly sugar-based economy, which created a favorable setting for the Creole language to form. At the time of tobacco and cotton production, the Haitian population was made up of colonists, the engagés (employed whites), gens de couleur and slaves in relatively balanced proportions, with roughly equal numbers of people of color and engagés. Singler estimates the economy shifted into sugar production in 1690, and radically reconfigured the early Haitian people as "the big landowners drove out the small ones, while the number of slaves exploded". Before this economic shift, engagés were favored over slaves as they were felt to be easier to control. However, the sugar crop needed a much larger labor force, and larger numbers of slaves were brought in. As the colored slaves had decreasing contact with native French-speaking whites, the language would have begun to change.
Many African slaves in French ownership were from the Niger-Congo territory and particularly from Kwa languages such as Gbe and the Central Tano languages and Bantu languages. Many were sent to French colonies. 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 the Gbe predominance in the French Caribbean. During the time Singler places the evolution of the language, the Gbe population was 50% of the imported slave population.
In contrast to the African languages, a type of 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 the other French colonies of New France and French West Africa. Slaves who seldom could communicate with fellow slaves would try to learn French. With the constant importation of slaves, the language gradually became formalized and became a distinct tongue to French. The language was also picked up by the whites and became used by all those born in what is now Haiti.
Although over 90% of the Haitian Creole vocabulary is of French origin, the two languages are mutually unintelligible. This is because the two grammars are different. In addition, both Haitian Creole and French have 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 "what"; genre "manner"; vous "you", and héler "to call", but the verb héler has been replaced by appeler in modern French.
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, a modern Gbe language, is often used to compare grammatical structure between Haitian Creole and to relexify it with vocabulary from French:
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.
- /?/ is always followed by /i/.
- 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 /??/ and ?èn? for /?n/;
- ?on? for /??/ and ?òn? for /?n/; 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").
Haitian orthography debate
The first technical orthography for Haitian Creole was developed in 1940 by H. Ormonde McConnell. 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
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 not matched its pronunciation since at least the 16th century. 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 le maten,
- Lui aller travail le matin, or
- Li aller travail le 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.
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. This is similar to the French construction of chez moi or chez toi which are "my place" and "your place", respectively. In northern Haiti, a or an is placed before the possessive pronoun.
Unlike in English, 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, there are five definite articles, and they are placed after the nouns they modify. The final syllable of the preceding word determines which is used with which nouns. If the last sound is an oral consonant and is preceded by an oral vowel, it becomes la:
If the last sound is an oral consonant and is preceded by a nasal vowel, it becomes lan:
If the last sound is an oral vowel and is preceded by an oral consonant, it becomes a:
If a word ends in "mi", "mou", "ni", "nou", or a nasal vowel, it becomes an:
If the last sound is a nasal consonant, it becomes 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 sa or li can sometimes be omitted with se:
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 overt 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"; 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
Nèg and blan
Despite nèg and blan having 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 "person", regardless of skin color (like "guy" or "dude" in American English). The word blan generally means "foreigner" or "not from Haiti". Thus, a non-black Haitian man would be called nèg, while a black person from Cameroon 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 first 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. The area also has 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 has a Creole Institute founded by Albert Valdman where Haitian Creole, among other facets of Haiti, are studied and researched. The University of Kansas, Lawrence has an Institute of Haitian studies, founded by Bryant Freeman. Additionally, the University of Massachusetts Boston, Florida International University, and University of Florida offer seminars and courses annually at their Haitian Creole Summer Institute. Brown University, University of Miami, 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.[1]
According to the 2014-2015 English Language Learner Demographic Report published by the NYC Department of Education, 3,031 English Language Learners (ELLs) in K-12 schools in New York City speak Haitian Creole, making it the sixth 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.
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