Haitian Creole

Not to be confused with Haitian French, a variety of French spoken in Haiti.
"Saint-Domingue Creole" redirects here. Not to be confused with Dominican Creole French.

Haitian Creole
kreyòl ayisyen
Pronunciation[kɣejɔl ajisjɛ̃]
Native toHaiti
EthnicityHaitians
Native speakers
13 million (2020)[1]
Latin (Haitian Creole alphabet)
Official status
Official language in
Haiti
Recognised minority
language in
Regulated byAkademi Kreyòl Ayisyen[5]
(Haitian Creole Academy)
Language codes
ISO 639-1ht
ISO 639-2hat
ISO 639-3hat
Glottologhait1244  Haitian
Linguasphere51-AAC-cb
IETFht
Distribution of Haitian Creole, areas in dark blue is where it is spoken by a majority, areas in light blue is where it is spoken by a minority.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
A Haitian Creole speaker, recorded in the United States

Haitian Creole (/ˈheɪʃən ˈkriːoʊl/; Haitian Creole: kreyòl ayisyen, [kɣejɔl ajisjɛ̃];[6][7] French: créole haïtien, [kʁe.ɔl a.i.sjɛ̃]), or simply Creole (Haitian Creole: kreyòl), is a French-based creole language spoken by 10 to 12 million people worldwide, and is one of the two official languages of Haiti (the other being French), where it is the native language of the vast majority of the population.[8][9] Northern, Central, and Southern dialects are the three main dialects of Haitian Creole. The Northern dialect is predominantly spoken in Cap-Haïtien, Central is spoken in Port-au-Prince, and Southern in the Cayes area.[10]

The language emerged from contact between French settlers and enslaved Africans during the Atlantic slave trade in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in the 17th and 18th centuries.[11][12] Although its vocabulary largely derives from 18th-century French, its grammar is that of a West African Volta-Congo language branch, particularly the Fongbe and Igbo languages.[12] It also has influences from Spanish, English, Portuguese, Taíno, and other West African languages.[13] It is not mutually intelligible with standard French, and it also has its own distinctive grammar. Some estimate that Haitians are the largest community in the world to speak a modern creole language,[14] others estimate that more people speak Nigerian Pidgin.

Haitian Creole's use in communities and schools has been contentious since at least the 19th century. Some Haitians view French as inextricably linked to the legacy of colonialism and language compelled on the population by conquerers, while Creole has been maligned by francophones as a miseducated person's French.[15][16] Until the late 20th century, Haitian presidents spoke only standard French to their fellow citizens, and until the 21st century, all instruction at Haitian elementary schools was in modern standard French, a second language to most of their students.[8]

Haitian Creole is also spoken in regions that have received migration from Haiti, including other Caribbean islands, French Guiana, Martinique, France, Canada (particularly Quebec) and the United States (including the U.S. state of Louisiana).[17] It is related to Antillean Creole, spoken in the Lesser Antilles, and to other French-based creole languages.

  1. ^ Haitian Creole at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Gurevich2004 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Haitian". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. ^ a b Dufour, Fritz, ed. (2017). "Exploring the Possibilities for the Emergence of a Single and Global Native Language". Language Arts & Disciplines. p. 4. Retrieved 11 October 2020.
  5. ^ "Cérémonie de lancement d'un partenariat entre le Ministère de l'Education Nationale et de la Formation Professionnelle et l'Académie Créole" (in French and Haitian Creole). Port‑au‑Prince, Haiti: Government of the Republic of Haiti. 8 July 2015. Archived from the original on 28 July 2015. Retrieved 5 December 2015.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Faraclas2012 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Valdman, Albert (2002). "Creole: The National Language of Haiti". Footsteps. 2 (4): 36–39. Archived from the original on 13 July 2015.
  8. ^ a b DeGraff, Michel; Ruggles, Molly (1 August 2014). "A Creole Solution for Haiti's Woes". The New York Times. p. A17. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 6 September 2015. Under the 1987 Constitution, adopted after the overthrow of Jean‑Claude Duvalier's dictatorship, [Haitian] Creole and French have been the two official languages, but most of the population speaks only Creole fluently.
  9. ^ Léonidas, Jean-Robert (1995). Prétendus Créolismes: Le Couteau dans l'Igname [So‑Called Creolisms: The Knife in the Yam] (in French). Montréal: Editions du CIDIHCA. ISBN 978-2-920862-97-5. LCCN 95207252. OCLC 34851284. OL 3160860W.
  10. ^ Schieffelin, Bambi B.; Doucet, Rachelle Charlier (1994). "The "Real" Haitian Creole: Ideology, Metalinguistics, and Orthographic Choice". American Ethnologist. 21 (1): 176–200. doi:10.1525/ae.1994.21.1.02a00090. ISSN 0094-0496. JSTOR 646527.
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference DeGraff2007 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ a b Seguin, Luisa (2020). Transparency and Language Contact: The Case of Haitian Creole, French, and Fongbe. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages. pp. 218–252.
  13. ^ Bonenfant, Jacques L. (2011). "History of Haitian-Creole: From Pidgin to Lingua Franca and English Influence on the Language" (PDF). Review of Higher Education and Self-Learning. 3 (11). Archived (PDF) from the original on 23 March 2015.
  14. ^ Nadeau, Jean-Benoît; Barlow, Julie (2008) [1st pub. 2006]. "Far from the Sun". The Story of French. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 97. ISBN 978-0-312-34184-8. LCCN 2006049348. OCLC 219563658. There are more speakers of French-based Creoles than all other Creoles combined (including English), thanks mostly to Haiti, the biggest Creole-speaking nation in the world...
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference Schieffelin1994 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  16. ^ DeGraff, Michel (2003). "Against Creole exceptionalism" (PDF). Language. 79 (2): 391–410. doi:10.1353/lan.2003.0114. S2CID 47857823. Archived (PDF) from the original on 29 July 2015.
  17. ^ Spears, Arthur K.; Joseph, Carole M. Berotte (22 June 2010). The Haitian Creole Language: History, Structure, Use, and Education. Lexington Books. p. 2. ISBN 978-1-4616-6265-5.