Origin of Haitian Creole
Haitian Creole is a language that was born in the 17th century, when France established a colony in the west of the island of Hispaniola, which is today Haiti. But its origin dates back to the period of Spanish rule. When Spain first established a colonization on the island in the 15th century, it was the Tainos who occupied the space. The contact of these two peoples has developed among them, a communication tool. After the extermination of the Africans, they went to look for blacks in various regions of Africa to work in the plantations. Arriving in the colony, black slaves contributed to the emergence of this tool with words from their spoken language.
The reason why our Creole language has a French lexical base is because the French have been colonizing us for a long time. They took control of the western part of the island with the Treaty of Wiswick from 1697 to 1804, establishing a system that depended exclusively on the labor of African slaves. The French colonists used the French language as the official language. As the slaves sought to communicate with each other, even with the French colonists. There was the creation of a new language that facilitated communication between these different groups of people. Creole, which has a French lexical base, but incorporates many words and grammatical structures from African languages, Tainos and Spanish, which makes it a rich and dynamic language.
In 1987, the Haitian Creole language was recognized as the official language in the country’s constitution, which reflected a change in the country’s political and social thinking. Many Haitians saw this as a recognition of their cultural identity. But despite this, many people still believed that the French language, which was considered the language of the elite, was better. This has created a division between those who are more comfortable speaking Creole, which is their mother tongue, and those who can say a few words of French and value this language more.
