21731: Vedrine: RE: 21703: Canal: Re: 21692: Nlbo: Is Haiti a French speaking country? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: E Vedrine <evedrine@hotmail.com>


>Haiti is not a French speaking country because the overwhelming majority
>does not have functional >comprehension of French. If Canada, on the other
>hand is used as an example, Haiti is a French >speaking country because a
>significant (especially in wealth and formal education) minority does >have
>unctional comprehension of French. (Francois)

Canada's case is LE BILINGUISME OFFICIEL (by law) where documents related to
Canada are in 2 languages; that even applies to Quebec in many cases
(despite of the "101 LAW" [La LOIE 101], making French the OFFICIAL language
of Quebec where English is absent in many cases (e.g, advertising in French,
road signs in are French only...). Practically, we don't have yet OFFICIAL
BILINGUALISM in Haiti (despite what the Constitudion of 1987 stipulates -
laws are just writtens down in Haiti as usual) as it is the case for Canada.
What the 2 countries share in common is the DIGLOSSIA phenomenon (where we
will see a dominant language in many situations, a minority group speaks "x"
language whereas a majority one speaks "z" within the same environment /
country). Going back to the issue of OFFICIAL LANGUAGE in Haiti, that never
existed before 1918. But, since Haiti was under US occupation at the time,
the constituation was drafted and reviewed by Americans in Washington.
Creole played a crucial role at the sociolinguistic level during colonial
times (e.g, many charges d'affaires [such as Sonthonax and others] from
France gave their speech in Creole [though these documents may be seen as
SCRIPTA of the spoken Creole of the time] so that everyone could clearly
decode the semantics of the message from the French Monarch.

E.W.Vedrine

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