Photo Credit: https://www.msu.edu/~williss2/carpentier/part1/creolealphabet.jpg
Phonology of Haitian Creole:
Scholarly work on Haitian Creole describes the language as having 32 segments, consisting of 20 consonants 7 oral vowels and 3 or 5 nasal vowels. The classification of the nasal vowels varies in some phonological categorizations of the language.
One scholarly article listed the consonants:
Stops: /p, b, t, d, k, g, m, n/
Fricatives: /f, v, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, ɣ, (h)/
Affricates: /tʃ, dʒ/
Approximants: /l, j, w, (ɥ)/
And the vowels
Oral Vowels: i, e, ɛ, a, ɔ, o, u
Nasal vowels: ũ, ɔ̃, ɛ̃, ã,
One sound of note is the rhotic ɣ. Classified as a voiced velar fricative there has been some debate on the use of this sound in Haitian Creole. Since consensus has not been reached that the symbol should be changed, the standard rhotic ɣ remains (Pindziak).
The original orthography of McConnel and Laubach was criticized for its lack of front rounded vowels. This is interesting as another paper on the subject breaks Haitian Creole into two sub-dialects, Rough Creole and Smooth Creole. Smooth Creole retains the front rounded vowel while Rough Creole doesn’t. It is worth mentioning that the article defines Smooth Creole as being spoken by bilingual educated Haitians, which is probably why it retains similarities to French, while Rough Creole is spoken by the much larger group of monolingual speakers. This could be why the initial orthography was criticized for the lack of front rounded vowels, because educated speakers did use the front rounded vowel while the majority of speakers did not (Pindziak).
Below are two videos demonstrating pronunciation of vowels. The first video shows the French pronunciation of front rounded vowels, not seen in the variation of Haitian Creole spoken by the majority of Haitians. The second video demonstrates the rest of the vowels commonly spoken in Haitian Creole.
Scholarly work on Haitian Creole describes the language as having 32 segments, consisting of 20 consonants 7 oral vowels and 3 or 5 nasal vowels. The classification of the nasal vowels varies in some phonological categorizations of the language.
One scholarly article listed the consonants:
Stops: /p, b, t, d, k, g, m, n/
Fricatives: /f, v, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, ɣ, (h)/
Affricates: /tʃ, dʒ/
Approximants: /l, j, w, (ɥ)/
And the vowels
Oral Vowels: i, e, ɛ, a, ɔ, o, u
Nasal vowels: ũ, ɔ̃, ɛ̃, ã,
One sound of note is the rhotic ɣ. Classified as a voiced velar fricative there has been some debate on the use of this sound in Haitian Creole. Since consensus has not been reached that the symbol should be changed, the standard rhotic ɣ remains (Pindziak).
The original orthography of McConnel and Laubach was criticized for its lack of front rounded vowels. This is interesting as another paper on the subject breaks Haitian Creole into two sub-dialects, Rough Creole and Smooth Creole. Smooth Creole retains the front rounded vowel while Rough Creole doesn’t. It is worth mentioning that the article defines Smooth Creole as being spoken by bilingual educated Haitians, which is probably why it retains similarities to French, while Rough Creole is spoken by the much larger group of monolingual speakers. This could be why the initial orthography was criticized for the lack of front rounded vowels, because educated speakers did use the front rounded vowel while the majority of speakers did not (Pindziak).
Below are two videos demonstrating pronunciation of vowels. The first video shows the French pronunciation of front rounded vowels, not seen in the variation of Haitian Creole spoken by the majority of Haitians. The second video demonstrates the rest of the vowels commonly spoken in Haitian Creole.