Haitian Creole

Spoken in

• Creole languages French based Kreyòl

Ht

Has

Has

The Haitian ( Kreyòl ) is a creole language that is spoken in Haiti by about eight million people, almost the entire population (only around 5 % of the population speaks French ). Several hundred thousand spokesman for the Haitian language living in other countries. Haitian Creole is the with most speakers.

The reason for the emergence of the Haitian was that the slave owner, to prevent the communication between African slaves, bought slaves always different languages. Thus they hoped to prevent revolts of the slaves. From this experiment out to have "speechless " slaves, was the Haitian language.

She has mainly French word roots and a " creolized " grammar. Linguistic influences various West African languages ​​(especially from the Wolof, Fon and Ewe ) and Indian languages ​​(especially from the Arawak and Carib ) exist only in the vocabulary. The Swadesh list for Haitian has only entries from the French vocabulary.

There are two dialects: Fablas and plateau.

Haitian compares to the French side with the Quebec Koine language such as:

• Haitian Creole: m'a fè sa
• Quebec French: m'a fer sa
• Standard French: Je vais faire ça. ( "I'll do it." )

1940-1943 the Haitian language of H. Ormonde McConnell and Frank Laubach was placed in a written form, which was then also used until 1979 by the Haitian government to literacy.

Since 1961, the Haitian language has the status of official and language of instruction. In 1979, the spelling definitively by the National Institute of Education ( National Institute Pédagogique ) was according to the principles that had been developed at Indiana University under the direction of Albert Valdman, normalized.

The literary language is emerging, but already all textbooks of the lower classes are published in Haitian. Many speakers are bilingual in French, however Haitian has a lower social status than French, especially in the mulatto and white Haitians. There are newspapers, radio and television programs in Creole.

The Haitian Creole is not to be confused with the cult language Langaj (also Langay or ( Haitian ) Voodoo sacred language ).