Creole languages are often stereotyped as simpler than the languages from which they are derived (not simpler than the pidgin from which they evolved not the language which the audience happens to speak), but this does not rule out the retention or development of individual complexities. In the case of Haitian Creole, this complexity was attention to the nasality or orality of consonants or entire words. The Creole word janmen 'never' is transparently the French word jamais in which neither vowel is nasal but there is a nasal consonant. I am still not certain from what origin the verb renmen 'to like' possesses. This contrast of orality and nasality is particularly conspicuous in the definite article, whose nasality or orality depends on the commensurate nature of the syllables in the noun. There are five possible articles - a, la, an, lan, and the apparently rare nan, postposed rather than preposed. Examples are mesye a 'the gentleman', liv la 'the book', tifi a 'the girl', tigason an 'the boy', nant lan 'the watch', and dam nan 'the lady'. I do not yet fully understand the parameters of the fourfold (and occassionally fivefold) distinction, but there is no denying that it is more complex than the binary distinction of Continental French.
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