8562: Francophonie - francofolly (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: ROODY BARTHELEMY <kreyolco@hotmail.com>

10% of the Haitian population that speaks French?
I think it's much less than that! There is a fallacy here that needs 
correction. Of course in the context of an everyday conversation, it could 
be excused as a rough estimate of a historically diglossic and discrepant 
issue about the national language of the People of Haiti.  But why continue 
with the colonial practice of dis-servicing the first Black independent 
Republic of the world with the undermining of its national language when all 
researches made about and around the topic articulate so clearly the thruth 
of this matter, as Guy Antoine and many others so rightly stated it.

Among several studies and just to cite one, let's read what Michele Burtoff 
Civan & al. write in the CAL fact sheet titled 'Haitians: their History and 
Culture': <<...while only about 10% of the population can be considered 
bilingual in French and Haitian Creole, more than half of this 10% is less 
than fluent in French.  About 90% of the population speaks Haitian Creole 
only.>>(p.16)

Let me emphasize on a few words from this exerpt:

--ONLY ABOUT 10%...CAN BE CONSIDERED...
--MORE THAN HALF OF THIS 10% IS LESS THAN FLUENT IN FRENCH.
--ABOUT 90%....SPEAKS CREOLE ONLY.

French is a foreign language, even for us, Haitians. Indeed, even 
for...about 90% of our country's only-Creole speaking population.  In the 
case of Haiti, French has always been a foreign language to the People of 
Haiti.  I would add that French is even a detrimental foreign language to 
Haitians. Culturally, socially,economically.  And History will always be 
there to show all the injustice the positon and the imposition of the French 
language have caused to Haiti and its nationals.

There's an old Haitian saying "Ki byen frize te fè pou koukou konsa a pou 
koukou fè pitit pou li rele pitit li frizelya?

Ayibobo.

Roody


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