On Duolingo’s language menu, there is an interesting language added rather recently. It is perhaps the only creole to have ever been added to the platform, and with a background in French, I decided to explore this creole further, out of pure curiosity.

This creole is known as Haitian Creole, or Kreyòl, spoken by at least 13 million people in Haiti and its diaspora. It is a French-based creole, but it is not really mutually intelligible with French. In fact, not only does Kreyòl have influence from various languages spoken in West and Central Africa such as Fon and Fula, but also a now-extinct indigenous Caribbean language known as Taíno. While Kreyòl is a French-based creole, this French substrate the creole is built upon is representative of the language as it is spoken centuries ago, and thus, we would see expressions that are unusual to French speakers today, but are normal in Kreyòl.

One such example is the question “What is your name?”. In French today, this would be “Comment tu t-appelles?” or “Comment vous appelez-vous?“. This stands in stark contrast to the Kreyòl translation “Ki jan ou rele?“, derived from the French words, in order, “Qui, genre, vous, hélez” (Who, manner, you, call, respectively). As I found out, héler is a rather antiquated word to use today for this purpose, as it is generally replaced by the word appeler, which means the same thing, “to call”. Padkwa, ‘you’re welcome’, seems to derive from pas de quoi in French, which is quite different from the de rien one would normally encounter in French.

Some Kreyòl words have undergone some phonetic changes over time from its French roots as well. One word I found to be rather unusual is renmen, which sounds almost nothing like the French origin aimer, despite meaning the same thing, “to like” or “to love”. Perhaps another word is je, pronounced /ʒe/, which derives from les yeux in French, meaning “eyes” (also “eye” in Kreyòl). My guess for this word origin is the French phenomenon called liaison, which carries over the s in les over to the next word as a linking consonant, leading to the phrase sounding something like /lez‿jø/, which in turn led to /ʒe/.

Sometimes, words are formed from combining the French word with a grammatical particle like de/du/des or le/la/l’/les. Some examples I can think of are diri, “rice”, deriving from French “du riz“, dlo ‘water’, deriving from French “de l’eau“, and lalin, “moon”, deriving from French “la lune“. I cannot seem to find a pattern in which words are affected by this, as “aunt” in Kreyòl is matant, derived from French ma tante, which translates to “my aunt”, but “uncle” in Kreyòl is tonton, spelled the same in French, translating to “uncle”.

One feature of Kreyòl that was a relief to me is the lack of conjugation patterns. If you study French, each conjugation by person or number sounds pretty much the same, leading to weird silent letters like -ent in the third-person plural. There is also a different pattern for each tense and mood, which further adds to the grammar of French verbs.

But not in Kreyòl. Here, the verb does not change its form by person, number, nor tense, but there are certain words added that convey the meaning of tense. For example, the word ap is the particle for the present continuous tense, and te is the particle for the past tense, and pral (derived from pour aller, “going to”) denotes the near future tense. And so, combining these with the verb, we get phrases like mwen t ap manje diri (‘I was eating rice’).

Negation in Kreyòl is formed by just one particle, pa, contracted to p. This comes before the verb, or replaces the copula representing the verb ‘to be’ se. This comes in contrast with the colloquial French pas, which comes after the verb, and differs from the Standard French ne … pas bipartite negation pattern. So to say ‘I am not eating’, It would be mwen p ap manje.

Now we come to the parts that slightly confuse me a bit when it comes to usage. In Kreyòl, there are short forms of each of the pronouns, alongside the uncontracted counterpart. These short forms are only one letter long, but I do not really understand under which contexts the short form is preferred over the uncontracted on. In many circumstances, the long forms seem to fit the context just fine, although the short forms might make a sentence flow better phonetically in some contexts as well.

mwen, m	I	nou, n	we
ou, w	you (singular)	nou, n	you (plural)
li, l	he, she, it	yo, y	they

Furthermore, there are possessive pronouns that feature particles that overlap with other grammatical particles as well. Pa is also used as a particle to form pronouns like “mine”, “yours”, and “theirs”, as in the constructions pa mwen an, pa ou a, and pa yo a respectively.

Notice the third word in those constructions above? Those particles are also used as definite articles. Definite articles in Kreyòl are formed differently from what I am familiar with in French, the first difference being that they come after the noun. With phrases like chen an (the dog, le chien), dam nan (the lady, la dame), and tifi a (the girl, la fille), it quickly occurred to me that how these definite articles are given do not really correspond to grammatical gender as it does in French. In fact, grammatical gender does not exist in Kreyòl. Instead, I learned later on that these definite articles correspond to the final syllable of the preceding word.

For phrases like lèt la, liv la, and chwal la, to use the definite article la, the final syllable has to end with an oral consonant (that is, not sounds like /n/ or /m/), or sounds like ‘w’ and ‘y’. The vowel preceding these consonants cannot be a nasal vowel (written like ‘an’, ‘en’, etc.). If the vowel is a nasal vowel, then the definite article lan is used, like bank lan. But why nuit lan (the night) is grammatical as well is beyond my comprehension.

Next we have the articles attached for cases where the word ends in a vowel. If the last syllable is a vowel, then an is used, as in tigason an (the boy). This is also used for words ending in -mi, -mou, -ni, and -nou, as in fanmi an (the family). For words ending in an oral vowel that is not -mi, -mou, -ni, and -nou, a is used, as in tifi a (the girl), and wonma a (the lobster). For words ending in nasal consonants -n or -m, nan or lan may be used. And to form the plural with definite articles, the particle yo is placed after the noun phrase.

Kreyòl orthography has faced several challenges before, as there exists resentment against Haiti’s colonial history under France, as well as its sour relationship with the United States during its history as an independent nation. Thus, some orthographical patterns could bring up connotations of French colonialism, while others would look too American. For example, the use of the letters ‘c’ and ‘qu’ for the /k/ sound would appear too French, but conversely, using the letter ‘k’ for the /k/ sound might just appear too American. Some form of Haitian identity needed to materialise in the orthography.

In the end, the current Kreyòl alphabet contains the standard set of the Latin alphabet, but without the letters ‘q’ and ‘x’. The letter ‘c’ can only occur as part of a digraph, ‘ch’, which produces the ‘sh’ sound. There are only two letters with diacritics, particularly, ‘è’ and ‘ò’, and nasal vowels are represented by digraphs ‘an’, ‘en’, and ‘on’, when they are not followed by a vowel. And the best part yet, there are no silent letters, and it is a pretty regular orthographical system.

Kreyòl and French are official languages in Haiti, but to my knowledge and research, most Haitians would speak only Kreyòl, with French being used in more formal contexts or by the more affluent or powerful rungs of society. How Kreyòl is taught is a bit of a blur to me, as I am unsure if the Haitian education system is taught in French or Kreyòl.

Overall, the sounds, words, and grammar of Kreyòl have been a breath of fresh air to me, as I feel relieved to not encounter conjugation patterns for verbs, while still largely understanding many Kreyòl words because of their similarity to the French counterparts. Of course, there were some parts of Kreyòl grammar that trip me up every now and then, like the definite article agreement, but there seem to be very few irregularities in their grammatical patterns.

While in current circumstances, I do not really see myself actually using Kreyòl in Haiti, I would actually like to experience the language in communities with a Haitian diaspora. Perhaps when things simmer down, I would love to travel to Cap-Haïtien in the north, and perhaps Jacmel in the south. But until then, exploring this creole would remain as an interesting learning experience, and it would be the first French-based creole I have ever learned. As much slander I have given to Duolingo for all of its faults and issues, I am still grateful to the application and the development team for introducing the creole to me and the user base, providing a great introduction to something that not all of us would think about exploring or learning at first glance. So, if you are interested in Kreyòl, definitely give it a whirl!