Haitian Creole

Haitian Creole, a French-based vernacular language that developed in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. It developed primarily on the sugarcane plantations of Haiti from contacts between French colonists and African slaves. It has been one of Haiti’s official languages since 1987 and is the first language of about 95 percent of Haitians, especially in rural areas. Like other French creoles, its grammatical features can be related to those of the nonstandard dialects of...