The following question came up yesterday for a group of American attorneys set up to volunteer legal assistance to Hatians in the UnitedStates eligible for the Temporary Protected Status program.
Can the average Hatian understand French?
Thereare many more lawyers like me who studied French than Creole. I haveoften met Hatian people here and they spoke French. Nevertheless, tocite just one example, I saw Wyclef Jean on the Grammy Awards Sunday night and could not understand a word he said during his "shout out" toHaiti in Creole.
This is a serious subject and I would appreciate serious replies only.
[Note: If you are an attorney admitted to practice in the United States, please take a look at this page: http://www.probono.net/ny/haiti]
You need to be a member of New York in French to add comments!
Replies
Marie
Please connect to me here and we'll figure something out. My next session is Thursday from 4:00 to 8:00. I posted information in the Forum section of this website. (You might want to see if the Creole is correct.)
I did not think this was a fee-for-service thing so I will not have a problem helping my fellow countrymen without remuneration. If you need help do not hesitate to contact me.
Robert Roth said:
Many years ago my family & I were awaiting the arrival of the lovely young Haitian woman who had cared for my grandmother prior to her death;as we were giving her a ride to the funeral and she was already quite late, my mother asked me to telephone her home to learn whether or not she was coming.
I had 3 years of high school French, audio lingual, and, despite some, perhaps, less than perfect grammar, was an A student with good vocabulary and pronunciation.
My mother was, therefore, quite astounded when, after some 15 minutes of my rather confused conversation with the girl's mother, who spoke only Haitian Creole French, all I could explain to my own Mom was that I THOUGHT the girl's mother had said that: Yes, the girl WAS coming, but she was running late, and she would arrive soon.
To have spoken so long for so little information made my mother skeptical of my comprehension and made me doubt myself!
I was so relieved when the girl arrived 5 minutes later, just as predicted!
I felt vindicated at that time, but thanks to your explanation, I now understand why we had so much difficulty conversing in "French";likewise my "conversations" with some of my Canadian acquaintances!
Merci! :)
Ernest Barthélemy said:
This is a volunteer program. None of the attorneys (like me) are getting paid. Do you want to volunteer your interpreting services?
I am quite sure that the organizers at the Bar Association are well familiar with the court interpreters.
If you someone needs a French-Creole interpreter, i can be contacted at 516-448-8989 and we can arrange a meeting time and place.
Thanks for your rather comprehensive reply. In the past, the Hatians I have met here were often nurses and/or other hospital employees and it was very easy to communicate in French.
To be more specific, in the context of my inquiry, if someone presents him or herself for legal assistance to apply for the TPS program and has difficulty in English, would I be likely to be able to interview them in French with questions like, "Depuis quand êtes-vous aux etats-unis?"
I think it's a crapshoot. I would guess that most Haitians might get this one even if they didn't speak French; the "quand êtes-vous" might require guess work depending on who you speak to. The Creole equivalent would be one of the following:
"Depi ki le ou nan zetazini?" (Day-pi kee leh oo nuh zayta zeenee)
"Ou nan zetazini depi ki le?" (Oo nuh zayta zeenee day-pee kee leh)
I would say you increase your chances of being understood by non-French speakers by using "Est-ce que" instead of the inverted forms because we use this term... "Eske"
Depuis quand est-ce que vous êtes aux Etats-Unis?
= "Depi ki le eskew nan zetazini?" (Day-pee kee leh ehs-kuh-oo nuh zayta zeenee?)
One of many unfortunate consequences of this dynamic is that, not uncommonly, Haitians who do not actually speak French may claim to - and so one should tread lightly when a Haitian claims to speak French, and try to determine whether this is actually the case. If you are speaking to a Haitian professional - e.g. physician, lawyer, businessman, journalist, politician, scholar or educator, who was trained in Haiti, you can be 100% certain that this person fluently speaks, writes and reads the French language as any French and Francophone native would. In any other case, you may have to investigate a little.
I know I am saying something sensitive here, but I will provide an anecdote to demonstrate (I have MANY of them... TRUST me)...
When my aunt and I stopped at the supply base near Toussaint L'Ouverture airport in Port-au-Prince to pick up medical supplies for my first mission trip a couple of weeks ago, the people running the base where from WHO (OMS) - and there were two representatives: a Haitian one and a French one; both of them were operating in French. My aunt and I are both French-speaking Haitians, so our interaction and requests went fluidly, as did those of the subsequent two or three Haitians behind us, who were all also French speaking. Then another Haitian man walks up, and blurts out some French terms, while handing over his requisition for supplies. The WHO reps then launched into a rather lengthy explanation of some issue they perceived from the list that this guy handed over to them, and then asked him a question directly - I don't recall the exact question, but it translated roughly into "Did you stop by here yesterday to submit your request?" - and this guy said very assertively, "OUI". And then they asked him another question, and he managed to completely contradict himself. The third question was not a "Yes/No" question, and that's when they became suspect... and then they asked the guy, in French, whether Creole was the only language he spoke (perhaps not the smartest way to ask this question under the circumstances)... and he just didn't get the question. Finally, another Haitian guy walks up to this guy's rescue, and translates for him, speaking Creole to the guy making the request, and French to the WHO reps.
My other anecdotes take place mostly in New York, but they all illustrate the point that some, but certainly not all (and not even most) Haitians speak French - yet figuring out whether they do can be elusive and is often not as easy as just asking them.