Brian Stevens                                                     . 

Haitian Times Staff                                           .

    NEW YORK -  A Long Island Haitian man has compiled a Creole to Creole dictionary meant to aide fellow countrymen and Creole speakers unsure of the written form of easily spoken words and phrases they sprinkle liberally throughout their daily conversation.

   “I wouldn’t call it a complete dictionary because it’s a work of one person,” said a modest if not practical Wilson Louis Elias, who created the 2500-word Dictionary exclusively for distribution on CD-ROM. 

    Louis Elias, a full-time New York State Department of Taxation accountant, spent a year jotting down “must include” words on scraps of paper and anything else he could get his hands on.

    All the while, the 33-year-old writer and self-described Creole advocated scoured English and French language dictionaries for ideas on what pivotal words must not be left out of his first-time endeavor.

     “I never saw one Creole to Creole dictionary,” said Louis-Elias, who sees his effort as part of a larger puzzle in what may be the first dictionary of its kind.

     Throughout Haiti’s recent past and up to today, Creole role and usage in society has often been charged with social and political overtones as the country struggled down the difficult road toward a more just and democratic setting.

    With the writing of 1987 Constitution, Creole took its place as an official language of Haiti since has begun to appear on government-issued documents like passport throughout Haiti.  But the drive to put Creole on an equal footing with French, for centuries the country’s only official language, is still met with some opposition.

“When a Haitian speaks French to me I respond in Creole,” Louis-Elias said, adding, “I know it’s rude, but I do it for the sake of the language.”

    The amateur author and novice dictionary writer also admitted to a personal interest in pushing Creole.  He has written two as yet unpublished Creole-language books, the latest titled “Yon Lavi Nan Shashe Konnen,” that is the story of the experiences of a young man as he traverses the corners of Haiti.

    “If we want a language to succeed we need to teach it, we need to write it, we need to take on new dimensions in it,” said Louis-Elias, who will present the fruit of his year’s worth of dictionary labor at the third annual Montreal International Creole Day Celebration on October 28.

     Pierre Roland Bain is coordinating the conference that will include more than 20 presenters like Louis-Elias spread across a 10-hour day.

“Creole is the true liberation,” Bain said.  “With this language Haitian can truly understand the world around them.”

     The conference has the dual role of promoting Creole worldwide and literacy in Haiti, and organizers hope hearing from presenters like Louis-Elias will push the Creole envelope even further.

    “We know some of his concepts will be seen by many for the first time and they will ask questions and they will challenge, but that is what this days is all about,” Bain said.

     Last year saw 300 attendees, and this year Bain believes that number may double, based largely on what he called an emerging recognition among many Haitians “that the International Creole Day celebration is their day.”

     The day’s keynote speaker will be Marilyn Mason, an American with a long history of study in Creole who has developed ground breaking computer software that translate old spelling of Creole to new more modern versions. “Her work furthers the marriage between Creole and new technologies,” Bain said.

     One of the longest running regular sources of Creole text for Louis-Elias as a young man was the ever-popular monthly journal “Bon Nouvel,” a mixture of news and commentary distributed free at his Roman Catholic parish.

     “Bon Nouvel was an inspiration to me,” said Louis-Elias who characterized his French-language studies as a young man in school as jumbled and confusing to a student who spoke Creole on the street outside school only to encounter the foreign language inside his classroom.

    But as Haiti and the world enter the 21 century, Louis-Elias pointed to Creole’s emergence in the classroom of his homeland and here in the United States at schools like the City University of New York’s Medgar Evers College and the University of Florida, as hopeful signs for the language’s future.

     He also noted the recent addition by Ministry of Education officials in Port-au-Prince who used Creole in a state baccalaureate exam.

     But being the young language that it is, Creole often finds itself embroiled in controversy over spelling and usage even among those who share the same goal of promoting the language.

     One new concept in Louis-Elias’ dictionary sure to raise eyebrows is his decision to replace “ch” in words like “cheche” (meaning to get or look for) with “sh” that would turn the word into “shashe.”

     And as he put himself out in the forefront, Louis-Elias, a native of Maissade in Haiti’s Central Plateau region, said he is ready for what criticism lies ahead.

     “No one criticizes me more than myself,” he said.  “If you want a language to grow and thrive, you have to accept criticism, analyze it and make something good out of it.”

    Conference organizer Bain believes works like that of Louis-Elias definitively demonstrates Creole has all the elements necessary to take its place on the world stage as an international language."

“There is still much to be done,” Bain said of the work of Louis-Elias and his fellow Creolists, “but we are thrilled with his efforts.”