Academic literature on the topic 'Haitians – Languages'

Abstract This research aims to prove the effectiveness of Spanish as a Second Language lessons for Haitians designed by volunteers in Santiago de Chile. The methodology used through the study was based on the application of two questionnaires to Haitian students in order to compare results, and finally obtain an average that reflects the achievement of the communicative functions expected. Results indicate that neither the lessons planned, material giver nor the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages fulfilled such expectations. Findings are discussed in relation to previous studies on methodologies for Spanish as a Second Language for Haitian immigrants in Chile (Toledo, 2016)

Abstract This study examines the relationship between the use of technology to stay connected with home country and culture while adapting and integrating into the host culture. Through a survey the authors probe into how Haitian immigrants living in South Florida with varying levels of contact with their home country acculturate into the receiving society, exploring an increasingly salient experience of contemporary global migrants. Immigration is the experience of acculturation by individuals and the emergence of culturally plural societies, where both immigrants and host country citizens can live together in a positive environment. In this study, we report our exploratory findings and insights from a survey conducted among Haitian immigrants in South Florida area, studying the relationship between the scope of their electronic communication, and their level of integration into the mainstream American culture. Considerable research has been devoted to the understanding of immigration, acculturation and adaptation of adults, but much less has addressed these phenomena among Haitian population in reference to the use of communication technologies to keep in touch with their loved ones overseas and being fully adapted to their host country at the same time, asserting both identities. In other words, to what extend Haitians who wish to have contact with American culture, while maintaining their cultural attributes do so through the Internet and telecommunication technologies. The objective of this study is to explore the correlation between cultural integration process and the level of Internet and telephony technologies usage among Haitians living in South Florida. The Internet and telephones are a necessity becoming central for one’s knowledge of environment, for the retention of one’s social contacts but also for the organization of one’s life. This is especially true for immigrants who often rely on their new and old social networks in order to adjust to the host country. This study looks at five well understood measures or indicators of the acculturation process, namely language proficiency, language use, length of time in the host culture, age, and peer contact. It also looks at the preferences of Internet related tools to contact friends and relatives both in Haiti and the USA by email, text messaging, and social sites. In our study, highly integrated Haitian immigrants are those who are young, have lived here for a long time, are proficient in Creole and English, speak to friends and relatives in both languages, and spend their free time with both Americans and other Haitians.

Abstract The Duvalier presidencies were a devastating chapter in the history of Haiti. There is, however, one aspect of Haitian society that went through unexpected progress in the midst of these despotic regimes. Haitian Creole has long been excluded from formal and written contexts, despite being the only language common to all Haitians. The debate over whether Creole should be used in formal contexts for the sake of the country’s development and democratization began in earnest at the start of the twentieth century but was far from being resolved when François Duvalier came to power in 1957. Surprisingly, perceptions of Creole changed drastically during the Duvalier era, so that by the time Jean-Claude Duvalier fell from power in 1986 the status of Creole had improved markedly, so much that it had become typical for Haitians to use the language, along with French, in virtually all contexts.

This article argues that Haiti’s French-dominant school system is an impediment to the nation’s development, whereas Haitian Creole-dominant education will lay the foundation for long-term development. In that Caribbean country, 95% of the population is monolingual in Haitian Creole while the portion that additionally speaks French does not exceed 5% with an additional 5–10% having some receptive competence (Valdman 1984: 78; Dejean 2006). Even though French is the language of the school system, as many as 80% of Haiti’s teachers control it inadequately and only a minority of students completes school (Dejean 2006). Economic, historical, sociolinguistic, and demographic factors are a part of the explanation for Haiti’s low educational achievement. Another important but often ignored factor is educational language policy. Data on educational language policy compared internationally show that the use of a second language in schools correlates with high illiteracy rates and poverty (Coulmas 1992). I reject arguments in favor of maintaining French-dominant education in Haiti (Lawless 1992; Youssef 2002; Francis 2005; Ferguson 2006, etc.) because the resources for it are woefully lacking. I argue that the progressive promotion of Haitian Creole throughout Haitian education will lead to improved learning, graduation, and Creole literacy, in addition to a more streamlined and coherent State, economy, and society (Efron 1954; De Regt 1984; DeGraff 2003; Dejean 2006). As Haiti rebuilds after the earthquake of January 12th, 2010, aid workers, government employees, and researchers who get involved in the recovery also unsuspectingly perpetuate French, English, and Spanish hegemony in development work (DeGraff 2010). The long history of suppressing Haitian Creole and promoting French in education and administration — and French, English, or Spanish in development work — form underlying obstacles in the nation’s struggle to produce an adequate class of educated citizens, to achieve universal literacy, and to make socioeconomic progress.

This paper summarizes the findings of an extensive study of Haitian Creole morphology as compared with that of contributing languages: French, the lexifier language, and Fon, the West African language selected as the substratum language. The proposal we want to argue for in this paper is that, although the phonetic matrices of Haitian Creole lexical items are recognizable as being from French, at a more abstract level the productive affixes of Haitian Creole pattern in a significant way with the model of contributing West African languages, in this case Fon. This being the case, the widespread assumption in the creole literature that creole languages have undergone morphological simplification is not borne out by the Haitian data (cf. several discussions on this topic in Hymes 1971).

This paper argues that Scrabble can be used as a tool to help maintain and grow all levels of Haitian Creole literacy and it provides the technical details for developing the game. The rules of the English version are given to introduce the game’s basic structure. Haiti’s educational, sociolinguistic, and literacy conditions are presented in order to put in context the orthographic form proposed for the Haitian Creole version. An overview of game culture in Haiti shows Scrabble’s potential for success. Previous research on the adaptation of Scrabble into Latin by means of a quantitative corpus-linguistic method is examined. Difficult aspects of standard Haitian Creole orthography (IPN) are discussed in order to expose potential pitfalls in design. Quantitative analysis of a Haitian Creole textual corpus provides an empirical basis for the distribution of letter tiles and their point values. Problems encountered in test-games played by Haitian-American university students and Haitian elementary and high school students inform the final proposal. The paper examines the work necessary for the successful introduction of Haitian Creole Scrabble and it provides independent evidence of the game’s cognitive benefits. Haitian Creole Scrabble is argued to be a creative and special method for expanding and strengthening literacy in Haitian Creole and other creole languages.

In this paper we examine the morphology of Haitian with respect to two issues widely discussed in the literature on creoles: 1) the substratum issue, formulated in our view in terms of the role played by relexification in the formation of Haitian Creole; and 2) the widespread assumption that creole languages are morphologically simpler than their lexifier language. These two issues are not unrelated. The morphological simplicity assumption is based on a comparison of creole with European languages that have contributed the bulk of their respective lexicons. In order to discuss the two issues, we will compare the productive morphology of Haitian with that of French (the lexifier language), and Fon, a contributive West African language. The major findings of this paper with respect to the issues addressed here are the following: 1) productive affixes of Haitian Creole pattern in a significant way with the model of contributing West African languages more so than with French; and 2) the presumed morphological simplicity of creoles reduces to the selection of the unmarked option with respect to the position of morphological heads.

Focusing on French, I show how ecological factors influence language evolution. After explaining what the ecological approach consists of, I provide a chronological description of language contacts involving French in Saint-Domingue / Haïti. I focus on the various effects of these contacts, particularly on the emergence of a French-based creole thanks to speakers’ informal acquisition of French. After providing a description of the French spoken by the founding fathers of the ex-colony, I turn to different contributions by Haitians to representations and descriptions of French in Haiti. I conclude by providing some elements of Haiti’s modern sociolinguistic situation.

Two recent works by Carden & Stewart (1988) and Arends (1989) have tried to prove a gradual rather than a single-generational origin for Haitian and Sranan respectively. Both arguments, however, are severely flawed. The Carden-Stewart argument from Haitian reflexivization is shown to depend on misinterpretations of both bioprogram theory and generative principles. Further, their claim that early Haitian was not a full language would entail that Middle English (among others) was also not a full language. Arends' claims of radical diachronic change in Sranan involve treating as an early creole sample a fragmentary text which, given the social and historical context of seventeenth-century Suriname, was most probably produced by a second-language learner of the creole. Reanalysis of Arends' data shows that he exaggerates the significance of marginal forms and mistakenly treats the inherent variability characteristic of all languages as evidence for ongoing change. In fact, none of the data reviewed in these works is inconsistent with the emergence of Haitian and Sranan as full languages in a single generation.

Within Haiti’s growing transnational Protestant community, there are different types of churches and adherents that practice traditional forms of Protestant Christianity (such as the Adventist, Methodist and Baptist faiths) and Pentecostal/Charismatic forms of Protestant Christianity. Using Michèle Lamont’s work on symbolic boundaries, I explore how Haitian Protestants living in New Providence, Bahamas, differentiate these two major Haitian Protestant church cultures through the use of denigrating terms about differing religious traditions. Churches which practice traditional forms of Haitian Protestantism, for example, are sometimes called touloutoutou churches. Churches where Pentecostal/Charismatic forms of Haitian Protestantism are practiced are sometimes referred to as tet mare churches by some Haitian Protestants. In addition, practitioners’ descriptions reflect issues of social class and contested notions of Christian authenticity among Haitian Protestants in the Bahamas. Dans la communauté haïtienne protestante transnationale, il existe différents types d’églises et de fidèles qui forment une pratique traditionnelle du christianisme protestant (comme les adventistes, méthodistes et les religions Baptiste) et pentecôtiste / charismatique qui forment le christianisme protestant. Avec l’utilisation du travail de Michèle Lamont sur les frontières symboliques, j’explore comment les protestants haïtiens vivant à New Providence, Bahamas, peuvent faire la différence entre ces deux grandes cultures haïtiennes grâce à l’utilisation des termes dénigrants au sujet de traditions religieuses différentes. Les églises haïtiennes qui pratiquent les formes traditionnelles du protestantisme, par exemple, sont parfois appelées « églises touloutoutou ». D’autre part, les églises où les formes pentecôtiste / charismatique du protestantisme haïtien sont pratiquées sont parfois dénommés « églises tèt mare » pour certains protestants haïtiens. En outre, les descriptions des praticiens reflètent les questions de classe sociale et les notions d’authenticité chrétienne attaquée chez les protestants haïtiens aux Bahamas.