Haitian Creole
Haitian Creole is a French-based creole (a full-fledged language that grows out of a pidgin). It is a language that developed out the sociohistorical situation of seventeenth and eighteenth century Haiti, where a pidginized variety of French was used as a contact language between masters and slaves and among Africans of diverse ethnic origins in the plantation economy of the time. There are considerable morphological and syntactic influences from West African languages, especially Wolof, Fon, Mandingo, and Ewe, but the basic lexical structure of the language is French in origin. Thus, it is generally considered a Romance language, but in many ways one that is quite unlike a typical Romance language. It is not considered a dialect of French, but rather a completely independent language, about as closely related to French as modern Italian is to Latin. Haitian Creole is spoken by about 5.7 million speakers in Haiti with over a 100,000 in the adjacent Dominican Republic, 200,000 in New York, and much smaller numbers in Canada and Puerto Rico.A modified Latin-based alphabet is used, but the spelling conventions are quite different from the French spelling system. In 1961, Haitian Creole became an official language and was granted legal and educational status in Haiti. It is the mother tongue of virtually the entire population; furthermore, it is the only language of 90 to 95 percent of the population. Nevertheless, Standard French, which remains an official language, is generally the language of instruction and the media. Some newspapers are printed in Haitian Creole and there is a growing body of poetry and literature as awareness evolves among Haitians of the value and importance of their language.
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