13695: Vishnusurf: Re: 13671: Lafleur: RE: 13639: KawolinA: Re: 13633: Minsky: report from... (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: VISHNUSURF@aol.com

<PRE>There has been some rather empty discussion over the past week or so
concerning the supposed mutual intelligibility of French and Haitian Creole,
after someone claimed that any native French speaker could become proficient
in Creole after 2 days in Haiti.  I would like to hear from some of the
esteemed Creole linguist who read this list, but in their stead let me chip
in that this claim is woefully false and also offensive to the Haitian
people, becuase it smacks of the thankfully-now-dead claim that Creole is not
a language.  I know lots of French people in Haiti who have spent months,
even in some cases years in the country, and their Creole is abominably bad.
It is almost like saying a Catholic theologian could understand Vodou after 2
days in the country.  Puh-Leez!!!