Creole languages celebrated on Oct. 28

During the last three decades, Oct. 28 has been the day to celebrate creole languages throughout the world. Creole is a stable language that has grown from a mixture of other languages, where the words come from the parent languages but the syntax is generally specific to the particular language.

Haitian Creole made its first contribution to history by facilitating communication among the fighters in the revolutionary army battling French colonialism and slavery.

Most creoles in the Western Hemisphere were formed in the last 500 years as a result of European colonialism and its trade in captured and enslaved people. Like most non-official and minority languages, creoles have generally been regarded—by the academics in service to the oppressor nations—as patois, substandard dialects of their European parents. Many creoles have gone extinct.

This year a number of the smaller countries in the Caribbean—St. Lucia, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Cayenne—had artistic, musical, and academic events using, honoring and examining the creoles they speak.

Haiti is a special case because its Creole, which Haitians call Kreyol, has been an official language since 1987 and is the only language spoken by the vast majority of its 8 million people.

Over half of the soldiers who fought in its war against the French slave masters, which ended with Haiti’s independence in 1804, were born in Africa. They needed a common language, a tool to express their unity in the struggle against France, and that tool was Kreyol.

Because they won independence and were not dominated by a European power, their language took deep roots. It was a tool for the peasant majority to oppose the elites, the landlords—the so-called gran doms. Those rulers of Haiti wanted to use French to mark their differences with the masses. Their goal was to replace the African traditions and culture of Haiti with French.

Kreyol radio stations became one of the major inspirations for the “dechoukaj,” the movement that in 1986 uprooted the hold of the 20^th century dictatorship of the Duvalier family on Haiti.

While the State University of Haiti celebrated Oct. 28 with a series of cultural events, the Asosyasyon Inivèsitè/Inivèsitèz Desalinyen (ASID) held a series of debates/conferences on the political role the use of Kreyol should have in Haiti. One issue ASID brought up was an open letter Esdras Fabien, the deputy from Carrefour, had written to the president of Haiti demanding that Kreyol become the only official language of Haiti. (Haïti Liberté, Oct. 28)

Kreyol became the major language of Haiti through struggle and will maintain its place through struggle.