19115: Sylvain: Haitians & English (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: patrick sylvain <sylvaipa@hotmail.com>


On Language:


Since the late 1960s, the Haitian middle and upper class have sent their
children to the United States to be educated. And in the past 15 years the
numbers of Haitians holding university degrees have increased tremendously.
Besides, in the past 30 years there has been over 100 Haitians students per
year who have graduated from the Union School. It is now very common to hear a
linguistic interchange among the educated Haitians between Haitian Creole,
French and English. In Certain milieu, you might even hear Spanish or Arabic
being spoken.   Keep in mind, since the 1980s there were a large number of
Haitians who were/are receiving for the first time their basic education
outside of Haiti; and the vast majority are being taught in English.  So,
hearing perfect or near perfect English being spoken in Haiti should not be
shocking.   To accentuate my point on the English phenomenon among Haitians in
Haiti, one should look at the presence of English in the popular culture.
From1989 to 2003 there has been a 120% increase of English occurrence in
Haitian popular culture. Master G was just the tipping point of the hip-hop/rap
movement that is now overtaken by Ragga.  Keep in mind, the vast number of
returnees (Criminal or Parental: sent back by parents) their primary functional
language is English. Unfortunately, the Lavalas-Chimères branch recruited a
lot of those criminal elements.



It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone if English becomes one of Haiti’s
officious, if not official, languages within the next 50 years.


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