Bonjou! Learn to Speak Haitian Creole

Bonjou! ...Mèsi! ...E Orevwa! Search for English or Haitian Creole words translation. Also search the whole site for expressions, idioms and grammar rules. And ask questions about the language in the ASK QUESTIONS HERE section.

Most requested translations added here for your convenience: I love you → Mwen renmen w. I miss you → Mwen sonje w. My love!Lanmou mwen!

Sunday, May 5, 2013

I understand your answer and appreciate your examples. However my concern is the fact that NOU ends in a vowel. Shouldn't it be nou A. For example in one of the examples you mentioned, there's SE N NAN, so the article NAN is there because of the N sound that we now here even though we know it's a contraction. So since NOU ends in a vowel sound, why is the article not A?

Hi,

That's because the "OU" sounds is also considered a nasal sound.  You will find a small percentage of people who will have a non nasal vowel after the "ou" sound, but we mostly have a nasal vowel after an "ou" sound.  Some examples:

Bondye nou an (our God)
lanmou an (the love)
jenou an (the knee)
bagay mwen te ba ou an (the thing that I gave you)

FYI:
Sometimes an definite article that would otherwise be non nasal, will be written as a nasal vowel if the first syllables of the word have a nasal sound.

For example
"Zanmi" ends with "I"
You will be tempted to say "zanmi a".
but because of the first syllable "zan..." which has a nasal sound, we would sometimes say "zanmi an".

other examples are:
fanmi an (the family)
lanbi an (the conch)
konduit lan or conduit lan (the behavior)
konsè a or konsè an (the concert)
Haitian Creole ↔ English Reference, Look up Haitian Creole and English Words

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