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The proverbial language
By “proverbial language” I don’t mean a language that’s a byword, like “It’s all Greek to me.” I mean a language that absolutely revels in proverbs, thousands of them. And they reveal a depth to the people who live by them: worldly-wise, humorous, serious.
Consider this one: “a lie’s hole isn’t deep.” Or “a cow never thanks the grass.” One more: “run in the rain, fall in the river.”
These are Kreyol proverbs, from Haiti. There are thousands of them, and they are naturally part and parcel of this unique language. But isn’t Kreyol, well, a creole, you ask? Well, yes. The Cambridge Dictionary definition is “a type of language that developed from a mixture of different languages, and which is spoken by a group of people as their first language.” As you may know (especially if you read my first article on Haiti), the Spanish and then French brought enslaved people to the island of Hispaniola (Columbus’ first find). In 1803 the slaves had revolted, beaten the best army in the world, and declared a republic officially on January 1, 1804. They maintained French as a way of saying “we won”, and their own language developed further. Along with their culture, growing richer every day in the first black republic in the world and the only government established by a slave revolt.
