Kreyòl Ayitien

"Creole is a language whose body is French but whose soul is African."

 -Aimé Césaire

Most people assume that Haitians speak French.  French, after all, is the official language of government and higher education in Haiti so it would make perfect sense to assume that to be the case.  In fact, only a small number of educated Haitians are able to hold a conversation in French.  The language of the people is called Haitian Creole or Kreyòl Ayitien.  To anyone who has heard Kreyòl, at first it sounds like a dialect of French spoken extremely fast.  But it doesn’t take long to realize that Kreyòl is certainly not French.   Most native French speakers admit they can’t understand hardly a word of Kreyòl . So how did this language evolve to be the real national language of Haiti?

In the 18th century, large numbers of slaves were brought to Haiti by the French.  Most came from Western Africa, from what is present day Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Cameroon.   The main tribes that were selected to bring to Haiti included the Yoruba, Igbo, Ewe, Bakongo and Fon tribes .   The slaves from these tribes heard the French that was spoken by their masters and tried to assimilate the words and syntax into their own languages.  Gradually, a unique language evolved with a vocabulary that was mainly derived from French, but a grammatical structure, or syntax, that was distinctly African. 

Over the decades Kreyòl solidified its identity and became the language of the people.  For centuries it was solely a spoken language as most of the citizens of Haiti were illiterate.  It was only in the latter half of the 20th Century that written Kreyòl became standardized. An interesting side note is that Haitian Creole is very closely related to the French Creole of Louisiana and other creoles of the Caribbean.

Kreyòl has had a difficult path to establish itself as one of the national languages of Haiti.  Ever since the revolution, French has enjoyed much higher prestige in Haiti.  French has always been considered to be the language of the educated and of the elite in Haiti.  Over the years, lawmakers have consistently dismissed  Kreyòl as a direct link and reminder to the days in which Haitians lived in bondage. Kreyòl was not accepted as a literary language and until the mid- 20th Century there was no literature written in Kreyòl.   To this day all Haitian school instruction is mandated to be conducted in French.  This, despite the fact that most of the teachers are unable to speak proper French themselves.

I was able to teach myself a fair amount of Kreyòl in the few weeks before I left.  I am able to fairly adequately express my needs in Kreyòl...understanding the reply, however,  is a different story.  Kreyòl does tend to be fairly easy for English speakers thanks to the vocabulary ( 50% of English words have a French origin) and the mercifully simple grammar.  

For example,  nouns have no gender, and their plural is formed simply by adding yo after the word. The term for “a” or “an” is placed before the noun, the term for “the” is placed  after the noun.  There are only five pronouns that do not decline based on their function (eg: mwen can mean:  I, me, to me, from me, my or mine)   To form the negative, just put pa in front of the verb. Possession is shown by placing the person or thing possessed before the possessor (eg: kay mwen : my house,  kay ou : your house).

Here are a few phrases thanks to Bryant Freeman’s Survival Creole Copyright © 1990, 2002

Good morning!   Bonjou!

Good evening!  Bonswa!   

How are you? Kijan ou ye?

Not bad. M' Pa pi mal.

And yourself? E ou menm?

Great! Anfòm!

I’m getting along. M' ap kenbe.

Hang in there! Kenbe, pa lage!

Have a good trip! Bon vwayaj!

Bye-bye. Babay.

See you (God willing). N a wè pi ta (si Dye vle).

It has been great fun attempting to communicate with the Haitians in Kreyòl.  They are very enthusiastic teachers and when I attempt to speak Kreyòl with them the response is always the same.   Eske ou menm pale Kreyòl??  Do you really speak Creole??

For more information, please visit:

http://www.indiana.edu/~creole/creolenatllangofhaiti.html