Haitian Creole Orthography Issues
Facing Software Developers

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The Problem | The Research | The Results | Bible Project Documents for Download
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Since the early 1940's, Haitian Creole has experienced at least three different formal spelling systems: McConnell-Laubach (1940's), Pressoir-Faublas (also called ONEC-ONAAC - 1950's to early 1980's), and IPN (Institut Pédagogique National - since 1979).

In addition, early into the life of the IPN orthography (post-1979), there was widespread opposition and/or non-adherence to the new standard. For example, the Haitian Bible
(Bib la an Ayisyin) was published in Pressoir-Faublas orthography by Société Biblique Haïtienne, Port-au-Prince, Haïti, in 1989. It is very important to note that this was 10 years after IPN had been declared by the Government of Haiti to be the "official" kreyòl orthography. And, to further complicate matters, a number of idiosyncratic and individualistic "hybrids" arose because 1) the orthographic standard could not treat all of the issues regarding written language, and 2) native-speaking Haitian kreyòl writers were led to pick and choose between the elements that they preferred of the different spelling systems. As a result, today it is very difficult to find two books written in kreyòl by two different people -- or even two books written by the same person but in different time periods -- that promote the same orthography, the same spelling system, the same
"written language".

SLIDE SHOW -- Haitian Creole Orthographical Overview & Text Samples

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR SLIDE SHOW VIEWING: To enter the slide show, click on link above, then once the slide show title page has appeared, click on the link, "Click here to start". The buttons at the top of each slide window operate very much like the controls of a CD player. From left to right, they are: 1) Back to First Slide, 2) Previous Slide, 3) Next Slide, 4) Forward to Last Slide, 5) Back to Slide Show Index, and 6) View Text Version of Slide. When you point to any of the buttons, a read-out of its function appears. Clicking on the forward button advances the slides one at a time. When you get to the last slide, #14, there is a link back to this page. And, in case you are wondering about the purpose of the red highlighted characters within the slide text, they track some of the identifying markers of those particular orthographies and how they differed from Pressoir-Faublas and from each other.

Since the early 1970's, Marilyn Mason has been closely following these trends of Haitian Creole orthography shift and, during the period of 1989-1995, she created an electronic edition of Bib la an Ayisyin (in the Pressoir - Faublas spelling system), as a necessary initial step of having a corpus (that is, an electronic database of text) prepared for testing and training an automated orthography conversion program from other spelling systems to IPN. NOTE: it should be understood from the outset that Ms. Mason was NEVER asked to undertake this research. She was NEVER given such responsibility by the Haitian Bible Society, NOR was her quest funded by the Bible Society or any other organization, NOR are the orthographically converted texts -- which can be accessed from this page -- to be construed to be "an official update" of the Haitian Creole Bible. Ms. Mason undertook all
of this work as her own personal research and at her own expense in order to test whether automated orthography conversion was indeed possible. What was the result?

Marilyn Mason found that automated kreyòl orthography conversion was necessary and possible; but even more than that, she reduced the process to one click of a mouse button. Entire books have been systematically updated to the IPN orthographic rules in just a couple of minutes, and in some cases in a few seconds, and without loss of formatting!

In recent work, Ms. Mason has been facing a reality, however, that plagues all readers, writers, editors and publishers of Haitian Creole: there is orthographic inconsistency (nasalization, spelling, word division, punctuation, capitalization) within texts and between different texts that all claim to follow the "official" spelling system.

What constitutes the "official" IPN of 1979? This spelling reform, implemented in Haiti at the end of the 1970s, was very flexible with regard to writing rules which are beyond the level of the sound of words. Due to this flexibility, it has led to people using different ways to form words with the combinations of the sounds. And since Haitian Creole speakers are writing in a language which is mainly a spoken language, this has multiplied the possibility of inconsistency on such important writing issues. A wide range of variables exists. For example: "ou" or "w"; "ui" or "wi"; "pap" or "p ap" or "pa p"; "konsa" or "kon sa", "poukisa" or "pou ki sa".

CreoleConvert, as a tool to help implement the orthographic and spelling reform decisions that must be made by Haitians, provides an automated process for consistent writing in Haitian Creole. In the current flux of orthography and writing, this tool can be customized
to different document production and/or publishing groups, depending on their specific needs and the requirements of their own clients.

Once Marilyn Mason had applied her orthography converting solution to the Haitian Creole Bible (which she herself had typed into her computer), she knew that the next barrier to break would be to apply that same orthography converting solution to texts she herself had NOT typed.

Marilyn, therefore, began to work on optical character recognition (OCR) issues for scanning Haitian Creole texts. That experimentation led to the creation of a second application, the Haitian Creole version of CreoleScan.

The publications she chose for experimentation with the prototype software solution were: Boukan (edited by Pauris Jn-Baptiste), Jé Nou Louvri (published by Projè Réabilitasyon Riral Jébo, Légliz Métodis, Jérémi, Ayiti), and Chanmòt la (edited by the late Rév. Marco Depestre from Petit-Goâve).

To view these documents, Adobe® Acrobat® Reader must be installed on your computer.
This software is free and can be downloaded at the link below:

The books which can be downloaded below (JenIPN.pdf; EgzIPN.pdf; RitIPN.pdf; EstIPN.pdf; SomIPN.pdf; FilozòfIPN.pdf; JeremiIPN.pdf; JanIPN.pdf; TravIPN.pdf; WomenIPN.pdf; EbreIPN.pdf; RevelasyonIPN.pdf) are samples of Bible books (Genesis; Exodus; Ruth; Esther; Psalms; Ecclesiastes; Jeremiah; John; Acts; Romans; Hebrews; Revelation) which have undergone an automated process called CreoleConvert [developed as MMHCOC (Mason Method for Haitian Creole Orthography Conversion) by Marilyn P. Mason in 1991 and upgraded at regular intervals since then].

The Haitian Bible Society is currently embarked upon an official orthographical updating of Bib la an Ayisyin, but has been kind enough to grant Ms. Mason written permission to "publish freely on the Internet" Bible books which have been subjected to her computer program.

You are hereby permitted to FREELY make copies of these files, print them, and distribute the print-outs. NOTE: THEY ARE NOT TO BE SOLD OR ALTERED! Hope you enjoy this transitional "first-fruit".

(Some of these documents ALSO require that Adobe® Acrobat® Reader be installed on your computer. If you have not already downloaded Adobe® Acrobat® Reader to your computer, do so now by clicking on the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader link above.)

These research results are copyrighted in the name of Marilyn Mason, 1991-2005. You are hereby permitted to download the files listed below in order to analyze them for research purposes. NOTE: THEY ARE NOT TO BE ALTERED, NOR ARE THEY (OR THE RESULTS REPORTED THEREIN) TO BE INCLUDED IN OTHER PUBLICATIONS (INCLUDING RESEARCH PAPERS) WITHOUT PROPER ATTRIBUTION TO MARILYN MASON.

As Founder, President & Chief Operating Officer of Mason Integrated Technologies (MIT2) from 1996-2002, many doors were opened to Marilyn Mason to advocate on behalf of the technological support of Creole languages at the highest levels of governmental and non-governmental agencies, industry, language technology conferences and academia. Creole advocacy, team building, and networking are the lasting legacies of MIT2.

Building upon this past experience, The Creole Clearinghouse (TCC) will, in collaboration
with a network of Creole specialists with whom Marilyn has established a basis of mutual
trust, make use of tools Marilyn created before the birth of MIT2 to improve the consistency
and excellence of materials translated and produced in Creole.

Marilyn P. Mason
The Creole Clearinghouse
P.O. Box 181015
Boston, Massachusetts 02118 U.S.A.

Tel: (+1) 617-247-8885
E-mail: MariLinc@aol.com