follow Lange focus on Facebook Twitter
and Instagram hello everyone welcome to
the Lange focused Channel and my name is
Paul
today's topic is Haitian Creole the most
widely spoken creole language in the
world Haitian Creole is the main
language of Haiti mainly in the western
one-third of the island of Hispaniola
with the rest of the island belonging to
the Dominican Republic it's spoken by
somewhere around 12 million people
including the 10 point six million
people of Haiti and Haitian immigrants
living in the United States and Canada
France and various Caribbean countries
Haitian Creole is a young language that
developed in the 17th and 18th centuries
it's a french-based creole language
meaning that the vast majority of its
vocabulary around 90% of it comes from
french but it's grammar is mainly rooted
in west african languages its sentence
structure is said to be very similar to
the phone language of the knee how did
this combination of elements take place
well a French colony in part of what is
now Haiti the island of Tortuga was
founded in 1660 and a few years later
the French West India Company took
control of the colony and France claimed
authority over the western part of
Hispaniola in 1697 Spain which had
previously controlled the entire island
ceded the western portion of the island
to France in exchange for French
promises to suppress acts of piracy
against Spanish ships and towns the
Pirates were a lawless community of
French Dutch and Englishmen
called the Buccaneers they attacked
Spanish ships and towns with the support
of rival European powers these people
with the real Pirates of the Caribbean
but I digress
in the French colony settlers founded
tobacco cotton and cacao farms and
African slaves were imported to work
them almost all of Haiti's present day
population descended from such slaves
the French colonialists spoke various
non-standard dialects of French while
the slaves spoke various West African
languages it's thought that the gabay
languages a branch of the Nigeria Hongo
language family were spoken by a large
proportion of the slaves with slaves
very often unable to communicate with
each other or with their slave masters
they tried to learn
but without formal training or education
they developed a French based pidgin
language a pidgin language is a
simplified form of communication that
arises when people with no common
language attempt to communicate pidgin
languages have no native speakers when a
pidgin language begins to be spoken as a
native language by people born in that
environment it becomes a creole language
whereas pigeons are simplified forms of
communication and may be limited in
function when they become Creole
languages they increase in complexity
and can be used for all functions of
life Haitian Creole is a fully
functional language if you want to learn
more about pidgins and creoles and how
they develop check out my video on the
subject right here there are also other
influences on Haitian Creole aside from
French dialects and African languages
contact with other Europeans brought
some Spanish Portuguese and English
words into the language there were also
frequent slave revolts and slaves
escaping into the mountains encountered
the native tyno people this contact
introduced some Thai no words into
Haitian Creole Haiti gained independence
from France in 1804 but French remains
the prestige language for the next 200
years the government conducted business
and French and French was officially the
only language of Education until fairly
recently Haitian Creole was considered a
corrupted form of French a language of
low prestige a language of the poor but
that stigma didn't stop Haitian Creole
from developing as a living language at
the end of the 1800s literature in
Haitian Creole was already being written
even though there was no standard way of
writing the words in the 1940s the
President of Haiti made an attempt to
standardization Creole orthography with
the kind of phonetic spelling system but
this met with a lot of resistance
because some people supported
orthography that was more based on the
way French is written in 1979 patient
Creole was finally standardised using a
compromise between those two approaches
Haitian Creole finally became a national
language alongside French in 1987 before
that school instruction had always been
in French which was basically a foreign
language for most of the students when
Haitian Creole became a national
language it was allowed to be used as a
tool of education in school
alongside French which was still
officially the language of instruction
I guess this change allowed schools to
switch between French and Haitian Creole
whenever that made instruction easier
French used to be the language of
official radio and TV broadcasts but in
the years since haitian creole became a
national language both languages are
used the major newspapers are all in
french but it seems that nobody really
reads them except people from the upper
class in haiti there seem to be two main
linguistic communities to bilingual
upper classes and the masses who mostly
speak only haitian creole though maybe
they understand some french as well
because of their schooling so what is
haitian creole like as a french-based
creole its connection to french is
immediately obvious when you look at a
haitian creole sentence most of the
words are a french origin but they're
spelled quite differently than they are
in french the french word of it is our
vet in Haitian Creole don't say is don't
say mojit is Margie a shtick is a shtick
messy is messy bonsoir Monsieur is
bonsoir Monsieur so you can see that
Haitian Creole uses simpler largely
phonetic spelling of French words it
should combine meaning I work is when to
revive the subject pronoun here is
interesting because the Haitian Creole
word for I comes from the French
disjunctive pronoun moi rather than just
the subject pronoun in Haitian Creole
there is no distinction between the
subject object and disjunctive pronouns
it's just when except for a short form
we'll see a bit later here's another
example of how French words are often
used differently in Haitian Creole Mike
on camera G this means I know how to
cook word for word it's I know make food
when comes from moi comme comes from
comment set comes from fair and mole G
comes from French mole G in French it
would be very different
you sit region 8 first of all in French
there are two verbs meaning to know
Panetta and savoir Conan
means to know in the sense of being
acquainted with someone or something
while Savoie is used when you know how
to do something or know something by
heart in the French sentence savoir is
used but in the Haitian Creole sentence
the word cone deriving from panetta
is used Margy means to eat in Haitian
Creole but it also means food ERG means
to make food or cook in French you could
say Sam still Inuvik you which means to
make food with new cook you meaning food
Mancha doesn't mean food in French these
kinds of changes in meaning or usage of
French words are common in Haitian
Creole personal pronouns before we saw
the pronoun more which means I or me the
other personal pronouns are similarly a
French origin but are a little different
from their French equivalent who need
new new you'll notice that new is used
for we but also for you in the plural
form which is distinct from French which
uses root not new yo means they and this
one may not look like a French pronoun
but it comes from the French disjunctive
pronoun good all of these pronouns stay
the same whether they are used as
subject pronouns or object pronouns when
we menu this means I like them you are a
memory
this means they like me there are
however short forms of the pronouns
which are used in certain situations
possession to show possession you simply
place the personal pronoun after the now
leave this means your book with the
first word leave meaning book and who is
the personal pronoun for you in the
singular word order the basic word order
of Haitian Creole is SVO similar to an
English or in French where kanji or
machine meaning I Drive a car here's the
subject the verb and the object and Yan
is the indefinite article adjectives are
usually placed after the now went onto
your machine wash this means I Drive a
red car but there is a limited number of
adjectives that come before the noun
verbs now let's see what happens to this
verb when we change the subject of the
sentence we convey your machine wood
nothing happens there are no verb
conjugations in Haitian Creole the verb
doesn't change based on gender person or
number
what about tenses verb tenses are
indicated by adding a tense marker
before the verb ah is the present
continuous marker tey is the past marker
that is the past continuous marker aa is
the future tense marker value is the
near or definite future marker and that
is the conditional marker nor Lina
magazine
this means we go to the store map Elena
magazine this means we are going to the
store and notice here that the personal
pronoun is the short form the short
forms of the personal pronouns are
generally interchangeable with the long
forms but before up and aah the short
form is normally used you clearly know
magazine this means we're going to the
store in the sense of a near or definite
future action no Darryl in a magazine
this means we went to the store and so
on it's really that simple you just
stick the tense marker before the verb
definite articles let's take a look at
this word on for a moment this is a
definite article which always comes
after the noun it modifies but this is
not the only definite article the
definite article changes depending on
the final syllable of the noun that
precedes it if the noun ends with any of
these combinations of letters or a nasal
vowel like this one in magazine the
article is if the noun ends in an oral
continent that is preceded by an oral
vowel the article is that for example
Lila the book if the noun ends in an
oral consonant preceded by a nasal vowel
the article is lost like bank loan the
bank if the noun ends in an oral vowel
preceded by an oral consonant the
article is aa for example a year the
country if the noun ends in a nasal
consonant the article is now or lost
for example delay for dinner
the telephone questions yes or no
questions can be formed by using rising
intonation or you can place SK at the
beginning Upali from safe SQL function s
K comes from French Eska open-ended
questions can be made by placing a
question word at the beginning before
the subject quiche our margin this means
what are you eating
Keitha means what the first piece key
means which and is combined with a
second piece the pronoun for this or
that other question words are also
formed with T equal to RV this means
where do you live or more literally
where are you living
because up indicates present continuous
key code it means where and comes from
which plus place give me this means who
are you ki-moon means who and the two
pieces are which plus person a couple
more sentences so a change in framework
is trash HT emotion
this means that is my brother's dog and
this is my dog word for word is this or
that is dog brother my and this or that
is dog my the word saw means either this
or that so in this case we have two
different dogs the meaning of this or
that would depend on which dog you
gesture towards say is the copula verb
like to be and you can see how
possession is shown swimway means my
brother because i comes after brother
and then this whole phrase comes after
the word for dog so it's my brother's
dog bag I came where is where she clear
thump we bomani
this means the thing I need is the key
please give it to me word for word it's
thing that I need the is key the please
give me it here you can see that the
word K creates a relative clause the
thing that I need the definite article
modifies the entire proceeding phrase
thing that I need here bond is one of
the only Haitian Creole
herbs that has conjugations but there
are only two forms ball and bow here you
can see that the indirect object comes
right after the verb and the direct
object
li comes after the indirect object as
you can see Haitian Creole is a very fun
and interesting language and if you
already know some French then it will
probably be quite interesting to examine
Haitian Creole and see how it's similar
and different to French and that brings
me to the question of the day to Haitian
Creole speakers does your knowledge of
Creole help you understand French and to
French speakers does your knowledge of
French help you understand Creole and
everyone else leave your impressions
about this video and about Haitian
Creole in the comments down below be
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want to say thank you to my amazing
patreon supporters especially these
people right here on the screen thank
you for watching and have a nice day
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