Haitian Creole is a relatively young language spoken by approximately 12 million people worldwide. To put things into perspective, countries such as Austria, Finland, Norway, New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, Greece, and the Czech Republic have an estimated total population of under 11 million people each. Moreover, besides being an official language in Haiti, Haitian Creole is a recognized minority language in the Dominican Republic and in the Bahamas. Creole Tutors can help you learn it efficiently!
A large part of the Creole language’s vocabulary is derived from French, but did you know that many of these words are borrowed from 18th century Old French? Many grammatical suffixes that Haitian Creole uses have long been abandoned in modern French.
What else makes Haitian Creole unique
Haitian Creole and French are not mutually intelligible, despite a large part of the Creole vocabulary being borrowed from French. Apart from the evident French influence, Haitian Creole also uses words borrowed from Spanish, Portuguese, English, Taino (†), and multiple West African languages. If you’re thinking about picking up Haitian Creole, we’re glad to help you on your learning journey. From complete beginner to a fluent speaker, we’re here to guide you each step along the way.
Whether you have a casual interest in Haitian culture and language, or you’re already well-versed in linguistics, we know that Haitian Creole is tough to learn without a tutor. That’s not because of morphosyntactic peculiarities, though. Haitian Creole is a simplified language that isn’t highly based on inflection rules. However, vocabulary poses a serious challenge, not for the reasons you might think.
Challenges of learning Haitian Creole vocabulary
If you’re learning Haitian Creole, you won’t have to bother with grammatical gender as you would in French or Spanish, and there are no ridiculously long and hard to pronounce words like there are in German. However, because it’s a very young language, literature and educational resources in Haitian Creole are difficult to find for learners, especially ones living in different countries across the globe. Many bilingual dictionaries of Haitian Creole do not offer contextual clues or examples of collocations for how you should use a word, and finding reading materials in Haitian Creole is difficult.
You’ve probably spoken to a person who uses English as a second language, or you might have heard someone speak grammatically correct English, yet you could tell something was off. Take the words “make” and “do” as an example. You know that you can “make a bed” and “do homework”, but you cannot “do a bed” or “make homework”. You can “buy some time”, but you cannot “purchase some time”. You can “become fat,” but you cannot “turn fat”. And to “break a leg” can be either an unfortunate event or a heartwarming wish for someone to succeed.
Collocations can be confusing and hilarious, but misusing a word can cause significant embarrassment or offense in certain conversational situations. If you plan on reading Haitian Creole texts, you want to make sure that nothing gets lost in translation. We’re here to offer you quality lessons with highly prepared tutors because we know how crucial communicative performance is for language learners.
Learn Haitian Creole vocabulary with our professional tutors
Creole Tutors will offer you answers to all your questions, and they will put everything you learn in a meaningful communicational context. With us, you will learn Haitian Creole from a grammatical and pragmatical point of view. We can also help you access useful vocabulary and reading resources based on your learning level. We’ll personalize your learning for each phase of language acquisition, from beginner to intermediate to advanced.
You can book both individual lessons and courses, and your first lesson will cost just $5! We’re excited to have you join our continuously growing community of learners! Feel free to contact us for any additional inquiries, and we’ll be right back with an answer.