haitian creole question

[jah_yout]

is j'can patois closer to standard english than haitian creole is to standard french?

i never understood this thing about some haitians not understanding standard french....is that true?

as far as i know most if not all j'cans understand standard english

[CeaBee]

Re: haitian creole question

interesting question mr yout

i dont know the answer but i find this:

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> 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.</div></div>

http://www.kreyol.com/dictionary/creole.html

not sure what period they are referring to, but it seems that french and haitian creole aren't as closely related as (jcan) patwa and english


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><span style="font-weight: bold">Haitian Creole grammar differs greatly from French and inflects much more simply: </span>for example, verbs are not inflected for tense or person, and there is no grammatical gender — meaning that adjectives and articles are not inflected according to the noun. The primary word order (SVO) is the same as French, but the variations on the verbs and adjectives are minuscule compared to the complex rules employed by French.


Like many creole languages, Creole was originally perceived as simply a corruption of a European language (French). This perception was connected by some to racialist attitudes about the linguistic capabilities of African slaves.[2] More recent approaches to creole languages in general see them resulting largely from the sociolinguistic setting; slaves speaking various African languages and European plantation managers needed a way to communicate. A language with mostly French vocabulary[3] but with a grammar derived from various African languages (such as Fon)[citation needed] arose.

An example of this difference between French and Creole is the use of preverbal particles te and a to mark the past and future tenses, respectively, instead of conjugation. Creole has also maintained the meaning of French words at the time of its origin while their cognates in French have been replaced or had semantic shifts.[citation needed] A good example is the sentence &quot;Ki jan ou rele?&quot; ('What is your name?') which corresponds to French &quot;Comment vous appelez-vous?&quot;. Although a French person wouldn't understand that phrase, every word is of French origin: qui/what, genre/manner, vous/you, héler/to call or &quot;What manner call (yourself)?&quot;. In France, the verb héler has been replaced by appeler.[4][

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Creole_language

[Dr.Dudd]

Re: haitian creole question

Put it this way. Hatian creol is <span style="font-weight: bold"> not </span> french. Itmay hav ea few words used in french, but it is not french patois . Jamaican patwa is 99% english vocabulary.while haitian crreol is about 10% french. the common words like man woman etc is so dufferent from ffrench that If you speak french you still can't undeerstand it. <div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">is j'can patois closer to standard english than haitian creole is to standard french?

i never understood this thing about some haitians not understanding standard french....is that true?

as far as i know most if not all j'cans understand standard english </div></div>