Skip to content
🇭🇹   BETA  ·  Istwanou is free during beta — free access continues until January 1, 2027 or when we reach 100,000 entries, whichever comes first.  ·  4,236 entries published  ·  95,764 entries away from the 100k milestone.       🇭🇹   BETA  ·  Istwanou is free during beta — free access continues until January 1, 2027 or when we reach 100,000 entries, whichever comes first.  ·  4,236 entries published  ·  95,764 entries away from the 100k milestone.       
You are offline — some content may not be available
1978-00-00

1978-00-00: (The Institut Pédagogique National Develops a Standardized Written Form of Kreyòl, Giving the Language of Ninety Percent of the Population a Form…

Haitian

1978-00-00: (The Institut Pédagogique National Develops a Standardized Written Form of Kreyòl, Giving the Language of Ninety Percent of the Population a Formal Orthography for the First Time): In 1978, the Institut Pédagogique National developed a standardized written form of Kreyòl, giving the language spoken by the overwhelming majority of Haitians a formal orthography for the first time. The standardization was a prerequisite for literacy campaigns, textbook production, and the integration of Kreyòl into the education system. The first Kreyòl text had appeared in 1925, and the first Kreyòl newspaper was published in 1943, but without a standardized spelling system the language remained primarily oral. The 1978 standardization was followed by a 1979 government decree allowing public education to be conducted in Kreyòl, and ultimately by the 1987 constitution’s recognition of Kreyòl as an official language alongside French. The arc from 1978 to 1987 was a linguistic revolution: the language that the colonial system had created as a tool of survival among the enslaved, and that the post-independence elite had dismissed as inferior, was finally granted the institutional recognition that its speakers had deserved since 1804.