Every month I receive a couple of requests from school districts to translate education materials into Creole. This inevitably leads to a discussion about which Creole the school district needs. What many folks don’t realize is that Creole is a rather ambiguous term. The definition provided by the online Merriam-Webster dictionary:
a language that has evolved from a pidgin but serves as the native language of a speech community
In it’s true form a creole is an amalgamation of two or more languages that evolve over time to become the primary language of a region. I frequently run across three dominant Creoles in the United States.
The first is Haitian Creole, also commonly known as French Creole, which is spoken by almost ½ million people in the United States primarily in Florida, New York and Massachusetts . The second Creole is Cajun or Cajun French which is almost exclusively found in Louisiana. According to the 1990 census there were almost 700,000 Cajun speakers in the United States . Both Haitian Creole and Cajun French are French based Creoles. Whereas the third commonly requested Creole, Cape Verdean Creole, is derived from Portuguese. Although I don’t have an exact statistic on how many Cape Verdean Creole speakers overall reside in the United States there are almost 30,000 Cape Verdean natives living in the Eastern United States who most likely speak Cape Verdean Creole fluently.
As you can see, knowing that you need a Creole translation isn’t quite enough information for your language service provider. You will also need to provide the type of Creole and, if you are in a pinch, knowing which state it is spoken in may be the key to knowing which Creole it is.
Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate
Tags: Creole
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