Haitian Creole is a French-based creole language, and a large proportion of its vocabulary is actually borrowed from old French. This makes vocabulary a breeze to learn for people who already speak French or other romance languages. Apart from this, Haitian Creole grammar is also simple to understand for people who are already experienced with other languages. That being said, no language comes without its own challenges.
If you hate grammar but love foreign languages, you might find the lack of inflection and grammatical gender in Haitian Creole a blessing. But this is not an excuse to completely ignore grammar and just learn as you go. To study more efficiently, you should first get a basic understanding of common grammatical concepts. In this article, we’ll take a look at adverbs in Haitian Creole. For more basic introductions in Haitian Creole grammar, feel free to also check our other articles!
What are adverbs, and why are they important?
Adverbs are unique grammatical words that we can use to modify a phrase, a clause, or a sentence. In less technical terms, they are words or groups of words we use to offer additional information about the “when”, the “where”, and the “how” of an action. We can describe this action through a single verb (e.g.: eat, sing, play), a part of a sentence, or an entire sentence.
Let’s take the example of the English adverb “quickly”. In the following sentences, “quickly” gives us additional information about how an action is carried out. Notice how adverbs can stay at the end, at the beginning, and also in the middle of a sentence:
“He talks quickly.”
“Quickly jumping to conclusions is a bad idea.”
“The problem was quickly dealt with.”
Haitian Creole and many other languages use adverbs for the same purpose. Just like English, Haitian Creole has different categories of adverbs to communicate different information.
Haitian Creole adverbs are easy to use!
As we already mentioned, Haitian Creole has different categories of adverbs. This classification is done according to the type of information they provide. Thus, you have adverbs of time – the “when” (e.g.: “demen”, “deja”, “imedyatman”, “kounye a”, etc), adverbs of place – the “where” (e.g.: “la”, “nenpòt kote”, “deyò”), and adverbs of manner – the “how” (e.g.: “konplètman”, “vit”, “difisil”), among others.
Adverbs don’t change their form, no matter where in the sentence you decide to use them. They can also be negated, or used together with quantifying words such as “very”, just like in English. The standard word order in Haitian Creole is subject-verb-object, and adverbs can occupy various positions in the sentence. For example, they can stay at the end of the sentence, after an object (“Ou pale avè l souvan?”), or at the beginning of the sentence, before the subject (“Tut tan l ap pase la.”)
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Apart from learning adverbs to enrich your Haitian Creole vocabulary, you can also learn how to create your own adverbs through derivation. Did you know that a wide range of Haitian Creole adverbs use the same suffix? Consider the following examples: “absoliman”, “vrèman”, “konplètman”, “imedyatman”, “dènyèman”, “sèlman”.
Other adverbs use a different root compared to their adjective counterpart, for example “byen” (well) vs. “bon” (good). Other adverbs such as “la” have multiple meanings, and sometimes they are used strictly as grammatical tools, such as when forming questions. You can learn all these grammatical rules and tricks and more with the help of our online tutors! If you find grammar intimidating but want to become fluent and proficient in Haitian Creole, we’re here to help.
Creole Tutors offers immersive, personalized lessons, and we base our online courses on the communicative method. We try our best to provide our learners a meaningful learning experience, and we always go at your desired pace. Sign up for a special first lesson for only $5, and we’ll help you on your journey to Haitian Creole fluency!