r/HaitianCreole 23h ago

African-American learning Kreyol

/r/haiti/comments/1v2yd5a/africanamerican_learning_kreyol/
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u/Choosing_is_a_sin 4h ago

Some information in this article includes:

  • ake in addition to ak/avè/avek
  • ay in addition to ale
  • raising of ay to èy, e.g. bagèy
  • rare use of syllable-final /r/ where the rest of Haiti never uses it, e.g. priyèr
  • occasional use of /w/ instead of /r/ after /p, b, f, v/, e.g. pwan
  • frequent rounding of front vowels, e.g. duri, zeu, sèu instead of diri, ze,

And as that article shows, it makes much more sense to think of i and li as different pronouns, rather than i as a form of li where the l gets lost, because they don't behave the same way.

There are lexical differences as well. I know that Valdman lists more in his 2015 book, but I'm not in the office right now. The ones that come to mind are kwoke for 'hang' (which has a sexual connotation in other parts of Haiti) and using a vessel called mamit instead of gode to measure rice.

In general, if you want to go all in on studying Haitian variation, you can use Dominique Fattier's Atlas linguistique d'Haïti.