[18][19] In the New World, the term originally referred to Europeans born and raised in overseas colonies[7] (as opposed to the European-born peninsulares).

[22][23][24] During the 17th century, French and Spanish colonizers produced tobacco, cotton, and sugar cane on the island.

[24] Throughout this period, the population was made of roughly equal numbers of engagés (white workers), gens de couleur libres (free people of colour) and slaves.

[11][23] The sugar crops needed a much larger labor force, which led to an increase in slave trafficking .

The first fifty years of Saint‑Domingue's sugar boom coincided with emergent Gbe predominance in the French Caribbean.

Mo sorti apprend, Mouché, qué vou té éprouvé domage dan traversée.Le Capitaine.

Vou crére qué navire à vou gagné bisoin réparations?Le C. Ly té carené anvant nou parti, mai coup z'ouragan là mété moué dan cas fair ly bay encor nion radoub.L'Entr.

The first days after the storm, we took on thirty six inches in twenty four hours; but in clear weather I made them take as much of it out as I was able, and attached it the best we possibly could; we're presently taking on not even thirteen inches.Haïti, l'an 1er, 5e, jour de l'indépendance.Chère maman moi,Ambassadeurs à nous, partis pour chercher argent France, moi voulé écrire à vous par yo, pour dire vous combien nous contens.

Congo, free and independent Haitian, at Trou-Salé.Haitian Creole and French have similar pronunciations and also share many lexical items.

[30] The phrase-structure is another similarity between Haitian Creole and French but differs slightly in that it contains details from its African substratum language.

Haitian Creole developed in the 17th and 18th centuries in the colony of Saint-Domingue, in a setting that mixed speakers of various Niger–Congo languages with French colonists.

American linguistic expert Frank Laubach and Irish Methodist missionary H. Ormonde McConnell developed a standardized Haitian Creole orthography.

[37] The Institut Pédagogique National established an official orthography for Creole, and slight modifications were made over the next two decades.

[11][17] Even without government recognition, by the end of the 19th century, there were already literary texts written in Haitian Creole such as Oswald Durand's Choucoune and Georges Sylvain's Cric? Crac!.

[43]: 556  Haitian Creole writers often use different literary strategies throughout their works, such as code-switching, to increase the audience's knowledge on the language.

There is a large population in Haiti that speaks only Haitian Creole, whether under formal or informal conditions:French plays no role in the very formal situation of a Haitian peasant (more than 80% of the population make a living from agriculture) presiding at a family gathering after the death of a member, or at the worship of the family lwa or voodoo spirits, or contacting a Catholic priest for a church baptism, marriage, or solemn mass, or consulting a physician, nurse, or dentist, or going to a civil officer to declare a death or birth.In most schools, French is still the preferred language for teaching.

[48][49] Haitian Creole has a phonemic orthography with highly regular spelling, except for proper nouns and foreign words.

Haitian scholar Charles Pressoir critiqued the McConnell–Laubach orthography for its lack of codified front rounded vowels, which are typically used only by francophone elites.

[15]: 431 The creation of the orthography was essentially an articulation of the language ideologies of those involved and brought out political and social tensions between competing groups.

[52]: 191 When Haiti was still a colony of France, edicts by the French government were often written in a French-lexicon creole and read aloud to the slave population.

Unlike the phonetic orthography, French orthography of Haitian Creole is not standardized and varies according to the writer; some use exact French spelling, others adjust the spelling of certain words to represent pronunciation of the cognate in Haitian Creole, removing the silent letters.

[34] bekànbikemwenmybekàn mwenbike mykekebikechemykeke chebike mymamybécanebikema bécanemy bikebekànbikemwenmyyoPLbekàn mwen yobike my PLkekebikechemylePLkeke che lebike my PLmesmybécanesbikesmes bécanesmy bikesThere are six pronouns: first, second, and third person, each in both singular, and plural; all are of French etymological origin.

The basic ones are: Simple past or past perfect: Past progressive: Present progressive: For the present progressive, it is customary, though not necessary, to add kounye a ("right now"): Also, ap manje can mean "will eat" depending on the context of the sentence: Near or definite future: Future: Other examples: Recent past markers include fèk and sòt (both mean "just" or "just now" and are often used together): A verb mood marker is ta, corresponding to English "would" and equivalent to the French conditional tense: The word pa comes before a verb and any tense markers to negate it: Most of the lexicon of Creole is derived from French, with significant changes in pronunciation and morphology; often the French definite article was retained as part of the noun.

However, the language also inherited many words of different origins, among them Wolof, Fon, Kongo, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Taino and Arabic.

[66][67] Etymologically, the word nèg is derived from the French nègre and is cognate with the Spanish negro ("black", both the color and the people).

There are many other Haitian Creole terms for specific tones of skin including grimo, bren, roz, and mawon.

Some of the larger Creole-speaking populations are found in Montreal, Quebec (where French is the official language), New York City, Boston, and Central and South Florida (Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach).

For instance, Miami-Dade County in Florida sends out paper communications in Haitian Creole in addition to English and Spanish.

For example, Flanbwayan and Gran Chimen Sant Kiltirèl, both located in Brooklyn, New York, aim to promote education and Haitian culture through advocacy, literacy projects, and cultural/artistic endeavors.

[93] After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, international aid workers desperately needed translation tools for communicating in Haitian Creole.