Photo Credit: http://childrenslifeline.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html
Haitian French Creole:
Haitian French creole is the language exclusively spoken by 90-95% of Haitians today. The language’s origin is not concretely understood but there are many theories as to its inception. One theory is that Haitian Creole was actually started in Africa by slaves kept at trading posts for lengthy periods of time before being sent to the Caribbean. Another, more likely theory is that the language developed in Haiti between slaves from different parts of Africa forming first a rudimentary pidgin for discourse and later evolving it into a full creole language.
Haitian Creole is based heavily on French. Because the bulk of initial contact language came from French colonials, the lexicon borrows heavily from French. The syntactical arraignment differs quite a bit though. Syntactically Haitian Creole is very similar to the Fon language of West Africa. Below is an example of the lexical similarities between Haitian Creole and French and the syntactical differences between the two.
Syntactical Differences: Absence of Inflection.
In Haitian Creole, unlike French or English, nouns are not inflected for plurality and instead a separate word is added to denote plurality.
French: Mes Bécannes
Haitian Creole: Bekann mwen yo
Fon Language: Keke che le
English: My Bikes
In English possession is indicated by the pronoun my which precedes the object: bike or bikes. In French there’s a similar syntactical structure for noun possession where Mes means my and Bécannes means bikes but the difference between French and English is that plurality is denoted by the s at the end of both words in French while it is only at the end of the noun in English. This differs greatly in Haitian Creole where the object precedes the possessive pronoun and neither the object nor the possessive pronoun are inflected for plurality and instead the plurality is denoted by the addition of yo at the end of the phrase. This is the same syntactically as Fon language where keke means bike and che is the possessive pronoun and le denotes plurality (UCLA and Wikipedia).
Lexical Borrowing:
In this example though, you can also see the lexical similarities between Haitian Creole and French. Bekann and Bécannes are pronounced virtually the same as the s is silent in French. While there are several terminal letters in French that are silent there are no unpronounced letters in Haitian Creole which might explain why there is not inflection for plurality. Mwen is fairly different from mes but where, in French, there are several different possessive pronouns whose use is determined by the gender and plurality of the noun, Haitian Creole only has one possessive pronoun for each different possible subject (Wikipedia: Haitian Creole and About.com/French Language).
In French ma, mes and mon all mean my but ma is used when the noun is feminine, mon is used when the noun is masculine and mes is used when the noun is plural. All of these are replaced with Mwen in Haitian Creole.
Research into language contact shows that lesser contact between languages often leads only to lexical borrowing while more intense contact between languages leads to syntactical borrowing as well. Later on language contact often leads to convergence, resulting in the creation of Creole languages. As was discussed earlier, there are two competing theories on the origins of Haitian Creole; one that it originated in slave trade hubs in West Africa and the other that it originated in Haiti. The fact that syntactically it has so many similarities to Fon language, suggests that it’s probably a combination of the two. We might suppose that the initial pidgin language was formed in West Africa by captured slaves from different parts of Western Africa in slave camps. While they may have all spoken different dialects or even completely different languages, they may have created a rudimentary pidgin in Africa which carried with them to Haiti where, through extensive contact with French borrowed heavily from the French Lexicon (UPenn).
When examining the lexical borrowing that occurred between French and Haitian Creole it is important to understand the way pronunciation of French letters and sounds likely affected the development of the Haitian Creole Lexicon. The example below will demonstrate how when spelled out, Haitian Creole often looks quite different from French, but when we consider the actual pronunciation of French we get a better understanding of how the words were transferred over.
The girls put on dresses in French is: Les filles mettent des robes. In the French sentence filles is pronounced fi without specifically pronouncing the ll or the es. Mettent also isn’t pronounced met ent or met ont but simply met. The Haitian Creole version of this sentence is Fi yo mete wob. Fi means girls, yo denotes the plurality of the girls. Mete is the corresponding verb “to put on” in French and wob is the Haitian Creole version of robes. Robes in French is not pronounces with same rhotic sound as in English but instead employs the French uvular R (sometimes referred to as guttural) which to an untrained ear might sound like a w sound. Because the es isn’t pronounced in robes in French, it sounds more like robe which is likely why the Haitian version is wob, where the b is pronounced at the end of the word.
Despite the many similarities between Haitian Creole and French, there has been constant controversy and difficulty between speakers of the two languages in Haiti.
Sources: http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/jQzOTliM/larson.eventsinfon.pdf and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Creole and http://lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?menu=004&LangID=2
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~gillian/Interlang.doc.pdf
Haitian French creole is the language exclusively spoken by 90-95% of Haitians today. The language’s origin is not concretely understood but there are many theories as to its inception. One theory is that Haitian Creole was actually started in Africa by slaves kept at trading posts for lengthy periods of time before being sent to the Caribbean. Another, more likely theory is that the language developed in Haiti between slaves from different parts of Africa forming first a rudimentary pidgin for discourse and later evolving it into a full creole language.
Haitian Creole is based heavily on French. Because the bulk of initial contact language came from French colonials, the lexicon borrows heavily from French. The syntactical arraignment differs quite a bit though. Syntactically Haitian Creole is very similar to the Fon language of West Africa. Below is an example of the lexical similarities between Haitian Creole and French and the syntactical differences between the two.
Syntactical Differences: Absence of Inflection.
In Haitian Creole, unlike French or English, nouns are not inflected for plurality and instead a separate word is added to denote plurality.
French: Mes Bécannes
Haitian Creole: Bekann mwen yo
Fon Language: Keke che le
English: My Bikes
In English possession is indicated by the pronoun my which precedes the object: bike or bikes. In French there’s a similar syntactical structure for noun possession where Mes means my and Bécannes means bikes but the difference between French and English is that plurality is denoted by the s at the end of both words in French while it is only at the end of the noun in English. This differs greatly in Haitian Creole where the object precedes the possessive pronoun and neither the object nor the possessive pronoun are inflected for plurality and instead the plurality is denoted by the addition of yo at the end of the phrase. This is the same syntactically as Fon language where keke means bike and che is the possessive pronoun and le denotes plurality (UCLA and Wikipedia).
Lexical Borrowing:
In this example though, you can also see the lexical similarities between Haitian Creole and French. Bekann and Bécannes are pronounced virtually the same as the s is silent in French. While there are several terminal letters in French that are silent there are no unpronounced letters in Haitian Creole which might explain why there is not inflection for plurality. Mwen is fairly different from mes but where, in French, there are several different possessive pronouns whose use is determined by the gender and plurality of the noun, Haitian Creole only has one possessive pronoun for each different possible subject (Wikipedia: Haitian Creole and About.com/French Language).
In French ma, mes and mon all mean my but ma is used when the noun is feminine, mon is used when the noun is masculine and mes is used when the noun is plural. All of these are replaced with Mwen in Haitian Creole.
Research into language contact shows that lesser contact between languages often leads only to lexical borrowing while more intense contact between languages leads to syntactical borrowing as well. Later on language contact often leads to convergence, resulting in the creation of Creole languages. As was discussed earlier, there are two competing theories on the origins of Haitian Creole; one that it originated in slave trade hubs in West Africa and the other that it originated in Haiti. The fact that syntactically it has so many similarities to Fon language, suggests that it’s probably a combination of the two. We might suppose that the initial pidgin language was formed in West Africa by captured slaves from different parts of Western Africa in slave camps. While they may have all spoken different dialects or even completely different languages, they may have created a rudimentary pidgin in Africa which carried with them to Haiti where, through extensive contact with French borrowed heavily from the French Lexicon (UPenn).
When examining the lexical borrowing that occurred between French and Haitian Creole it is important to understand the way pronunciation of French letters and sounds likely affected the development of the Haitian Creole Lexicon. The example below will demonstrate how when spelled out, Haitian Creole often looks quite different from French, but when we consider the actual pronunciation of French we get a better understanding of how the words were transferred over.
The girls put on dresses in French is: Les filles mettent des robes. In the French sentence filles is pronounced fi without specifically pronouncing the ll or the es. Mettent also isn’t pronounced met ent or met ont but simply met. The Haitian Creole version of this sentence is Fi yo mete wob. Fi means girls, yo denotes the plurality of the girls. Mete is the corresponding verb “to put on” in French and wob is the Haitian Creole version of robes. Robes in French is not pronounces with same rhotic sound as in English but instead employs the French uvular R (sometimes referred to as guttural) which to an untrained ear might sound like a w sound. Because the es isn’t pronounced in robes in French, it sounds more like robe which is likely why the Haitian version is wob, where the b is pronounced at the end of the word.
Despite the many similarities between Haitian Creole and French, there has been constant controversy and difficulty between speakers of the two languages in Haiti.
Sources: http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/jQzOTliM/larson.eventsinfon.pdf and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Creole and http://lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?menu=004&LangID=2
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~gillian/Interlang.doc.pdf