What is a creole?
The people in Haiti call Haitian Creole kreyol. The term Creole comes from a Portuguese word meaning "raising in the home." It first referred to Europeans born and raised in the overseas colonies. It was later used for languages hat arose on the plantations that the Europeans established, where cash crops (indigo, coffee, cotton, sugar) were reproduced using slaves imported from Africa. Creole is the most widely spoken and most developed of a large group of creole languages that are found today in all former French plantation colonies, including Louisiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guyana and islands in the Indian Ocean. Nothing about their structure differentiates them from other languages nor makes hem inferior. The grammar of Creole is just as complex or simple as that of English or French, for example, and its vocabulary meets all the needs of its speakers.

How was Creole formed?
In a way, Creole resulted from African slaves' efforts to speak the French that they heard when they arrived in the colony of Saint-Dominique.(now Haiti). Slaves came from all over West Africa and spoke many different languages. On any one plantation, several African languages were spoken. Also as that time, most of the French people in Saint- Dominique spoke French dialects and everyday spoken French. That type of French, called Popular French, differed a lot from the French spoken by he ruling classes n France called Standard French. The slaves, seldom able to communicate with fellow slaves in a common African tongue, tried to learn Popular French. Slaves who arrived later, especially field slaves who had little contact with French speakers, tried to learn the approximate variety of Popular French the other slaves spoke rather than Popular French itself. Over time, this appreciative form of French became more and more different from the French varieties and came to be recognized as a language in its own right. It is also interesting that the whites picked it up and became the language used by all those born in the colony.

More than 90% of the vocabulary of Creole is of French origin, yet French people can't understand Creole. This is because the grammars of the two languages are very different. Also, Creole has kept the original meaning of Popular French words whereas in France these words were replaced by words from stand French, and some Popular French words changed their meaning. A good example is the sentence Ki jan ou rele? "What is your name?" which corresponds to French Comment vous appelez-vous? Although a French person wouldn't understand that phrase, every word is of French origin.

The African Element of Creole
Most present-day Creole speakers are descendants of African slave, and some people think that it is a language that mixes French vocabulary with grammar from African languages. This seems reasonable since African traits have survived in other areas of cultures: religion, folklore, and food. For example, in the case food, okra, called by its African name gumbo. It is used a lot in Haiti. There are indeed some grammatical elements that might be traced to Africa.

African languages served as a sort of filter between forms slaves heard and those they reproduced. They would favor forms of Popular French that resembled or worded like those of their native language. The famous writer, Aime Cesaire said, "Creole is a language whose body is French but whose soul s African."

The Future of Creole
Today in Haiti, Creole has been recognized as a co-official language with French. It now has an official spelling It is used more and more in education and the media. Its recognition as full language and its expanded use means that the majority of Haitian for whom it is the only language will be able to better participate in the political and economic life of their country.