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Haiti THE LANGUAGE QUESTION
French and Creole
Two languages were spoken in Haiti: Creole and French.
The
social relationship between these languages was complex.
Nine of
every ten Haitians spoke only Creole, which was the
everyday
language for the entire population. About one in ten also
spoke
French. And only about one in twenty was fluent in both
French
and Creole. Thus, Haiti was neither a francophone country
nor a
bilingual one. Rather, two separate speech communities
existed:
the monolingual majority and the bilingual elite.
All classes valued verbal facility. Public speaking
played an
important role in political life; the style of the speech
was
often more important than the content. Repartee enlivened
the
daily parlance of both the monolingual peasant and the
sophisticated bilingual urbanite. Small groups gathered
regularly
in Port-au-Prince to listen to storytellers. Attitudes
toward
French and Creole helped to define the Haitians' cultural
dilemma.
Language usually complicated interactions between
members of
the elite and the masses. Haitians of all classes took
pride in
Creole as a means of expression and as the national
tongue.
Nevertheless, many monolingual and bilingual Haitians
regarded
Creole as a nonlanguage, claiming that "it has no rules."
Thus,
the majority of the population did not value their native
language and built a mystique around French. At the same
time,
almost every bilingual Haitian had ambivalent feelings
about
using French and did so uncomfortably. In Creole the
phrase "to
speak French" means "to be a hypocrite."
Fluency in French served as an even more important
criterion
than skin color for membership in the Haitian elite. The
use of
French in public life excluded the Creole-speaking
majority from
politics, government, and intellectual life. Bilingual
families
used French primarily for formal occasions. Because Creole
was
the language of informal gatherings, it was filled with
slang and
was used for telling jokes. Haitian French lacked these
informal
qualities. Monolingual Creole speakers avoided formal
situations
where their inability to communicate in French would be a
disadvantage or an embarrassment. In an attempt to be
accepted in
formal or governmental circles, some monolingual Creole
speakers
used French-sounding phrases in their Creole speech, but
these
imitations were ultimately of little or no use.
Middle-class
bilinguals in Port-au-Prince suffered the greatest
disadvantage
because they frequently encountered situations in which
the use
of French would be appropriate, but their imperfect
mastery of
the language tended to betray their lower-class origins.
It was
in the middle class that the language issue was most
pressing.
The use of French as a class marker made middle-class
Haitians
more rigid in their use of French on formal occasions than
Haitians who were solidly upper class.
The origins of Creole are still debated. Some scholars
believe that it arose from a pidgin that developed between
French
colonists and African slaves in the colonies. Others
believe that
Creole came to the colony of Saint-Domingue as a
full-fledged
language, having arisen from the French maritime-trade
dialect.
Whatever its origins, Creole is linguistically a separate
language and not just a corrupted French dialect. Although
the
majority of Creole words have French origins, Creole's
grammar is
not similar to that of French, and the two languages are
not
mutually comprehensible.
There are regional and class variations in Creole.
Regional
variations include lexical items and sound shifts, but the
grammatical structure is consistent throughout the
country.
Bilingual speakers tend to use French phonemes in their
Creole
speech. The tendency to use French sounds became common in
the
Port-au-Prince variant of Creole. By the 1980s, the
Port-au-
Prince variant was becoming perceived as the standard form
of the
language.
The use of French and Creole during the colonial and
the
independence periods set speech patterns for the next
century.
During the colonial period, it was mostly whites and
educated
mulatto freedmen who spoke French. When the slaves gained
their
freedom and the plantation system disintegrated, the
greatest
barriers among the various classes of people of color
collapsed.
French language became a vital distinction between these
who had
been emancipated before the revolution (the anciens
libres) and those who achieved freedom through the
revolution, and it ensured the superior status of the
anciens
libres. French became the language not only of
government and
commerce, but also of culture and refinement. Even the
most
nationalist Haitians of the nineteenth century placed
little
value on Creole.
Attitudes toward Creole began to change during the
twentieth
century, however, especially during the United States
occupation.
The occupation forced Haitian intellectuals to confront
their
non-European heritage. A growing black consciousness and
intensifying nationalism led many Haitians to consider
Creole as
the "authentic" language of the country. The first attempt
at a
Creole text appeared in 1925, and the first Creole
newspaper was
published in 1943.
Beginning in the 1950s, a movement to give Creole
official
status evolved slowly. The constitution of 1957 reaffirmed
French
as the official language, but it permitted the use of
Creole in
certain public functions. In 1969 a law was passed giving
Creole
limited legal status; the language could be used in the
legislature, the courts, and clubs, but not in accredited
educational institutions. In 1979, however, a decree
permitted
Creole as the language of instruction in the classroom.
The
constitution of 1983 declared that both Creole and French
were
the national languages but specified that French would be
the
official language. The suppressed 1987 Constitution (which
was
partially reinstated in 1989) gave official status to
Creole
(see The Constitutional Framework
, ch. 4).
Data as of December 1989
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