Haitian Creole Alphabet & Accents

Haitian Creole has a phonemic orthography with highly regular spelling, although pronunciation varies by dialect and context. The standard alphabet, the one taught in Haitian schools, is usually given as 32 letters and letter groups, in this order: a, an, b, ch, d, e, è, en, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, ng, o, ò, on, ou, oun, p, r, s, t, ui, v, w, y, z. That is why alfabè kreyòl la is said to have 32 lèt, even though only 24 single letters are used on their own.

The letters C and U never stand alone: c appears only in ch (the sound of English sh, as in chat, cat, and machin, car), and u only in ou, oun and ui (bonjou, hello; moun, person; uit, eight). Q and X are not part of the alphabet at all, and K, S and Z do their work: French école is lekòl, quatre is kat, and s is always the hissing s of sè (sister) while z is always buzzing, as in zanmi (friend). G is always hard, as in gason (boy), and j is the soft sound of French j (jodi a, today).

Where French has an r before a rounded vowel, Creole usually has w, and the spelling follows the sound: rouge became wouj (red) and roche became wòch (rock). Y is the consonant of English yes (yo, they; kay, house), and h is rare, heard in only a few words.

Haitian Creole accent marks: è, ò and à

The only accent Haitian Creole uses is the grave accent, and it changes the sound, never the stress. Plain e is a closed e, like the vowel in French été; è is an open e, like the e in English bed. Plain o is closed, as in English go without the glide; ò is open, as in English law. Because the sounds are different, the accent tells words apart: pe (quiet) and pè (afraid; priest), se (it is) and sè (sister), bo (kiss) and bò (side). Everyday words full of them are mèsi (thank you), fèt (party, birthday), lekòl (school), pòt (door), Pòtoprens (Port-au-Prince) and Kreyòl itself.

The accent has a second job before n. In Creole spelling, en, an and on are nasal vowels, so pen (bread) is one nasal syllable. To show an open vowel followed by a real n sound you write the accent: pèn (pain, sorrow) is pè + n. That is where à comes in: it appears in a few words such as pàn (a breakdown, as in machin nan an pàn, the car has broken down), where a plain a is followed by a sounded n instead of the nasal an.

Capitals keep their accents: È, Ò and À are written in names and headings (LEKÒL NASYONAL, PÒTOPRENS). Leaving the accent off is a spelling mistake, not a style choice, though people texting quickly often skip it.

Nasal vowels, the apostrophe and quotation marks

Haitian Creole has three nasal vowels, written with an n after the vowel: an in manje (to eat, food), en in pen (bread) and on in bon (good). oun is ou followed by a sounded n (moun, person), and ng is the sound at the end of English sing, met mostly in borrowed words.

The short pronouns often lose their vowel: mwen becomes m, ou w, li l, nou n and yo y. Many writers join them with an apostrophe, as in m’ap vini (I'm coming) or n’ap boule (we're doing fine), while the school standard and many publishers write them as separate words, m ap vini; both are seen every day. The curly apostrophe ’ is the typographic one; the straight ' from the keyboard works the same in a text message.

Printed Creole in Haiti often follows the French custom of guillemets, « Bonjou » with « and », and online writing uses English-style “ ” as well. Both sets are here to copy.

How to type Haitian Creole accents on a keyboard and phone

On Windows, hold Alt and type on the number pad: Alt+0232 for è, Alt+0200 for È, Alt+0242 for ò, Alt+0210 for Ò, Alt+0224 for à and Alt+0192 for À; Alt+0171 and Alt+0187 give « and », and Alt+0146 gives ’. With the US-International layout switched on, press the backtick and then e, o or a. A French AZERTY keyboard has è and à on their own keys (7 and 0) but no ò, so ò still needs the Alt code or the dead key of other layouts.

On a Mac, press Option+` and then E, O or A for è, ò and à (add Shift for the capital); Option+\ and Option+Shift+\ type « and ». On iPhone and Android, hold down e, o or a on the keyboard and slide to the letter with the grave accent; Google's Gboard also offers Haitian Creole as a keyboard language with Creole word suggestions. In HTML, use è, ò, à and their capitals È, Ò, À, or paste the letters straight from this page.

Where Haitian Creole is spoken

Haitian Creole, Kreyòl ayisyen, is the language of Haiti 🇭🇹: CLDR estimates about 9.5 million speakers there (81% of Haiti's population in CLDR's data), while French is spoken fluently by a smaller share. The 1987 constitution made Creole an official language alongside French, and the Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen, founded in 2014, now looks after it. The spelling used today goes back to the orthography adopted for schools in 1979; earlier systems from the 1940s on were more French-looking.

Large communities speak it abroad: in the United States 🇺🇸, especially Miami, New York and Boston, in the Dominican Republic 🇩🇴 next door, in Canada 🇨🇦, above all Montreal, in France 🇫🇷, and in the Bahamas and Cuba. Money in Haiti is the gourde, written with a plain G (500 G), and prices are also quoted in the Haitian dollar of five gourdes, written $.

Most Creole words come from French, but the grammar is its own, with influences from West African languages, so French spelling is no guide: compare the accents in our French collection with the three used here. For the country's flag, food and holiday emoji see the Haiti collection; other creoles and island languages with pages of their own include Morisyen from Mauritius and Papiamento.