Haitian Creole language

Haitian Creole
Kreyòl ayisyen
Spoken in
Total speakers	12,000,000[1]
Ranking	62
Language family	Creole language French Creole Antillean Creoles Haitian Creole
Official status
Official language in	Haiti
Regulated by	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ht
ISO 639-2	hat
ISO 639-3	hat
Linguasphere
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Haitian Creole language (Kreyòl ayisyen; pronounced: [kɣejɔl ajisjɛ̃]), often called simply Creole or Kreyòl, is a language spoken in Haiti by about eight million people, which is about 80% of the entire population of some ten million, and via emigration, by about one million speakers residing in the Bahamas, Cuba, Canada, Cayman Islands, Dominican Republic, French Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Belize, Puerto Rico, and United States. The language is notable for being the most widely spoken creole language in the world.^[2]

Haitian Creole is one of Haiti's two official languages, along with French. It is a creole based largely on 18th-century French with various other influences, most notably African languages (including some Arabic), as well as Spanish and Taíno - and increasingly English.

Partly due to efforts of Félix Morisseau-Leroy, since 1961 Haitian Creole has been recognized as an official language along with French, which had been the sole literary language of the country since its independence in 1804. The official status was maintained under the country's 1987 constitution. The use of Creole in literature has been small but is increasing. Morisseau was one of the first and most influential authors to write in Creole. Since the 1980s, many educators, writers and activists have written literature in Creole. Today numerous newspapers, as well as radio and television programs, are produced in Creole.

Phonology

Where consonants appear in pairs, the one on the left is voiceless.

1. /iŋ/ is not originally a Haitian Creole phoneme, but appears in English loanwords (e.g. bèl filing "good feeling").
2. The contrast between /ɣ/ and /w/ is lost before rounded vowels; the two phonemes merge as /w/ in that environment. Some orthographies of Haitian Creole follow the etymology of the word, using ‹r› for /w/ before a rounded vowel where this comes from an original /ɣ/, e.g. /ɡwo/ ('big', cf. French gros /ɡʁo/) is spelled ‹gro›. Other orthographies follow the modern pronunciation of the word and use ‹w› for /w/ in all cases, so that /ɡwo/ is spelled ‹gwo›.

Haitian Creole has ten vowels: seven oral vowels and three (or five) nasal variants.

Orthographically, open-mid vowels carry either a grave accent ‹`› to distinguish them from close-mid vowels (e.g. ‹é› for /e/ and ‹è› for /ɛ/). ‹n› indicates nasalization when following ‹a›, ‹e›, or ‹o›. However, if a vowel before ‹n› carries a grave accent or a circumflex, the vowel is oral (e.g. ‹on› = /ɔ̃/, but ‹òn› = /ɔn/.)

The status of the nasal closed vowels in Haitian Creole has been disputed. Marcel D'Ans claims that these vowels cannot be phonemically nasal, while Robert A. Hall, Jr. and others argue that they are in fact phonemes.^[5]

The high nasal vowels are quite rare, appearing in a few words such as vodoun ("voodoo") and houngan ("voodoo priest"). In most words spelled with ‹in› or ‹oun›, such as moun ("person"), the final ‹n› is pronounced as a consonant.

Lexicon

Most of the lexicon 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.

Sample

1. ↑ A banana that is short and fat, not a plantain and not a conventional banana; regionally called "hog banana" or "sugar banana" in English.
2. ↑ The gap between a person's two front teeth.

Nouns derived from trade marks

Many trademarks have become common nouns in Haitian Creole (as happened in English with "aspirin" and "kleenex", for example).

• kolgat (Colgate) or pat - "toothpaste"
• jilèt (Gillette) - "razor"
• pampèz (Pampers) or kouchèt - "diaper" or (Br) "nappy"
• kodak (Kodak) - "camera"
• frijidè (Frigidaire) - "refrigerator"
• dèlco (Delco) - "generator"
• iglou (Igloo) or tèmòs (Thermos) - "cooler"
• chiclèt (Chiclets) - "chewing gum"
• kitèx (Cutex) - "nail polish"
• djip (Jeep) - "SUV"
• douko (Duco) - "automobile paint"

New words from English

Haitian Creole speakers have adopted some English words. "Fê bac" means 'to move backwards' (the original word derived from French is "rékilé" from reculer). Another example is "napkin" being used as well as the original Creole word "tòchon" from torchon.

nèg and blan

Despite similar words in French (nègre = a black man; blanc = white person), the meanings they carry do not apply in Haiti. The term nèg is generally used for any man, regardless of skin color (i.e., like "guy" or "dude" in American English). Blan is generally used for white foreigner.

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, such as grimo, bren, roz, mawon, etc. However, such labels are considered offensive by some Haitians, because of their association with color discrimination and the Haitian class system.

Grammar

Haitian Creole grammar differs greatly from French and is much more analytical: for example, verbs are not inflected for tense or person, and there is no grammatical gender — meaning that adjectives and articles are not inflected according to the noun. The primary word order (SVO) is the same as French.

Many grammatical features, particularly pluralization of nouns and indication of possession, are indicated by appending certain suffixes, like yo, to the main word. There has been a debate going on for some years as what should be used to connect the suffixes to the word: the most popular alternatives are a dash, an apostrophe or a space. It makes matters more complicated when the "suffix" itself is shortened, perhaps making only one letter (such as m’ or w’).

Although the lexicon is mostly French, the sentence structure is like that of the West African Fongbe language. This is because many of the enslaved peoples that were brought to Haiti came from the former kingdom of Dahomey [citation needed] (present day Benin).

Pronouns

There are six pronouns, one pronoun for each person/number combination. There is no difference between direct and indirect. Some are of French origin, others are not.

(*) sometimes ou is written as w - in the sample phrases, w indicates ou.
(**) depending on the situation.

Plural of nouns

If a noun is definite, it is pluralized by adding yo at the end. If it is indefinite, it has no plural marker, and its plurality is determined by context.

Possession

Possession is indicated by placing the possessor after the item possessed. This is similar to the French construction of chez moi or chez lui which are "my place" and "his place", respectively. Unlike in English, possession does not indicate definiteness ("my friend" as opposed to "a friend of mine"), and possessive constructions are often followed be a definite article.

*Names are usually spelled like in French.

Indefinite article

The language has two indefinite articles on /õ/ and yon /jõ/, roughly corresponding to English "a/an" and French un/une. Yon is derived from the French il y a un, (lit. "there is a/an/one"). It is used only with singular nouns, and it is placed before the noun:

Definite article

There is also a definite article, roughly corresponding to English "the" and French le/la. It is placed after the noun, and the sound varies by the last sound of the noun itself. If the last sound is an (ã) 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 the last sound is an oral vowel and is preceded by a nasal consonant, it becomes an:

If the last sound is a nasal vowel, it becomes an:

If the last sound is a nasal consonant, it becomes nan:

"This" and "that"

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

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 are indicated by the use of tense markers.

Copulas

The concept expressed in English by the verb "to be" is expressed in Haitian Creole by three words, se, ye and sometimes e. (The "e" in Creole doesn't have accent but it is pronounced same as "e" in Spanish.)

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

The subject sa or li can sometimes be omitted with se:

For the future tense, such as "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 the sentence, after the predicate and the subject (in that order):

The verb "to be" is not overt when followed by an adjective, that is, Haitian Creole has stative verbs. So, malad means "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/are"

"to know"

There are three verbs which are often translated as "to know", but they mean different things.

kòn or konné means "to know" + a noun (cf. French connaître).

kòn or konné also means "to know" + a fact (cf. French savoir).

(note pa = negative)

The third word is always spelled kòn. It means "to know how to" or "to have experience". This is similar to the "know" as used in the English phrase "know how to ride a bike": it denotes not only a knowledge of the actions, but also some experience with it.

Another verb worth mentioning is fè. It comes from the French faire and is often translated as "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", very similar to the French "capable".

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:

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

(Note that manjé means both "food" and "to eat" -- m’ap manjé bon manjé 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:

mwen té manjé - "I ate" or "I had eaten"

ou té manjé- "you ate" or "you had eaten"

li té manjé - "he/she ate" or "he/she had eaten"

nou té manjé - "we ate" or "we had eaten"

yo té manjé - "they ate" or "they had eaten"

Past progressive:

mwen t’ap manjé - "I was eating"

ou t’ap manjé - "you were eating"

li t’ap manjé - "he/she was eating"

nou t’ap manjé - "we were eating"

yo t’ap manjé - "they were eating"

Present progressive:

m’ap manjé - "I am eating"

w’ap manjé - "you are eating"

l’ap manjé - "he/she is eating"

n’ap manjé - "we are eating"

y’ap manjé - "they are eating"

Note: For the present progressive ("I am eating now") it is customary, though not necessary, to add "right now":

M’ap manjé koun-yè-a - "I am eating right now"

Also, those examples can mean "will eat" depending on the context of the sentence.

M’ap manjé apré m’priyé - "I will eat after I pray" / Mwen p'ap di ça - "I will not say that"

Near or definite future:

Mwen pr’al manjé - "I am going to eat"

Ou pr’al manjé - "you are going to eat"

Li pr’al manjé - "he/she is going to eat"

Nou pr’al manjé - "we are going to eat"

Yo pr’al manjé - "they are going to eat"

Future:

N’a wé pi ta - "See you later" (lit. "We will see (each other) later) from the old patois (Nous sommes à voire plus tard > > Nous à voire plus tard) meaning: we are to see later.

Other examples:

Mwen té wé zami ou yè - "I saw your friend yesterday"

Nou té palé lontan - "We spoke for a long time"

Lè’l té gen uit an... - "When he/she was eight years old..."

M’a travay - "I will work"

M’pr’al travay - "I'm going to work"

N’a li’l démen - "We'll read it tomorrow"

Nou pr’al li’l démen - "We are going to read it tomorrow"

Mwen t’ap maché é’m té wé on chyen - "I was walking and I saw a dog"

Additional time-related markers:

fè’k - recent past ("just")

sòt - similar to fè’k

They are often used together:

Mwen fè’k sòt antré kay-la - "I just entered the house"

A verb mood marker is t’a, corresponding to English "would" and equivalent to the French conditional tense:

Yo t’a rémé jwé - "They would like to play" (*note the word rémé is sometimes spelled; renmé or renmen)

Mwen t’a vini si’m té gen on machin - "I would come if I had a car"

Li t’a bliyé’w si ou pa’t la - "He/she would forget you if you weren't here"

Negating the verb

The word pa comes before a verb (and all tense markers) to negate it:

Rose pa vlé alé - "Rose doesn't want to go"

Rose pa’t vlé alé - "Rose didn't want to go"

Examples

Salutations

• A démen! – See you tomorrow!
• A pi ta! – See you later!
• Adjié! – Good bye! [Permanently]
• Anchanté! – enchanted (Nice to meet you!)
• Bon apré-midi! – Good afternoon!
• Bòn nui! – Good night!
• Bonjou! – Good day! / Good morning!
• Bonswa! – Good evening
• Dézolé! – Sorry!
• Éskizé’m! – Excuse me!
• Ki jan ou alé? – How is it going?
• Ki jan ou rélé? – What is your name?
• Ki jan ou yé? – How are you?
• Ki laj ou? – What is your age? (How old are you?)
• Ki laj ou genyen? – How old are you?
• Ki non ou / ki non’w? – What is your name?
• Koman ou alé? – How is it going?
• Koman ou rélé? – What is your name?
• Koman ou yé? – How are you?
• Kon si, kon sa – So, so
• M’ap boulé – I’m burning [Response to “ça’k pasé” or “ça’k ap fèt”]
• M’ap viv – I’m living
• Mal – Bad
• Mwen byen – I’m well
• Mwen dakò – I’m fine / I’m alright
• Mwen gen…an – I am…years old
• Mwen la – I’m fine
• Mwen rélé… – My name is…
• N’a wé pi ta! – We will see later (See you later!)
• Non’m sé… – My name is…
• O révwa! – Good bye [Temporarily]
• Pa mal – Not bad
• Pa pi mal – Not so bad
• Padon! – Pardon! / Sorry!
• Padonné’m! – Pardon me!
• Pòté’w bien! – Carry yourself well! (Take care!)
• Sa’k ap fèt? – What’s going on? [Informal]
• Sa’k pasé? – What’s going on? / What’s happening? [Informal]
• Tout al byen – All goes well (All is well)
• Tout bagay an fòm – Everything is in form (Everything is fine)
• Tout pa bon – All is not good (All is not well)

Proverbs

• Sac vid pa campé - You can't work without food. (Literally: An empty sack does not stand)
• Pitit tig sé tig - Like father like son. (Literally: a young tiger is still a tiger).
• Ac pasians w’à wé tété foûmi - Anything is possible. (Literally: With patience you will see the breast of the ant)
• Bâ’y cou bliyé, pôté mâc sonjé – The giver of the blow forgets, the carrier of the scar remembers
• Bèl dan pa di zami – Just because one smiles at you doesn't mean they're your friend
• Bèl entêman pa di paradi – A beautiful funeral doesn't guarantee heaven
• Ça’k rivé coucouloulou-a ca rivé cacalanga tou – What happens to the turkey can happen to the rooster too.
• Créyol pâlé, créyol compràn – Speak plainly, do not deceive / Creole spoken is Creole understood
• Fam poû youn tan, manman poû tout tan – Wife for one time, mother for all time
• Li pâlé françé – He cannot be trusted, he's a trickster. (Literally: He speaks French)
• Nèg di san fê, Bon Dié fê san di – People say without doing, God does without saying
• Nèg rich sé milât, milât pov sé nèg – A rich negro is a mulatto, a poor mulatto is a negro
• Pâlé françé pa di léspri ou – Speaking French doesn't mean you're smart.
• Woch nan dlo pa conné doulê woch nan soléy – The rock in the water doesn't know the pain of the rock in the sun
• Si ou bwé dlo nan vê, réspècté vê-a – If you drink water from a glass, respect the glass
• Si travày té bon bagày, moun rich t’à pran’l lontan – If work were a good thing, the rich would've grabbed it a long time ago

Usage outside of Haiti

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 an 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 HTN, based in Miami. The area also has more than half a dozen Creole-language AM radio stations.

Haitian language and culture is taught in many colleges in the United States as well as in the Bahamas. Indiana University has a Creole Institute [1] founded by Dr. 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 Dr. 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. Tulane University, Brown University, Columbia University, and University of Miami are also offering classes in Haitian Creole. The University of Oregon and Duke University will soon be offering classes as well.

Haitian Creole is the second most spoken language in Cuba, where over 300,000 Haitian immigrants speak it. It is recognized as a 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.^[6] The language is also spoken by over 150,000 Haitians (although estimates believe that there are over a million speakers due to a huge population of illegal aliens from Haiti^[7]) who reside in the neighboring Dominican Republic ,^[8] although the locals do not speak it.

Translation efforts after the 2010 Haiti earthquake

After the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010, international help badly needed translation tools for communicating in Haitian Creole. As an emergency measure, Carnegie Mellon University released data for its own research into the public domain.^[9] Microsoft Research and Google Translate have implemented alpha version machine translators based on the Carnegie Mellon data.

In addition, several free apps have been published for use on the iPhone & iPod Touch, including learning flashcards by Byki and two medical dictionaries, one by Educa Vision and a second by Ultralingua, which includes an audio phrase book and a section on cultural anthropology.

Haiti is isolated from the rest of the world by a significant language barrier. Lexical information is incomplete. For example, the machine translators provided by Microsoft and Google are only in alpha mode and have not made it to beta testing. Very few non-Haitians know the language, and most Haitians do not understand another language, even French. The language barrier is a contributor to Haitian poverty and it has confounded earthquake relief work as well.

References

Further reading

• Degraff, Michel (2001). "Morphology in Creole genesis: Linguistics and ideology". In Kenstowicz, Michael. Ken Hale: A life in language. Cambridge: MIT Press. pp. 52–121 
• Degraff, Michel (2005). "Linguists' Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Creole Exceptionalism". Language in Society 34 (4): 533–591 
• Fattier, Dominique (1998). "Contribution à l'étude de la genèse d'un créole: L'Atlas linguistique d'Haïti, cartes et commentaires (Dissertation)". Language in Society (Université de Provence) 
• Spears, Arthur K., and Carole M. Berotte Joseph, eds. The Haitian Creole Language: History, Structure, Use, and Education (Lexington Books; 2010) 297 pages. Topics include Creole and English code-switching in New York City, Creole in education in Haiti, and Creole and French in Haitian literature.
• Turnbull, Wally R. (2000). Creole Made Easy, Light Messages. ISBN 0-9679937-1-7.

External links

• Haitian Creole materials from the Institute of Haitian Studies at the University of Kansas - Complete pdf versions of books created by Bryant C. Freeman, PhD, as well as the accompanying mp3 audio supplements.
• Haitian Creole - English Medical Reference by Ultralingua - Made for iPhone & iPod Touch, using texts authored by Bryant C. Freeman, PhD.
• Microsoft Translator supporting Haitian Creole. Since Carnegie Mellon began to make the data on Haitian Creole publicly available (see external link below), a team at Microsoft Research used it to help develop an experimental, web-based system for translating between English and Haitian Creole.
• Public release of Haitian Creole language data by Carnegie Mellon. In response to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute (LTI) publicly released spoken and textual data they've compiled on Haitian Creole so that translation tools desperately needed by doctors, nurses and other relief workers on the earthquake-ravaged island could be rapidly developed.
• Haitian Creole - English, English - Haitian Creole Dictionary
• Creole Language and Culture - OpenCourseWare from the University of Notre Dame
• UN Declaration of Human Rights in Haitian Creole
• RFI — Kréyòl Palé Kréyòl Konprann (radio program)
• Common Creole Words and Phrases
• What is Haitian Creole? (By Hugues St.Fort)
• Saint Lucia Creole guide
• Google Translator supports Haitian Creole in alpha mode.
• Byki Learning Flashcards - for iPhone by Transparent Language
• Haitian Creole - English Medical Dictionary for iPhone, by Educa Vision

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