Haitian Creole

Haitian Creole (Kreyòl Ayisyen) is the universal first language of Haiti, spoken by all ~10M residents plus ~2M diaspora across the US (especially Florida and NYC), Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Cuba, France, and Quebec. Co-official with French since 1987 and constitutionally protected as the language of education, government, and religious life. It is a French-lexifier Antilles Creole (sister to the Lesser Antilles Creoles of Martinique/Guadeloupe and to Louisiana Creole) that emerged on 17th-18th-century Saint-Domingue sugar plantations, with substantial Fon, Wolof, Yoruba, and Bantu African substrate visible in syntax: post-nominal definite article (-la), serial verb constructions, focus particles (se), and TMA preverbal particles (ap, te, ta, va). The 1979 IPN orthography (refined by the Académie Créole Haïtienne in 2014) established a phonemic Latin spelling distinct from French. The world's largest creole-speaking community by far.