Every Haitian Creole and Spanish word on this list have the same definitions, although they may not be spelt the exact same way, they at least have similar pronunciations from one another. This is usually because the French-based Creole and Spanish share similar words from previous descended languages.
Something I did to make this post unique was that I made sure that the Creole and Spanish equivalent of the word did NOT comparably resemble the word in English. (Ex. dola, dólar, dollar, or nimewo, número, number) — That list is for another time.
All numbered words contain footnote comments located below!
| Haitian Creole | Spanish | English |
|---|---|---|
| di 1 | decir 1 | to say |
| lave | lavar | to wash |
| lakay 2 | la casa 2 | house |
| mal, malad 3 | mal, malo 3 | bad, ill |
| fasil | fácil | easy 4 |
| men | mano | hand |
| plat | plano | flat |
| manton an | la mentón | chin |
| kouri 5 | correr 5 | to run |
| vini | venir | to come |
| travay | trabajar | to work |
| konprann | comprender | to understand |
| li | leer | to read |
| premye | primer | first |
| si 6 | si 6 | if |
| dòmi | dormir | to sleep |
1 ‘di’ and ‘decir’ are very easily to click towards for speakers of both languages.
“¿Cómo dices esto?” and “Koman ou di sa?” both translate to: How do you say this?
2 ‘lakay’ and ‘la casa’ both are almost pronounced alike.
3 ‘mal’ in both Creole and Spanish mean bad, or wrong. Meanwhile, ‘malad’ and ‘malo’/’mala‘ mean to sick or ill.
4 ‘facile’ is also a word in English derived from the same Latin roots. But I rarely ever hear the word in English, so i’ll just use the more popular word of the two which is unanimously: ‘easy’
5 The pronunciation difference for ‘kouri’ and ‘correr’ may be a bit of a stretch due to the distinctive trill of Spanish’s double R (“rrrrr”) and Haitian Creole’s particularly soft R (phonetic symbol of … ɣ or /ɰ/). But I still found the distinction close enough to add it to this list. I recommended this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eacLGstVSBY from Learn Haitian Creole w/ Fè to learn more.
6 Crazy to think that two languages have a word that is spelt exactly the same and means exactly the same thing? ‘If’ in Spanish can also translate to ‘a ser’ or ‘cuando’ in some cases.
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