Question: What language do they speak in Haiti?

Answer: Haitian Creole (Kreyol) is spoken in Haiti.

One minute answer. . . ready. . . set. . . go:

Creole languages have a substrate language, with an adstrate lexifier overlay. So, for Haitian Creole, the substrate is African and the lexifying language is French which provides the roots and some of the articles which are then blended with the word or put after the word which is a trait of African languages. In Creole languages, the substrate is rarely identified specifically because the language originated among slaves who were purposely in mixed groups from all over Africa. This was a “secret” language used to communicate apart from the slave masters.

Some people want to call Creoles “pidgin French.” This is not the case. A pidgin language does not have native speakers, whereas Creoles do. It is believed that Creole was created by the children of slaves. Not having a “native tongue,” they blended the African languages they heard with the French from the masters. Creoles are morphologically developed languages. Pidgins are more like the equivalent of “glass drink me,” which could mean: “I will drink out of the glass.” Or, it is more like a variation of / dialect of a given lexifying language. Jamaican English is considered a Creole, but it could be debatable that it is a pidgin.

Creoles are not merely variations of or a dummying down of the lexifier language. They are a mixed fusion of language with a specific history rooted in a slave economy. All language is fluid. Spanish is not called pidgin Latin. Nor is it called a Creole. Yet modern day Castilian Spanish is also about 30% Arabic. To flip this thinking, a scholar at MIT has deemed Creole languages to actually be romance languages.

Let’s look at the ever-changing story of English. In England there was Gaelic, and then in the 6^th or 7th century the Anglos and the Saxons showed up. By the 8^th century there was old English, and a lot has changed since then. English is a Germanic language with its closest relative being Dutch. Yet, it could be called a romance language because so many of the language’s more sophisticated words are rooted in the Latin signifiers - - “entirely,” “collaborate,” “innovate.”

Is English known as “pidgin Latin”? No. Do people ask “is English a real language”? No. Do people ask, “Why do English speakers spell the words funny?” No. This is where the history of the language comes into play. French speakers find the written Creole to be a “phonetic spelling” of the French. This is incorrect, because of the complexity of Haitian Creole. But, it is also an incorrect and insensitive thing to say based on the history of Haiti revolting from the oppressor of the French.

The island of Hispaniola was the richest and most lush place on earth. In the seventeenth century, the French controlled the western third portion of the island while the Spanish controlled the eastern two-thirds. It was a slave economy. In the late seventeen hundreds 500,000 slaves revolted on the 40,000 French masters. The first president of Haiti was an ex-slave. The Haitian Revolution is responsible for a series of events in western history, including the Louisiana Purchase. Haiti is the first black republic. The Haitians have been punished by the US, French, Canada, and the western world ever since. For a closer and more elaborate history of Haiti, the Haitian people, and the US occupation of/influence in, I strongly suggest a fantastic book by Dr. Paul Farmer called The Uses of Haiti.

“Bonjou msye dam. Ki sa m kab fe pou nou?”
(Good morning sir and madam. What can I do for you?)

“M bezwen yon kostim. Madmwazel la vle we wob abiye yo. Montre nou bel bagay, paske nou vle abiye byenn bwode.”
(I need a suit. The lady wants to see the formal dresses. Show us nice things because we want to dress up.)

To hear more Haitian Creole, check out this video of Belo, a popular singer in Haiti. I saw him in concert in 2006, and I am a huge fan!