Hatian CreoleA Review of Slavery and Creation
Christopher Columbus claimed Haiti when he landed there in 1492. Arawak Indians were the original inhabitants of this island when Columbus arrived. Later, the island became a colony of England. Haiti remained virtually unsettled until the mid-17th century, when French colonists, importing African slaves, developed sugar plantations in the north. Under French rule from 1697, Haiti (then called Saint-Domingue) became one of the world's richest sugar and coffee producers. Soon, Haiti became a land of wealth with the vast use of slavery as their method of production. The rising demand for sugar, coffee, cotton, and tobacco created a greater demand for slaves by other slave trading countries. Spain, France, the Dutch, and English were in competition for the cheap labor needed to work their colonial plantation system producing those lucrative goods. The slave trade was so profitable that, by 1672, the Royal African Company chartered by Charles II of England superseded the other traders and became the richest shipper of human slaves to the mainland of the Americas. The slaves were so valuable to the open market - they were eventually called "Black Gold." Plantation owners began to be represented in the colony either by
Haitian Creole preserves much of French phonological, morphological, syntactical, and lexical characteristics, but a merger of both French structural features and West African features characterizes the language. The inflectional system of French is greatly reduced. As with the pidgin languages, which result from the need to communicate with the overseers and those who did not share the same language, this was a development in linguistics, which is still studied today. The expansion and strength of the languages are a part of our history and are present in other lands of slavery and persecution. Although pidgin is used for trade only and for no social communication, its use resulted in a new form of communication, or language, for the new people in the New World. The bioprogram hypothesis (Gooden handout) "claims that Pidgin/Creole is the "invention" of children growing in a multiracial community. These children find the "language" being spoken inadequate and without enough structure to function as a natural language." This is true because the children and women slaves needed to communicate with others slaves from different African dialects and they needed to communicate with the overseers as well. Because of the colonization of Haiti by France, the importation of African slaves, and the original inhabitants, the Arawak Indians, three languages were spoken on the island. This sparked a need for a common language between the inhabitants of the island. In fact, a large factor in the success of the Haitian Revolution (1804) was the creation of Haitian Creole through African dialects and French. The fact that the majority of the residents spoke their language made their domination even more prevalent. The language was created through the slavery and the need for communication. The people of Haiti were also aware that Creole was spreading to Jamaica as well and their match had been met. 'Invisible' and anxious to be 'seen' by their masters, the privileged few of the black culture and the mass of freed blacks conceived of visibility through the eyes of their masters' already uncertain vision of life. The information on Haitian Creole is quite scarce and the
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Approximate Word count = 1482
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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