21745: Vedrine: RE: 21735: Lawless: Re: 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>


The term has been extended over the years by sociolinguists (in terms of its
application and its relation to 2 languages). Though the primary meaning (by
Ferguson, 1959 is understood – which was focused on the use of CLASSICAL
Arabic (known by scholars, the educated people , the language in which
RELIGIOUS documents are written, the language of the government) vs. POPULAR
Arabic (spoken in the streets by the majority) though you see ONE language
in Ferguson's case but his focused is on TWO variations.The case in HAITI is
different: two different languages (French vs. Kreyol). So, in Haiti, sure
you have a DOMINANT language and sometimes people think it's only French. If
we take LES REGISTRES (written documents in commerce, legal papers,
documents by the government, they are still written in MOSTLY French;
probably the government think they will spend too much money to hire
translators to render them in Kreyol or sometimes they come up with this
pretext: the same people who can read French and can also read Kreyol).
French is the DOMINANT language in this case and is spoken by a MINORITY
(15% of the population, a vehicular language)  and is also the IMPOSED
language) while 85%  of the population is monolingual (speaking ONLY Kreyol,
the  vernacular language). Now, if you want to about HAITIAN CULTURE
at-large, Kreyol is the DOMINANT language (but at ORAL level).

E.W.Vedrine





>From: Robert Lawless <robert.lawless@wichita.edu>
>
>At 02:31 PM 5/6/2004 -0500, Vedrine wrote:
> >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).
>
>The usual linguistic definition of diglossia is a situation in which at
>least two versions of the same language are spoken by socioeconomic varying
>segments of the population. French, English, and Creole are three different
>languages. In Haiti French is a second language for Haitians, all of whom
>speak Creole as their first language. It is not a situation that can be
>described as diglossia.
>

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