Haitian Creole/Basic Vocabulary

Personal pronouns

These are the personal pronouns. They are the same ones for both subjects and objects; that is to say, there is no distinction between I and me, for example.

	Singular	Plural
First person	mwen or m	nou or n
Second person	ou or w
Third person	li,l or i	yo or y

• The word li/l can mean he, she or it. i is commonly used in the Northern part of Haiti
• There are short and long forms of each pronoun. They are synonymous, but there are circumstances when one is preferred over the other.

Some more vocabulary:

Verbs

ale	to go
fè	to do, to make
kite	to leave, to let (someone do something)
gen, genyen	to have, there is/are
manje	to eat
pale	to speak
rele	to call, to name (something or someone). Used when asking what someone's name is: Kijan ou rele?: (literally) How are you called?

• Note: Verbs don't conjugate.

Nouns

angle	English
Ayiti	Haiti
bagay	thing
dlo	water
franse	French
kreyòl ayisyen	Haitian Creole
manje*	food
moun	person

• Note: There is no way to make nouns plural without a definite article, which will be taught in a later lesson, or the word kèk, meaning "some".
• *Manje can mean either "food" or "eat".

Adjectives

anpil	a lot.*
ayisyen	Haitian
kèk	some. This noun indicates that the following noun is plural.
lòt	other
sa	this, that.**
yon	a, an

• Note: Most adjectives go after the noun they modify. Yon, anpil and kèk are exceptions.
• *This can also be an adverb
• **This can also be a pronoun, meaning "this" or "that".

Other

bonjou	hello
bonswa	good evening
kijan	how
men	but
mèsi	thank you
nan	in
pa	not
pou	for

Extra Practice
A worksheet covering this material is available at Wikiversity.