26789: Vedrine: (reply) RE: 26783: Bell (reply) : 26781: FACTS ABOUT CREOLE, OR KREYOL, Bell replies(fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: E Vedrine <evedrine@hotmail.com>


There's a saying in Kreyol (Haitian Creole) that says "Fèy labapen sanble ak 
fèy veritab men yo pa menm". Though French-based creoles may share certain 
(lexical, syntactic...) features, it does not mean that a Haitian Creole 
speaker would understand 100% some other French-based creoles (though Dominican 
Creole) would be the CLOSEST to Haitian Creole, and even sounds as dialectal 
variation of it (when listen carefully to Kweyol speakers from Dominica). 
St.Lucian Kweyol would be the second closest to HC.

Certain French-based creoles that I am currently working (for linguistic 
research), I would need a French or English translation of the original text in 
order to decode certain hidden Semantics of them. At the ORAL level, 
welll...certainly speakers of two different varierties may decode a lot more 
[though not quite a parallel between Dutch/German (hoch Deutsch)], and I 
remember my experience two years ago in French Guyana (FG) where I was invited 
to participate in the International Linguistic Symposium. About 10 languages 
are spoken in FG (including Guyanese French-creole [spoken by most Guyanese], 
Haitian Creole (about 30% of the population). It's funny to observe how Haitian 
Creole there has been influenced by the Gayanese French-based and Haitians pick 
it up quickly in order to get assimilated to the rest of the population.

E.W.Vedrine: Haitian Creole Editor/Translator
http://www.palli.ch/~kapeskreyol/bibliographie/vedrine.html
P.O.Box 255110 - Boston, MA. 02125-5110(USA)