Haitian Creole dictionary, Interlingua, Indo-European and other things

Fotografi DVD syantifik yo mete sou wobo an pou misyon nan fiti yo; moun yo ap twouve anndan l tout istwa nou konnen anlè planèt mas. Source

On scribd.com I just noticed there's a Haitian Creole - English dictionary of almost 200 pages, which comes from the page here on Haiti and Haitian Creole.

For purposes of comparison it would be nice to see a Haitian Creole - English - French - Interlingua dictionary someday. It would look something like this:

Haitian	English	French	Interlingua
egzak	exact	exact	exacte
egzale	exhale	exhaler	exhalar
egzamen	quiz, test	examen	examine
egzamine	examine, view	examiner	examinar
egzan	exempt	exempt	exempte
egzanp	example	exemple	exemplo
egzanplè	exemplary	exemplaire	exemplar
lajan	currency	argent	moneta (argento)
lakou	yard	cour	corte

It's a pity though that Haiti is economically so bad off because it's very close to the United States and were it better off it would be able to serve as a place to practice one's French (and Creole) by those that live in the area (Mexico too), hate the cold of Quebec in the winter, and/or don't have the funds to live there for a space of months at a time. The Independent today has an article though on Haiti's tiny foray into the world of tourism again:

Remarkably Haiti might just be finding its way back onto the map. Rising world food prices have hit the people harder than in most countries. And Haiti is still subject to those "don't go there unless you're nuts" government advisories, but they're led by US State Separtment concerns about kidnapped Americans – almost all of whom are, in fact, Haitian-Americans. Tourists have not been targets. The turnaround began with UN intervention in 2004. To general Haitian acclaim the Brazilian personnel who led the UN forces tended to shoot first and check which gang the bodies had belonged to afterwards. As a result law and order soon returned

Haiti is often not a very pretty place. The shocking deforestation which has gone hand in hand with the country's descent to "poorest country in the western hemisphere" status means it can look dusty and impoverished. The roads are potholed and battered; the infrastructure is limited; but there's also exuberant colour, some amazing sights, music to rival nearby Cuba, and it's certainly not overrun by tourists.

I also wrote a few days ago about another article mentioning how New York plans to have foreign language service available in Haitian Creole among other languages.

Back to scribd.com: there's quite a bit of good content there that generally isn't picked up all that well by Google, so you might want to give it a look to see what you can find there that a regular search won't turn up. Here's Moby Dick in French for example. I noticed also that the people at dnghu.org have had their Indo-European grammar up there for a year now. If the project succeeds it'll be in part because of how tech savvy they are. Since uploading it there it's had over 4000 views, which perhaps isn't that much over a year but still, it's 4000 more views than would have been had without being uploaded to that site as well. Any blogger or site owner could also embed the grammar into their site whenever they want.

Oh, and if you know Portuguese you can learn Biblical Greek for free too.