Haitian Creole

Haitian Creole is a French-based creole language spoken by almost the whole population of Haiti. It developed in the colony of Saint-Domingue from the eighteenth century among enslaved Africans of many languages, combining mostly French vocabulary with grammatical influences from West African languages. Long overshadowed by French, the language of the elite and the state, it became an official language alongside French under the constitution of 1987.