Basic Haitian Creole

I have been to Haiti at least 25 times. Since I didn’t have a passport for years, I don’t have an accurate record of all my travels. But, I have been to the country enough times to learn how to get around the country and speak conversational Creole.

Creole is a mixture of languages, but it has enough of a separate identity for linguists to say that Haitian Creole is a distinct language. Uneducated Haitians surely do not understand French, from which Creole flows a lot. There are also some African dialects that also contributed to Creole. And words from other languages ​​have been appropriated.

Blackout it is easily recognizable in Creole, although the Creole spelling is different. The Creole word for snow is sneezefrom German.

Creole developed among slaves in Haiti when it was a French colony. Slaves used the language to communicate with each other in the presence of their masters. This was the beginning of one of the cultural qualities of Haitians: it is an enigmatic culture. In many ways, Haitians are not only hard to understand, they don’t want to be understood. Many outsiders are too slow to accept and appreciate this, until they discover that they really didn’t understand Haitians.

Creole is a phonetic language. Vowels can be nasalized. This is indicated in writing with the letter “n” after the vowel. If the “n” is supposed to be pronounced, then the word is spelled with a double “n”.

The letter “j” is pronounced like the French “j”, with the teeth barely touching and vibrating. Vowels are pronounced like: “a” is always “ah”, as in; “e” is pronounced as a long “a”, as in cane, “è” is eh as in get; “i” is always pronounced as a long “e” as in eat; “o” is pronounced as a long “o”, as in oatmeal, “ò” as in crib; and the “u” is pronounced like “oo”, as in shoot. The “y” can be pronounced as a consonant but it can also be pronounced as “e”. It can also be combined with “e” and then pronounced as a long “i”, as in the sky.

Greetings. Before noon, the greeting is Bonjou; after noon, Bonswa. To ask “how are you?”, “kouma ou ye?”. Kouma means “how”, or means “you” and ye is “to be”.

To ask how many children a person has: “Kombien pitit ou genyen?”

Please is “flexible”. Thank you is “mesi”. Much is “boku”.

To ask how to get to the bathroom: “kote twalet la?”

Goodbye is “na wè” and ‘See you later’ is “na wè pita”.

Have a good trip. Good vwayaj!