Haitian Creole
Christopher Columbus claimed Haiti when he
landed there in 1492. Arawak Indians
were the original inhabitants of this
island when Columbus arrived. Later, the
island became a colony of England.
Haiti remained virtually unsettled until the
mid-17th century, when French
colonists, importing African slaves, developed
sugar plantations in the
north. Under French rule from 1697, Haiti (then called
Saint-Domingue)
became one of the world's richest sugar and coffee producers.
Soon, Haiti
became a land of wealth with the vast use of slavery as their method
of
production. The rising demand for sugar, coffee, cotton, and tobacco
created
a greater demand for slaves by other slave trading countries. Spain,
France, the
Dutch, and English were in competition for the cheap labor
needed to work their
colonial plantation system producing those lucrative
goods. The slave trade was
so profitable that, by 1672, the Royal African
Company chartered by Charles II
of England superseded the other traders and
became the richest shipper of human
slaves to the mainland of the Americas.
The slaves were so valuable to the open
market - they were eventually called
"Black Gold." Plantation owners
began to be represented in the colony either
by their agents or plantation
managers, who kept them, informed of production
levels, profits, expenses, and
the general operations of the plantation. The
arrogance and conceit of these
agents, or procurers, was that they were
surrounded by a multitude of domestic
slaves to satisfy every want or need of
their own. The greater number of
domestic slaves one may have entails a great
amount of prestige for these people
in their time of the early 1700's and no
though was given to the immoral ways
and acts taken by their race because
they though it not an issue. Plantation
owners and those of the like
continued to be heavily involved in social aspects
of culture and the French
way of life. Commuting from their authoritatively
constructed world of
pleasure in France with wealth and prestige combined with
the occasional
visits to the plantation for business. The life of a plantation
owner and
those that surround him is of luxury and negative profusion. The
Haitians
are almost wholly black, with a culture that is a unique mixture
of
African and French influences. Haiti was a French colony until 1791
when, fired
by the example of the French Revolution, the black slaves
revolted, massacred
the French landowners and proclaimed the world's first
black republic. As noted,
this is the first revolution of slaves against
their owners and their success
did not go unnoticed. The treatment of slaves
around the globe is quite unjust.
Because of the colonization of Haiti by
France, the importation of African
slaves, and the original inhabitants, the
Arawak Indians, three languages were
spoken on the island. This sparked a
need for a common language between the
inhabitants of the island. In fact, a
large factor in the success of the Haitian
Revolution (1804) was the
creation of Haitian Creole through African dialects
and French. The fact that
the majority of the residents spoke their language
made their domination even
more prevalent. The language was created through the
slavery and the need for
communication. The people of Haiti were also aware that
Creole was
spreading to Jamaica as well and their match had been met.
'Invisible'
and anxious to be 'seen' by their masters, the privileged few of the
black
culture and the mass of freed blacks conceived of visibility through the
eyes
of their masters' already uncertain vision of life. The slaves of Haiti
rose
up against their French and mulatto masters in August of 1791. This
marked
the beginning of the end of one of the greatest wealth-producing slave
colonies
the world had ever known. The early leaders forming the core of this
movement
were Boukman Dutty, Jeannot Bullet, Jean-Francois, and George
Biassou. Later,
slaves armies were commanded by General Toussaint who was
eventually betrayed by
his officers Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henri
Christophe who opposed his
policies. The revolt consisted of long days and
nights and the energy to
continue to fight and defend their cause. It ended
in 1804 and the island of
Haiti became a free land without slavery.
Haitian Creole preserves much of
French phonological, morphological,
syntactical, and lexical characteristics,
but a merger of both French
structural features and West African features
characterizes the language. The
inflectional system of French is greatly
reduced. As with the pidgin
languages, which result from the need to communicate
with the overseers and
those who did not share the same language, this was a
development in
linguistics, which is still studied today. The expansion and
strength of the
languages are a part of our history and are present in other
lands of slavery
and persecution. Although pidgin is used for trade only and for
no social
communication, its use resulted in a new form of communication, or
language,
for the new people in the New World. The bioprogram hypothesis
(Gooden
handout) "claims that Pidgin/Creole is the "invention" of
children
growing in a multiracial community. These children find the
"language" being
spoken inadequate and without enough structure to
function as a natural
language." This is true because the children and
women slaves needed to
communicate with others slaves from different African
dialects and they
needed to communicate with the overseers as well. Today,
Haitian Creole
is spoken by 95% of the people who live there. It is also has the
largest
number of speakers of the Caribbean Creoles. Speakers include 700,000
in
Haiti; 159,00 in the Dominican Republic; and 200,000 in New York City.
French is
an official language along with Haitian Creole, yet many people in
Haiti do not
speak French. It became the official language in 1804 at the end
of the
revolution. The Haitian flag was a result of removing the white band
from the
French flag and turning it on its side. The decision for the
flag came from
those who were victorious in the revolution and its leaders of
freedom. It is
also meaningful to know that many of the migrants from Haiti
are driven not only
by political issues but also by the immense amount of
AIDS and other third world
country issues like potable water, deforestation
and soil erosion. Although,
Haiti is still plentiful with trees and
vegetation, a large amount of their
farmland is being destroyed and food has
become a rare commodity to those who
are underprivileged. They result in
fleeing the country and in the 1980's, it
was reported than more than 500,000
Haitians had migrated to the United States,
legally and illegally, to New
York, Miami, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia. The
information on Haitian
Creole is quite scarce and the resources of worthwhile
information regarding
the creation and purpose Creole has served in Haiti, and
other places, is not
available. Many resources regarding the Haitian Revolution
are present and
the requirement focuses more on the impact and development of
the language.
The ability to make communication work in a confused and
inappropriate era of
turmoil in the eyes of the slaves is a profound result of
God and life.
The development of another language out of others is mind-power,
strength,
inventiveness and tenacity. The people of Haiti continue to be
mistreated and
neglected by many countries of the United Nations. The United
States can
apply only so much support to one country since we are looking after
many
countries as the lead nation in the world as support. The assistance that
is
needed by Haiti is of immense detail and the feats of success are few and
far
between for many of the local people in Haiti. Problems exist here
because of
the age-old tradition of neglect and desecration of the people of
Haiti and
their ancestors who hands created the land of wealth that benefited
those before
them.
Bibliography
Scott III, Julius Sherrard "The
Common Wind" UMI Publishing 1986
Dayan, Joan "Haiti, History, and the
Gods" University of California
Press 1995 Fick, Carolyn E. "The Making Of
Haiti: The Saint Domingue
Revolution from Below" The University of
Tennessee Press 1990
http://babel.uoregon.edu/romance/rl407/creole/haitian.html
Title: Haitian
Creole Yahoo search
http://www.eli.wayne.edu/students/Newsletter96F1/creole.html
Title: The
Origin of Haitian Creole Yahoo
search