This message is dedicated to my fellow
Francophiles

who get alarmed or even offended at the
thought of eliminating French

as one of the official languages of the
Republic of Haiti.

I am speaking today as a Haitian who is

truly madly in love with the French
language.

I confess that my fascination and my respect for not only
the richness

of the language but equally for those who
master it without boundaries.

However, these days, I reject the French
language.

I look down on it as much as some of my
fellow Haitians

look down on the Creole language.

Therefore, I have a lot of trouble expressing
myself in French.

Some may even say that I'm losing my
French.

I think it is sad how Haitians always think
they are able to lose something

that in no way and at no point in time
belonged to them.

I say all that and still today I'm pushing to
deliver this message in French.

It's because I'm addressing those of us who
would have a hard time

taking me seriously if I had chosen to
share my ideas in my native language.

I want you to understand the damage you
are causing to your country,

to be fully concious of this damage and I
hope I'll manage to do that, in French.

What I observed especially from the
Haitians living in Haiti is that

French isn't a tool for communication that
facilitates and allows the exchange of ideas,

the passing of customs and culture or the
expression of convictions.

On the contrary, this languages diminishes the most
remarkable and precious aspects

of the human experience from us, which is
conversation.

French has become nothing more than one
more way

to segregate the Haitian population.

To be able to tell from the get-go who
deserves your good manners

and who you will snub, who you will barter
with, and who you will charge double.

So it really doesn't help us to communicate properly.

I've also witnessed the mistreatment
Haitians receive in Haiti

simply because they cannot speak
French; a colonial language,

a language that we don't even teach to
most of our people,

a language that is so foreign to us,

a language that despite the fact that it
has dominated our educational system

for over two centuries is still lost among
our people who are far from mastering it.

So that is rather deplorable.

I remember well that in Haiti, 
French was reserved for the formalities of meeting for the first time.

It was the initial move to 
affirm one's social class.

And to identify at which level a relationship 
could evolve between two people

And it was not a language that
was used in familiar settings

or with those that we were close with

There is a very restricted group of
people in Haiti who insist on

always speaking the French language,
but we consider those people to be

pretentious and full of it

and often, their conversations remain
very superficial

and because of that, they struggle
to maintain relationships with people

outside of that very restricted circle.

So to say that French is an official language of the Haitians would be a huge exaggeration.

What I can tell you is,
the percentage of Haitians that are able

to easily and clearly express themselves
in french is probably less than those

who can fluently speak German or Mandarin.

Of course, there are Haitians in the
french diaspora like in France and Canada

They speak french because that is the
language they speak in those countries.

It's like me, I speak English and English
has become my first language

Because I am obligated to speak well in
English in the United States.

But to say that Haitians speak French,
again, is completely false.

What also happens in Haiti, is
that we substitute someone's ability

to read a few phrases in French with their
intelligence or wisdom.

We attribute the ability to get by in 
French as wisdom

and now there are a lot of Haitians who
fall into this trap because they

kill themselves trying to learn French and
imitate the "elite" pretentious

francophones of Haiti.

And they completely lose because
not only, are they not able to acquire

the french language, but they're not fully
able to develop Creole which is their

native language.

So what happens is we end up with a
population that is not able to properly

express themselves.

And Creole loses in its vocabulary and
is constantly blocked by a stigma of

inferiority.

So it's quite a bummer.

If you have the intention to not agree
with what I'm saying, consider

that to truly acquire a language,
you need to really learn it in advanced

classes, or even further in college
to really be able to manipulate a language

enough to be able to fully express your
ideas and to be understood.

In Haiti, the majority of students do not make
it past elementary courses.

And even if we obtain a High School
Diploma in Haiti, it's not a very

robust diploma.

So the ability of Haitians to really
express themselves in this forced language

becomes very minimized.

So what I want to tell you and leave
you all with this message is,

think about communicating, think about
sharing your ideas.

What you say is far more important than
the language you are using.

We have to remind ourselves that
each time we talk to someone in Haiti

or another Haitian, we really need to think
about how what we say is what we say is

what's really important.