English-Haitian Creole Bilingual Dictionary

By Albert Valdman, Marvin D. Moody and Thomas E. Davies

Haitian Creole (HC) is spoken by approximately 11,000,000 persons in Haiti and in diaspora communities in the United States and throughout the Caribbean. Thus, it is of great utility to Anglophone professionals engaged in various activities—medical, social, educational, welfare— in these regions. As the most widely spoken and best described creole language, a knowledge of its vocabulary is of interest and utility to scholars in a variety of disciplines.

The English-Haitian Creole Bilingual Dictionary (EHCBD) aims to assist anglophone users in constructing written and oral discourse in HC; it also will aid HC speakers to translate from English to their language. As the most elaborate and extensive linguistic tool available, it contains about 30 000 individual entries, many of which have multiple senses and include subentries, multiword phrases or idioms. The distinguishing feature of the EHCBD is the inclusion of translated sentence-length illustrative examples that provide important information on usage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532016004

Albert Valdman

Albert Valdman is an Emeritus Rudy Professor of French/Italian and Linguistics, director of the Indiana University Creole Institute, and a leading international specialist in French-based Creole. He has written and/or edited numerous other books and manuals that focus on language. Marvin D. Moody is a former member of the French Linguistics faculty in the Department of French and Italian at Indiana University, where he also directed the First Year French Program. He has also worked as a software engineer and has taught computer science courses at universities and junior colleges. Thomas E. Davies has lived and worked in the Haitian diaspora in Florida and Montreal for more than thirty years. He was the lead translator of Haitian Creole for the Florida, Fort Myers School District from 2004 to 2011. The author of a spell checker for Haitian Creole, he is completing a Ph.D. in curriculum studies at Indiana University.

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ENGLISH-

HAITIAN CREOLE

BILINGUAL DICTIONARY

Indiana University

Creole Institute

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ENGLISH- HAI TIA N CREOLE BILINGUA L DIC TIONARY

Copyright © 2017 Albert Valdman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-1601-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-1599-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-1600-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017903469

iUniverse rev. date: 03/31/2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Editor Biographies

Preface

Introductory Remarks on Haitian Creole

Orthography and Sound System

Grammatical Sketch

Numbers in Creole

A User’s Guide to the Dictionary

Detailed Discussion of the Content of Entries

List of Abbreviations

Bibliography

English-Haitian Creole Bilingual Dictionary

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Given the amount of work and time it requires, the preparation of a dictionary is a collaborative achievement. We would especially like to thank the many speakers of Haitian Creole, most of them in Haiti, who have provided information on the form, meaning, and use of the Haitian Creole material contained in this dictionary. We are also grateful to the team that prepared the first existing bilingual Creole-French/French-Creole dictionary: Diksyonè Kreyòl-Français/Français-Kreyòl (DKFFK). A work that certainly meets the norms of professional lexicography. Destined for middle and high school students in Haiti and published by Editions haïtiennes, this very important project was led by André Vilaire Chéry and included, as contributors, Geneviève D. Auguste and Rogéda D. Dorcil a former Dean of the Faculté de Linguistique Appliquée. Several of the Haitian Creole examples of the present dictionary are derived from the DKFFK.

It would be a presumptuous venture indeed for lexicographers not to consult preceding dictionaries. Thus, it behooves us to give special acknowledgement to the utility of the subsequent works by the following authors to whom we are beholden: Bryant C. Freeman who has prepared the most extensive English-Haitian Creole bilingual dictionary to date, English-Haitian Creole Dictionary (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas, 2010); Féquière Vilsaint & Jean E. Berret and their English-Haitian Creole/Haitian Creole-English Word to Word Dictionary (Coconut Creek, FL: Educa Vision, 2005); Jean Targète and Raphaël G. Urciolo with the Haitian Creole-English Dictionary (Kensington, MD: Dunwoody Press, 1993); Lodewijk F. Peleman, C.I.C.M. and the Dictionnaire créole-français (Port-au-Prince: Bon Nouvèl, 1976); and finally Alain Bentolila, Pierre Nougayrol, Pierre Vernet, Charles Alexandre, and Henry Tourneux’s Diksyonnè kreyòl-franse (Port-au-Prince: Editions Caraïbes, 1976). However, the most important source for this dictionary is the Haitian Creole-English Bilingual Dictionary (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Creole Institute, 2007), prepared under terms of the research contract No P017A0004, funded by the United States Department of Education, International Research and Studies Program. We are likewise grateful to the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University that have provided partial funding for the preparation of the present dictionary.

EDITOR BIOGRAPHIES

Albert Valdman, Emeritus Rudy Professor of French/Italian and Linguistic, Director of the Indiana University Creole Institute, a leading international specialist in French-based creoles, is the author of the recent comprehensive descriptive study: Haitian Creole: Structure, Variation, Status, Origin (2015) and the basic introductory instructional manual, Ann Pale Kreyòl, as well as lead editor of Haitian Creole-English Bilingual Dictionary (2007), Dictionary of Louisiana Creole (1998) and Dictionary of Louisiana French: As Spoken in Cajun, Creole, and American Communities (2010).

Marvin D. Moody was from 1970 to 1979 a member of the French Linguistics faculty in the Department of French and Italian at Indiana University where he also directed the First Year French Program. He authored A Classification and Analysis of "noun + de + noun Constructions in French (1972). From 1981 to 2005, he worked as a Software Engineer in Colorado and California where he also taught Computer Science course at various universities and junior colleges. Upon his retirement in 2005, he returned to Indiana University where he has served as Research Associate in the Department of French and Italian and the Creole Institute. In this capacity, he has provided programming support for the Dictionary of Louisiana French: As Spoken in Cajun, Creole, and American Communities (2010). With A. Valdman, he is currently working on an online version of the Differential, Historical, and Etymological Dictionary of Louisiana French at Indiana University funded by NEH and to be completed in 2018.

Thomas E. Davies has lived and worked in the Haitian diaspora in Florida and Montreal for more than 30 years. He was the lead translator of Haitian Creole for the Florida, Fort Myers School District from 2004 to 2011. The author of a spell checker for Haitian Creole, he collaborated in the preparation of the Haitian Creole-English Bilingual Dictionary (2007), and was part of the team conducting research on the Cape Haitian dialect (2007-2009) funded by the National Science Foundation. He is completing a PhD in Curriculum Studies at Indiana University and planning research on the role of Haitian Creole in the Haitian educational system.

PREFACE

Purpose of the English-Haitian Creole Bilingual Dictionary

The primary function of the English-Haitian Creole Bilingual Dictionary (EHCBD) is to help English speakers speak and write Haitian Creole, the target language, by providing Haitian Creole equivalents of English words and phrases. Speakers of Haitian Creole may also use this dictionary to improve their oral and written skills in English as well as to extend their knowledge of the vocabulary of their own language.

While an official orthography exists for Haitian Creole, it is important to understand that the written language is not yet fully standardized. That is, there are no extensive grammars meeting current standards of linguistic description written in the language, nor do monolingual dictionaries exist designed for native speakers of the language such as the Merriam-Webster for American English or the Grand Robert or Larousse for French. Thus, in some cases, we are not absolutely sure of the precise meaning of a Haitian Creole word or expression when we strive to provide exact equivalents of English words or phrases. However, as is the case for bilingual dictionaries that meet current standards of lexicography, such as the Diksyonè Kreyòl-Français/Français-Kreyòl, this bilingual dictionary provides an excellent starting point for the preparation of monolingual dictionaries, with specifically targeted readerships, to be used in Haiti.

It is outside the scope of this dictionary to have it assume a partially encyclopedic function as it provides little information about Haitian history, culture, etc. For example, there are few proper names referring to historical personages and geographical proper names are reduced to main cities. In the case of terms referring to Vodou, minimal information is provided to help the reader situate them within the framework of Haiti’s primary religion.

Scope and nature of the EHCBD

As is the case with its predecessor and companion volume the Haitian Creole-English Bilingual Dictionary, the present dictionary stands as the most thorough bilingual dictionary dealing with Haitian Creole. First, it is broader and more extensive than any existing dictionary designed to provide Haitian Creole equivalents for English words and expressions. Its nomenclature (the list of English headwords) contains more than 30,000 entries, many of which, especially verbs, have multiple senses, and about 25,000 subentries, multiword units or idiomatic expressions whose meanings cannot readily be derived from the individual meaning of the constituent words. Second, it features the most developed microstructure (the content of individual articles) for its entries. In addition to the headword, identification of parts of speech, and the gloss(es) (Haitian Creole equivalents), it provides abundant sentence-length English examples with Haitian Creole translations. Moreover, careful semantic analysis distinguishes between homonyms (words that share the same pronunciation but differ in meaning) and polysemes (words with several closely related senses). For the latter, senses are ordered on the basis of primarily semantic criteria, generally from a concrete or basic meaning to a more abstract or figurative meaning.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON HAITIAN CREOLE

Much ink has been spilled over how one is to name the language spoken by all Haitians and which stands as the only means of communication and self-expression for 90% of the country’s population. In addition to Haiti, French-based Creole languages are spoken in four principal areas: 1, the Lesser Antilles: Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint-Barth, and Saint-Lucia; 2, French Guyana; 3, Louisiana; and 4, the Mascarene Archipelago: Reunion, Mauritius, and the Seychelles of the Indian Ocean. Since they show significant differences in vocabulary as well as some at the levels of grammar and pronunciation, these languages are not always mutually intelligible, especially between those of the Atlantic Ocean and those of the Indian Ocean. However, mutual comprehension is more easily achieved between neighboring Creoles, for example, between that of Haiti and those of the Lesser Antilles.

There is a tendency among creolists—linguists that specialize in the study of creole languages—and some speakers of these languages to refer to them simply by the place where they are spoken and the term creole, for example, Mauritian Creole or Haitian Creole. However, in the case of Haitian Creole, most native speakers call the language simply kreyòl ‘creole’. In this dictionary, we will retain the anglicized version of this traditional label: Creole.

Creole is the principal language of communication in the Republic of Haiti. It is spoken by all Haitians and is the sole means of communication for the vast majority of the population of about ten million. In the 1987 Constitution, both French and Creole were promulgated as official languages of the Republic of Haiti, but a certain dominant/subordinate relationship still exists between them. A mastery of French is still highly valued by all segments of the population. Although the use of Creole has continued to expand into all domains (media, education, administration, literature), French is often still preferred for literary expression and in the educational and administrative sectors. Nonetheless, Creole is considered by all Haitians as the true national language of their country. A rural speaker poignantly expressed how many Haitians view their country’s two languages:

Fransè se pa lang pa n, se lang achte … Ti moun fèt pou konn kreyòl paske se lang ni, li pa achte l.

French is not our language, it’s a ‘bought’ language … A child is born to know Creole because it’s her language, she didn’t ‘buy’ it.

The speaker is making an analogy with loas, Vodou spirits. Like loas that are bought from Vodou priests—and are more capricious and demand more expensive offerings—French is viewed as alien and not inherited as part of one’s lineage. For rural Haitians, Creole is the only authentic language.

French and Creole share a great deal of lexical items, many of which are false cognates, and phonological features but they differ substantially at the grammatical level rendering them mutually unintelligible under most circumstances. Creole arose through a process of what linguists term creolization within the context of a slave-holding plantation society in which French was the language of most of the original European settlers with European indentured servants, artisans, military personnel, and administrators arriving later. The variety of French that evolved into the varieties of the language currently used in North America, in the French overseas departments in the Caribbean, and in the Indian Ocean is usually referred to as Colonial French. In their attempt to acquire Colonial French second-hand, as it were, without ready access to a proper model, the slaves modified its structure considerably. In the social context of the plantation colonies, the French available to them was highly variable reflecting the everyday speech of ordinary people from different parts of France rather than the more standardized language of the elite. Imported slaves spoke a variety of African languages. These operated as filters through which the slaves decoded Colonial French. However, it is simplistic to characterize the Creole that evolved from this attempt by the slaves to acquire Colonial French language intertwining consisting of French vocabulary embedded in African grammar. Instead, Creole is a language in its own right whose pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, though grounded in French, clearly show the influence of African languages.

For the small minority of the population that is bilingual, the use of the two languages is largely determined by the interaction of two sociolinguistic variables: those of public versus private context and of formal versus informal situations. As is the case for all languages, Creole shows geographical and sociolinguistic variation manifesting itself primarily at the levels of pronunciation and vocabulary. The speech of the Cape Haitian region in northern Haiti differs most strikingly from that of the rest of the country, although there are also some salient differences in the speech of the western part of the southern peninsula. Differences also exist between the speech of urban and rural inhabitants of each region, but the sharpest differences are noted when comparing the speech of the bilingual minority and that of the monolingual masses in the rural areas and in the lower urban social strata.

ORTHOGRAPHY AND SOUND SYSTEM

The oldest extant texts in Creole date from the end of the 18th century. The orthography used is unmistakably adapted from French spelling conventions. This type of spelling system was the rule until the 1940’s. In 1941, a Methodist minister from Northern Ireland, H. Ormonde McConnell, and an American literacy specialist, Frank Laubach, using the first description of the language by the Haitian linguist Suzanne Sylvain (1936) as a springboard, devised an alphabet based on a systematic phonological representation of the language. This system, somewhat modified by two Haitians, the journalist Charles-Fernand Pressoir and the then Minister of Education Lélio Faublas, had a semi-official status and was used in all educational and religious works. It was also adopted by the government’s literacy and developmental agency, the Office National d’Alphabétisation et d’Action Communautaire (ONAAC). In 1975, a slightly modified version of the Pressoir-Faublas alphabet was introduced. Labeled IPN because it was devised by persons affiliated with the Institut Pédagogique National (IPN), this alphabet was given official recognition in 1979 by the government headed by Jean-Claude Duvalier. It is used today in all official publications, in a wide variety of written texts, and in material destined for school programs where some instruction is provided in Creole. This is the orthography that is used in this dictionary. A guide providing correspondences between spelling and pronunciation is provided below.

Most phonological descriptions of Haitian Creole use as a standard the speech of monolingual Creole speakers from the central part of the country that includes the Capital, Port-au-Prince. This was also the standard used in the preparation of this dictionary. We have not included those features that are particularly characteristic of middle class bilingual speakers, such as the front-rounded vowels /y/, /ø/, and /œ/. For example, for the word for ‘rice’ we have opted for the form /diri/ rather than /dyri/. Nonetheless, these phonemes could be represented using new symbols compatible with the IPN orthography: u for /y/, eu for /ø/, and èu for /œ/. In fact, we use the graphic symbol u to represent the vowels of the word zuzu, which refers to a Frenchified way of speaking.

Like all languages, Creole shows variation in the spoken form of words. For example, the word for now is pronounced koulye, konnye, kounyeya, or kounye a. There are frequent cases of phonological variation where speakers sometimes use variants interchangeably. These involve the vowels e and è and o and ò in non-final syllables: grese, grèse ‘to oil’, sòti, soti, sòt, sot ‘to go out’; corresponding oral and nasal vowels: ansasen, asasen ‘murderer’, makòn, makonn ‘bunch’. malonnèt, malonèt ‘dishonest’, beni (benni) ‘blessed’. There is also variation in word-final position between the consonant j and the semivowel y. In some of these examples the preferred pronunciation is j (zoranj, zorany ‘orange’, chatwouj, chatwouy ‘octopus’), in others, the preferred pronunciation is y (lizay, lizaj ‘manners’, paryay, paryaj ‘betting’). For these variations, in the glosses (the Creole equivalents of the English headwords), we show the most common written variants or those that we have observed most frequently in speech; in the illustrative contextual examples, we show the equivalent occurring in the particular written or oral sources we consulted. For example, bunch, we only show ‘makòn’. In the HCEBD, we show all variants, and readers are invited to consult that dictionary for alternative orthographies.

Because Haitian Creole is not fully standardized—no monolingual dictionary comparable to the French Grand Robert or the American Merriam-Webster exists—written texts show variation in the spelling of words composed of several morphemes (meaningful units). For example, for the interrogative pronouns, some authors and editors treat them as single units, others separate the general interrogative element ki from the one that bears identifiable meaning: ki lè (‘hour’) or kilè ‘when’, ki moun (‘person’) or kimoun ‘who’, pou ki sa (‘that’) or pou kisa, poukisa ‘why’. We have chosen to represent these as two words (ki lè, ki moun) when the second part is semantically clear, but as a single unit when it is not, as is the case for ‘why’: poukisa. As a rule, we follow the general Haitian practice in writing words composed of several semantic elements as unitary forms: alèkile ‘at the present time’ (a ‘at,’ lè ‘hour’ kile ‘that is’, literally, ‘at the time that is’.

The pronunciation of the personal pronouns varies greatly between the long and short form: mwen/m, li/l, nou/n, yo/y. In the case of the 2nd person singular, variation exists between the vowel ou and the semivowel w. When the official spelling was first used, that form was, in most cases, written ou even where it is usually pronounced with the semivowel. However, there is, at present, a tendency to have the written form reflect actual pronunciation, and in many texts one finds matant ou ‘your aunt’ versus sè w ‘your sister’; m ap jwenn ou ‘I’ll find you’ versus mwen wè w ‘I see you.’ We follow the general scriptural practice that alternates freely between the long and short forms, except after a word ending in a consonant where only ou is used, as in matant ou, In the presentation of the IPN alphabet below, we provide letters of the alphabet followed by an indication of their pronunciation with the use of the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols. Illustrative words contain the particular distinctive sound, and, where applicable, an English word containing a sound that is close to the pronunciation of the specific Creole sound.

GRAMMATICAL SKETCH

The following description is intended only as a brief sketch of Creole grammar. It does not aim to provide an exhaustive treatment and it does not cover all grammatical features. Its purpose is to assist the reader in understanding the Creole translation of the illustrative examples provided in the dictionary.

1. Determiner Phrases

1.1. Determiners

In general, determiners in Creole are placed after the noun or noun phrase that they modify. A notable exception to this pattern is found with the indefinite article.

1.1.1. Definite Determiners

The definite determiner in Creole surfaces as the singular la (with variants lan, nan, a, and an) and the plural yo that is invariable. The basic singular variant la occurs after non-nasal consonants, lan or nan after nasal consonants, a after oral vowels, and an after nasal vowels. The variant lan also occurs after a nasal vowel followed by a non-nasal consonant, mont lan ‘the watch’. The variant an also occurs after i and ou preceded by a nasal consonant, pitimi an ‘the millet’, jenou an ‘the knee’. A semivowel, not reflected by the spelling, is inserted: 1) y, when a is preceded by words ending with the vowels i or e, fiya ‘the woman’, pyeya ‘the foot’, or when an is preceded by words ending in en, chenyan; 2) w, when a is preceded by ou or o, jouwa ‘the day’, dlowa ‘the water’. As mentioned above, the determiners follow the noun or nominal clause (underlined in the examples below) that they modify:

1.1.2. Indefinite Determiner

The singular indefinite determiner is yon, which is generally pronounced on in normalspeech while it is conventionally represented in written materials as yon. We have maintained this convention throughout the dictionary. As in English, no article is used with the indefinite plural.

Older Creole texts show the use of la preceding the plural. In this case, yo functions as a purely plural marker rather than bearing both the semantic notions of plurality and definiteness:

1.1.3. Demonstrative Determiner

Creole has a single postposed demonstrative determiner: sa. It is always combined with the definite article forms a or yo, depending upon whether the noun to which it relates is singular or plural, respectively. There are no forms corresponding to the spacial distinction made in English between ‘this/these’ and ‘that/those.’

Another form, occurring infrequently, sila followed by a in the singular and yo in the plural, seems to vary freely with sa:

To distinguish ‘near’ versus ‘remote’ effected in English with this versus that, one may use sa a for remote versus the use of bò or kote meaning ‘place’ and sila a:

1.2. Adjectives

Except for a few common exceptions, for example bèl ‘beautiful’, bon ‘good’, gran ‘great’, gwo ‘big’, and ti ‘small’, adjectives generally follow the noun they modify:

2. Personal Pronouns

The same personal pronouns function as subject and object of verbs and as object of prepositions. As pointed out in the Orthography and Pronunciation section above, pronouns have short variants that are frequently used: mwen/m (I, me, my), ou/w (singular you, your); li/l (he, she, it, him, her, his, its); nou/n (we, us, plural you and your, our); yo/y (they, them, their). Note especially that nou/n refers to both the first and the second person plural, and in some cases to the first person singular.

The long form of personal pronouns is used obligatorily after a consonant:

Note that in the third person singular there is no distinction between masculine, feminine, or neuter. Li/l is equivalent to ‘she/her/hers’, ‘he/him/his’, and ‘it/its’. In the illustrative examples of this dictionary, we translate the 3rd person pronoun, both singular and plural, with one of its English equivalents, sometimes depending on the context sometimes to alternate the English equivalents. Similarly, we translate nou/n sometimes by ‘we’ and sometimes by ‘you’, its usual English equivalents, or in much less frequent cases, by ‘I’.

3. Expressing Possession

The equivalent of English possessive adjectives in Creole is the use of the personal pronouns following the noun. If the preceding noun ends in a consonant, the full form is used. If the preceding noun ends in a vowel, either form is used. The full form yo is used after consonants and after vowels.

The pronouns used as possessives can combine with the definite article, providing for a greater specificity on the part of the modified noun. Compare the contrastive pair of sentences below:

In the second example, the use of the definite article an indicates that the food had already been given to the individual, but that, not finding it, (s)he wonders what happened to it. Although we are trying to provide translations that are as close as possible to the Creole meaning, such subtle nuances are lost in translation. The definite determiner is often used with kinship terms. Note that, as indicated in Section 1.1.1. above, the determiner variant used depends on the last sound of the segment that precedes it.

4. Verbal System

Unlike English or French, verbal forms in Creole are generally invariable. Creole has a number of pre-verbal particles, termed verbal markers, which serve to indicate distinctions of tense, mood, and aspect. In addition, the meaning of a contextualized verb is strongly tied to the semantic properties inherent to the verb itself: whether it is a verb denoting an action (active verb), for example ‘to clean’ or whether it is one that expresses a state (stative verb), for example, ‘to seem’, ‘to like’, or ‘to know.’ The base form of a stative verb generally refers to the present with universal or habitual extension:

The base form of an active verb usually refers to a relatively recent past:

Adverbials expressing time, underlined in the examples below, help to determine the tense of active verbs, the past in the first example, the habitual present in the second:

4.1. Verbal markers

In the case of the various pre-verbal markers discussed below, we offer a short, general characterization which we illustrate with a set of representative examples.

4.1.1. ap/ape/pe, event in process or immediate/definite future:

The marker ap/ape/pe combines with the verb base ale ‘to go’ to form the combina-tions pral that carries the meaning of an action or an event about to take place:

4.1.2. a/va/ava, prospective/indefinite future:

4.1.3. te is used obligatorily with stative verbs to indicate past tense:

It is used with active verbs to emphasize past tense:

It may also indicate that a past event preceded another, and it is then equivalent to the English pluperfect:

4.2 Verbal Marker Combinations

4.2.1. t ap, past progressive:

4.2.2. ta, anterior marker te plus the indefinite future marker variant a, is equivalent to the conditional:

4.2.3. t av ap

Three marker combinations are used in complex sentences to describe future events occurring or assumed to occur at some point following another future event:

4.3 Aspectual and Modal Verbs

These verbs express various modal and aspectual distinctions. Aspectual verbs describe the characteristics of the process: whether it is starting, continuing, or ending. Modal verbs most often express the attitude of the speaker towards the statement: desire, demand, and suggestion.

4.3.1. Aspectual Verbs

a. fèk, fenk, fin, immediate past actions:

b. konn, habitual action:

c. pran, tonbe, to begin to:

d. vin, to come:

4.3.2. Modal Verbs

a. mèt, permission:

b. ka/kab/kapab, capability:

c. dwe, fò/fòk, obligation:

d. vle, volition:

e. pito, suggestion:

f. pinga, warning:

4.4. Serial Verbs

Creole features the use of a sequence of verbs of which the total meaning is idiomatic; that is, it is not the sum of the meaning of the constituent verbs. These combinations are called serial verbs. The meaning of Li voye rad sa yo jete is not ‘She sent and threw these clothes’ but rather ‘She threw these clothes away’. The second verb functions, as it were, as an adverb. Serial verbs fall into two main groups:

4.4.1. Combinations with verbs of motion where the verb of motion imparts a relatively fixed meaning. In these examples ale ‘to go’ has the meaning of the adverb ‘over’:

4.4.2. Idiomatic combinations, where the total meaning of the combination cannot be predicted at all from that of the constituents:

The verb bay/ban/ba ‘to give’ began as a serial verb but today it functions as the equivalent of the preposition ‘to’. On the other hand, pote vini is a serial verb:

4.5. Copula (linking verb)

The use of a copula equivalent to the English ‘to be’ is not obligatory in Creole. Predicated elements such as adjectives or expressions of place and time are connected directly to the subject:

The fact that there is a sort of ghost linking element is shown by the fact that verb markers may occur with these constructions:

When copula sentences differ from the normal declarative order, such as is the case with questions or emphatic constructions, the element ye normally appears in final position:

The element se is generally used when the predicate is a noun:

Finally, se also functions as a sentence introducer and it is often used in emphatic sentences. In this latter case, it is accompanied by ye:

4.6. Imperative

In imperative sentences no second person pronoun is used. For the first person plural commands the imperative marker annou/ann is used:

5. Negative Sentences

In negative sentences the particle pa is placed before the predicate:

A common exception to this ordering occurs in sentences with se, in which case pa follows se:

6. Interrogatives

Yes-no questions are formed by only changing the intonation from falling to rising:

Information questions are generally formed with the placement of interrogative adverbs or pronouns at the beginning of the sentence. Most of these consist of the particle ki followed by a noun bearing the particular meaning: time ki lè ‘when’, place (ki) kote, ki bò ‘where’, manner ki jan ‘how’, person ki moun ‘who, whom’. Other interrogative pronouns are (ki) sa ‘what’, kilès ‘which (one)’, ki ‘which’; interrogative adverbs are kouman ‘how’, konben ‘how much’, and poukisa, ‘why’:

7. Comparison of Adjectives

The comparative of equality is expressed by placing tankou or kou between the two elements being compared:

To express a comparison of inequality, pi ‘more’ or mwen ‘less’ is placed before the adjective. When two elements for comparison are included in a sentence, pase introduces the second element:

8. Coordination and Subordination

In Creole the conjunction ak is used to coordinate two nouns:

Two sentences or phrases are coordinated without any conjunction or with the conjunctions epi/enpi or e ‘and’ and men ‘but’:

In complex sentences involving the modification of the main clause by a subordinate one, as is the case in English, the use of a conjunction is optional. The use of the conjunction ke is associated with the Frenchified variety of bilingual speakers:

There is a variety of conjunctions with semantic content, for example, paske ‘because’, lè ‘when’, etan ‘while, at the same time’:

In relative clauses ki/k is used when the relativized element is the subject. That element is underlined in the examples below:

When the relativized element is an object, a relative pronoun (ke) is generally used only in Frenchified Creole:

9. Means for Expressing Emphasis

An element in Creole may be emphasized by moving it to the front of a sentence. In most cases, the fronted element will be introduced by se. The emphasized element in the examples below are underlined:

In cases of predicates introduced by the copula se, the copula is replaced by the form ye. The se that occurs before the fronted emphasized element is the introducer, not the copula:

In the case of predicates containing adverbs or adverbial expressions that, as was pointed out above, do not require a copula, ye is also added at the end:

When a verb or an adjective is emphasized, the verb is duplicated and the copy fronted. Note that verbal markers and/or personal pronouns are not duplicated; they remain attached to the original verb or adjective. An introducer, generally se, precedes the copy. In the examples below, the element emphasized is underlined and the fronted copy appears in bold face:

Compare this construction to the non-emphatic versions corresponding to the third example above:

Another emphatic construction involves adding a quantifier and the negative marker pa to the nominal equivalent of the verb. Strictly speaking, this is not a case of duplication but rather one of addition, in fronted position, of the matching noun. This makes possible the use of a quantifier:

The same construction may be used with adjectives:

NUMBERS IN CREOLE

Numbers in Creole present a certain degree of variability, depending upon the context in which they occur. In the chart below, the first column shows the numbers from 1 to 20 as they are pronounced (and written) when counting and in isolation. The second column provides the numbers acting as modifiers, and the third column presents their special forms before an ‘year’ and è ‘hour, o’clock.’ The special consonant that appears before these two words is indicated in bold face. The numbers 5, 7 and 8 show no variation regardless of context. This is also the case for the numbers from 11 to 18. Note that in the third column, the numbers whose form differs from that of the form used in counting are appended to the noun they modify, whereas those whose form is identical to the counting form are written separately. This convention is adopted in the representation of numbers in the dictionary.

The numbers from 21 to 99 are listed below. The numbers from 21 to 69 and 80 to 89 are formed according to the same basic pattern as that found in English, namely by the addition of the numbers from 1 to 9 to that of the form for the two digits, 20, 30, etc. However, there is some internal variation within each multiple of ten. The final consonant t is used for 21/31, 28/38 and 29/39. The forms for the other numbers contain a final n instead. The numerical system of Creole is inherited in large part from that of French, which partly features 20 as a base. Thus, 80 is four times 20: French quatre-vingts, Creole katreven. Note that this system is residual in English: We bought three score boxes (60). He has reached three score and ten years of age (70 years). In Creole, the forms of the numbers for the seventies and nineties follow the French pattern of combining the forms for 10 through 19 with those for 60 and 80. Finally, note that the forms for the eighties do not show the internal variation that was seen in those for the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties. For that reason they are represented as two words.

A USER’S GUIDE TO THE DICTIONARY

This section will provide a general guide to the organization of the dictionary articles, i.e. individual headword and all the materials subsumed under it (the microstructure). Below, representative articles will be presented with the various parts of the microstructure labeled. These presentational diagrams will be followed by an explanation of certain elements that are not exemplified in the sample articles or that require additional information.

EXPLANATORY CHART

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DETAILED DISCUSSION OF THE CONTENT OF ENTRIES

1. General Structure of Entries

Entries begin with the English headword in bold followed immediately with the part of speech identified in italics. Then, the Creole gloss (equivalent) is provided in unformatted text. Next, especially for adjectives, verbs, and nouns with several meanings (senses), illustrative examples are provided followed by their Creole translation. Subentries, multiple word phrases or idiomatic expressions are preceded by •, in which the headword occurs are provided where these exist. The simple entry for the verb saw illustrates the general structure of entries; the superscript number is provided to differentiate it from its homonym, the noun saw that is listed as saw¹:

saw² v.tr. siye They are sawing the wood. Y ap siye bwa a. •saw off twonse He’s sawing off a piece from the board to make a stool. L ap twonse yon pati nan bwa a pou l ka fè yon tabourè.

2. Glosses

For many English headwords several Creole glosses may be provided. As was mentioned in the Orthography and Spelling section, Creole has not been fully standardized. In the absence of a monolingual dictionary of the language, the exact meaning of words and multiword expressions cannot always be determined. Accordingly, there may be some minor semantic differences between the glosses when several are provided. For that reason, we have endeavored to provide each gloss with an example to illustrate nuances of meaning where these exist among the glosses of a headword. We illustrate this with the verb to damage:

damage² v.tr. abime, andomaje, degrade, demonte, deteryore, fè dega, gate The goats damaged the gate when they passed through. Kabrit yo abimen griyaj la lè yo pase. Look at how this trinket has become damaged because the child threw it on the ground. Gade kijan biblo a vin andomaje afòs pitit la jete li atè. The maid ended up damaging all the plates. Bòn nan fin degrade tout asyèt yo. She damaged the umbrella. Li demonte parapli a. The caterpillars are damaging my crop. Cheni yo vin deteryore rekòt mwen. The cattle damaged the field. Bèf yo fè dega nan jaden an. She damaged the radio. Li gate radyo a.

Many words in Creole exhibit phonetic variation. For example, among the glosses for ‘ointment’ one finds the variants ponmad and pomad; for ‘forearm’, anvan bra and avanbra; for ‘crumb’, miyèt and myèt. In these cases, we have attempted to provide what we have judged to be the most common variants. Where there is regional variation, if the variation bears on the pronunciation, as is the case between the variants frappe ‘to hit’, the geographically unmarked form, and fwape, found in northern Haiti, we provide only the former in most cases. However, if the variation involves different forms rather than simple pronunciation differences, we sometimes list both the regionally marked variant and the unmarked one. For example, for the English pronoun ‘mine’, together with the general gloss pa m, we provide the northern variant, but indicate its regional status: kinan m [N].

For words denoting fauna and flora no attempt has been made to provide the Linnean taxonomic nomenclature. The information at our disposal was incomplete. Rather than providing this information partially, for the sake of consistency, we have given only the known Creole gloss available. In some cases, we provide some general indication in italics between square brackets:

stilt-plover n. [bird] pèpet

shinglewood tree n. lorye gran fèy

shining stenostomum n. [bot.] avoka mawon

sage¹ n. [plant] lachòy, soj

3. Illustrative Examples

As was the case with the Haitian Creole-English Bilingual Dictionary, what distinguishes this work from most other bilingual dictionaries dealing with Creole is the ample exemplification of glosses. We have provided sentence- or phrase-length contextual examples to capture the precise meaning or the grammatical properties of glosses and to show typical sentence structure. The examples are straightforward (i.e. not generally a proverb or other sentence the meaning of which is obscure) and do not contain terms (other than proper names) that are not found as headwords elsewhere in the dictionary. Illustrative examples are not definitions. Rather, they present information about a term that may not be inferred from the gloss(es) alone. They are provided for all verbs, and, as much as possible, for polysemic adjectives and nouns.

4. Order of Senses in Polysemic Words

As is the case for most languages, many words in English are polysemic and the various senses may be translated in other languages by different words. In this dictionary, senses of polysemic words are ordered on a semantic basis. We generally proceed from the most concrete meaning to the extended and figurative ones. The entry for the noun ‘abuse’ shows this conscious ordering. The three senses are numbered, identified with a semantic specifier (in square brackets), provided with a gloss or glosses, and illustrated with a contextual example:

abuse¹ n. 1[misuse of power, injustice] abi Favoritism is the worst abuse. Paspouki se pi gwo abi ki genyen. 2[cruel treatment] abi, move trètman Child abuse is a big problem. Koze abi timoun yo se yon gwo poblèm. ‘Restavèks’ endure a lot of abuse. Restavèk yo pase anba yon pakèt move trètman. 3[unkind/rude words] betiz, bwa jouman He greeted me with a stream of abuse. Parèt m parèt, li pran m ak yon bwa jouman.

5. Verbs

Verbs are labeled transitive (v. tr.) when they take a direct object, even where the object is not obligatory, for example, to peck (The hen pecked me. Manman poul la te beke m.), and where the verb governs a direct object, but where none is present (Hens peck. Poul beke.). Verbs are labeled intransitive (v. intr.) only when they do not take a direct object, for example, to step (Don’t step on the grass. Pa mache sou gazon an.). Most English verbs have transitive and intransitive senses. Verb classification is clearly indicated by the use of roman numerals, as shown below:

sting² I v.tr. 1[pain] boule, pike When you spread the alcohol on my back, it stung me a bit. Lè ou pase alkòl la nan do m lan, li boule m. 2[insects] bo, bobo, pike, mòde It’s a wasp that stung me. Se yon gèp ki pike m. Yesterday evening the mosquitoes stung me all over my face. Ayè oswa marengwen bobo tout bò figi m. I have been stung by a bunch of mosquitoes. Se pa de twa marengwen ki mòde m. II v.intr. 1[physical pain] pike My eyes are stinging. Je m ap pike m. 2[emotional pain] blese, fè mal, pike What I’m going to tell you may sting a little. Sa m pral di ou la gendwa blese yon tikras.

In some cases, verbs do not occur individually but as part of an expression, as for example, to steel, whose transitive sense ‘to cover with steel’ is extremely rare but is used with reflexive pronouns to mean ‘to make one’s self emotionally strong,’ as in the following entry that contains the subentry to steel one’s self:

steel² v.tr. •steel o.s. mare{ren/vant/zenba}li We need to steel ourselves so we can bury the child. Mare ren nou pou n ka tere pitit la.

6. Compound Words

The following guidelines apply to compound words that appear as main entries and as subentries:

1. adjective + noun: listed only under the noun, e.g. •lifelong buddy frè kòd lonbrik (listed under buddy); •imported used car machin pèpè (listed under car).

2. noun + noun: listed usually under the second noun, except for compound words described in 6 below, e.g. •cassava bread kasab (listed in the entry bread); literacy campaign kanpay alfabetizasyon (listed under campaign).

3. preposition + noun: listed only under the noun, e.g. . •by/on foot anmachan a pye (listed under foot); •under s.o. else’s name [do sth.] sou non yon moun (listed under name).

4. adverb + adjective: listed only under the adjective, e.g. •brand new flanban nèf (listed under new); very nice [good quality] bon vye (listed under nice).

5. verb + complement: listed only under the verb, except for items in 7 below, e.g. follow one’s footprints swiv tras (listed under follow); fool s.o. good pran yon moun (listed under fool).

6. Exceptions to Guideline 1—In expressions with frequently used nouns such as woman, man, person, and child that are preceded by an adjective, the subentry is listed only under the adjective, e.g. young person is listed in the entry for young. For name of animals (e.g. Antillean grebe plonjon fran) and plants (e.g. black mahoe n. [tree] kachiman{granbwa/kowosòl}, kowosòl granbwa) the compound is listed under the first word, as are medical expressions, including ailments (abdominal pain trip{kòde/tòde}; gastric reflux asid, dlo si), which are listed as headwords, not subentries, under the first word.

7. Exceptions to Guideline 5—There are a few verbs that occur in a large number of subentries. In order to limit the size of these verbal entries, they are listed in the entry for their complements. The following is a list of these verbs: be, become, do, get, give, go, have, make, put, take, e.g. •give carte blanche ba(y/n) yon moun kat blanche (listed under carte), •have one’s heart broken kè fè mal (listed under heart).

7. Subentries

Multiple word subentries, including idiomatic expressions, occur last in entries and are preceded by a bullet (•), and like headwords, appear in bold face. To avoid duplication, in general, subentries are listed only once in the dictionary, according to the set of guidelines presented above.

Subentries are listed in alphabetical order. First, those that begin with the headword are listed, and then those in which the headword is not the first word. For example, in the entry for heart, the subentries •heart condition {maladi/twoub}kè •heart disease maladi kè •heart murmur bri nan kè •heart of stone kè di occur first, then •at the heart of nan kè •be all heart devwe kò e{am/nanm}.

8. Abbreviation Conventions

Many Creole glosses consist of compound words or phrases that share some elements. To avoid repetition, curly brackets and slashes are used to abbreviate. For example, the synonymic equivalents of •rifle butt contain the shared keyword fizi ‘rifle’ and three different first parts of the compound words: bounda fizi, bwa fizi, kwòs fizi. This is abbreviated as follows: {bounda/bwa/kwòs}fizi. Similarly, the equivalents of •that’s right are abbreviated as se{rezon/vre}. Optional elements of glosses are indicated with parentheses: •be right byen fè or byen fèt gives byen fè(t), rise leve kanpe or leve is leve (kanpe).

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allman, Suzanne. 1984. L’Inventaire des ressources lexicales en créole haïtien: Présentation d’extraits du lexique de la maternité et de l’accouchement. Conjonction, 161-162: 133-150.

Anglade, Georges. 1975. L’Espace haïtien. Montreal: Presses de l’Université.

Antoine, Paul. 1980. Kò Moun. Port-au-Prince: Bon Nouvèl.

Auguste, Michaëlle. 1987. Lire le créole sans peine. Port-au-Prince: Editions Henri Deschamps.

Ans, André-Marcel d.’ 1968. Le créole français d’Haïti. Etude des unités d’articulation, d’expansion et de communication. The Hague and Paris: Mouton.

___1987. Haïti: Paysage et société. Paris: Karthala

Bentolila, Alain, et al. 1976. Ti Diksyonnè Kreyòl-Franse. Dictionnaire élémentaire créole haïtien-français. Port-au-Prince: Editions Caraïbes.

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