What do they speak in Haiti?

blanc   Tue Jan 19, 2010 11:46 am GMT
" I've been trying to find out, to no avail, if Haitian Creole and French are mutually intelligible or not. Does anybody know? Can any french speakers comment? "


Creoles are basically derivations of french. It is a sort of french that adopted very simplified gramar (such as using infinitive verbs); with a African-based interpretation of the french phonology. It probably has some vocabulary from Spanish, English or African languages.

I actually doesn't find it really more difficult to understand than some other oil languages dialects. But it is sure that because most of it is distorted that we need some efforts to be able to understand most of it.
curiously at first when read it seem like a complete different language, but when it is pronounced many "strange things" are easily understood.


To have an idea it is like if there was an English-based dialect like this:

"me spik inglich, me av lern inglish a skool an me unerstan it ouel."

french Creoles seems more of less like this for us.
K.   Tue Jan 19, 2010 10:30 pm GMT
The grammar and spelling are different, but I've been able to make out a lot of it by sound and by reading it, so I would say that French speakers can understand it for the most part.
La Hostia   Sun Jan 24, 2010 6:32 am GMT
One of the reasons why Haiti is poor is because the French people were reluctant to colonize the French colonies, as they didn't really have a need to go abroad; in contrast the English people did have a cause / reason. The Spanish did a superb job than the French upon Mestizaje of Spanish men mating with Blacks / Natives; this gave them an incentive to the Blacks and Natives to better their social status by mixing themselves with: Mestizos, Castizos or Criollos. Let's not forget the Spanish built many churches, governmental buildings, some universities and other types of edifices in their former colonies. Much more grandiose and medieval-looking than the English colonies ever did. This is why the Dominican Republic is way better off than Haiti.

This is a stellar example of the difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republic:

http://www.elmundo.es/america/2010/01/19/noticias/1263889868.html

p.s. Nicaragua by the way, is the poorest Spanish-speaking country on earth.
Franco   Sun Jan 24, 2010 10:33 am GMT
In my view, it is very interesting the fact that Haiti is almost totally deforested. Normally PC propaganda associates over and over again white man and industrial progress to heavy pressure on natural resources that leads to things such as deforestation and other ecological disasters. Haiti is a good example of the opposite as there is hardly a tree in this continent that was once as green as Republica D. But Haiti is not a industrial nation nor is populated by greedy whites, on the contrary she is an underdeveloped, agrarian nation and populated by blacks by 95%.
The Earth   Sun Jan 24, 2010 12:38 pm GMT
Yes Franco; humans are viruses.
Franco   Sun Jan 24, 2010 4:08 pm GMT
Also, why are there so many people in Haiti? Can't they stop reproducing ?.Haiti is poor, small and with few natural resources. 10 millions of people in 27 0000 square kilometers!. That's 361 blacks per square km. Spain, with much more agricultural output , water resources, coastline , etc has only 85 inhabitants / km2.
Perhaps recent earthquake made a favor to mother nature in the end.
Baldewin   Sun Jan 24, 2010 6:20 pm GMT
The Lord's Hand taketh, the Lord's Hand giveth!
Maritornes   Mon Jan 25, 2010 12:29 am GMT
Then it can be said that God is not very fond of the Haitians.
Coki   Mon Jan 25, 2010 6:46 pm GMT
Didn't the Haitians killed all the white French people living in Haiti?

Then it went downhill from there. It's now the poorest country in the world. No wonder!
Jean Claude   Mon Jan 25, 2010 7:09 pm GMT
Haiti looks like an African nation in the Americas. Extreme poverty. No water. No food. HIV / AIDS. No centralized government. No resources. The Brazilian U.N forces were actually there governing the nation before the earthquake - more or less. All of the aforesaid was BEFORE the massive earthquake.
Fynall   Mon Jan 25, 2010 8:20 pm GMT
Lol Quebec in Canada was a french colony and it's not poor at all...it has nothing to do with what you said, being a french colony doesn't necesserly mean it's poor...same with spanish and other languages.
K.   Mon Jan 25, 2010 11:38 pm GMT
Haiti is very interesting. I don't know if it's true that they made a pact with the Devil, but I wonder if the past overwhelming interest in Voodoo
instead of other religions and science, contributed to the low standard of living. I don't know how much time Voodoo took up in the average Haitian's life. Do some beliefs keep people's minds in a kind of prison? I don't know. I've read a little about Voodoo, but I don't know much about it.

As to whether God "caused" the earthquake, I don't know that either.

I think I would like to do some work down there if I could go with a good group.
Franco   Mon Jan 25, 2010 11:41 pm GMT
Quebec is not poor because it belongs to a predominantly Anglo country.
Hispano   Tue Jan 26, 2010 12:23 am GMT
<< Quebec is not poor because it belongs to a predominantly Anglo country. >>

Quebec is industrialized unlike Anglo-Canada where all the industrial establishments are US owned just like Hispanic America, it cannot even manufacture a TV set o f its own.
Hispano   Tue Jan 26, 2010 12:34 am GMT
It's understandable that Africa is poorer than Hispanic America because modernity arrived in that continent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries during European colonization.

Experts predict that it will surpass Hispanic America in terms of economy and standard of living using the traits and discipline that they acquired from their former colonial masters French, British, and Portuguese.

Hispanic American countries have been in existence since the early 19th century and up to now they are still living in poverty, unindustrialized that they cannot even manufacture TV sets of their own.

Look at Venezuela, it's one of the petroleum exporting countries and yet the standard of living is still low. Argentina used to be the leader in economy(thanks to Italian, German, and British immigrants) in Latin America but now inflation is so high. That's because of the negative traits that Spain passed on to them like corruption, violence, vanity, etc.

The countries with the highest iexternal debts are Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, etc. are all hispanics. Luckily, African countries have low external debts.

It won't be long now that Africa and 3rd world Asian countries will surpass Hispanic America in terms of economy and standard of living so that the latter will become the poorest entity in the entire world