Michel Frederic DeGraff is a Haitian
creolist
A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...
who has served on the board of the ''Journal of Haitian Studies''.
He is a tenured professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
and a founding member of the
Haitian Creole Academy.
His field of scholarship is
Creole language
A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...
, also known as ''Lang Kreyòl'' Linguistics.
He is known for his advocacy towards the recognition of
Haitian Creole as a full-fledged language.
In the fall of 2012, he received a $1 million grant from the
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
to introduce online Creole language materials in the teaching of
STEM in Haiti.
He believes that Haitian children should be taught in their native language at all levels of instruction, contrary to the tradition of teaching them in French.
Degraff believes that instruction in French, a foreign language for most Haitian children, hinders their creativity and their ability to excel.
Early life
As a child growing up in a middle-class Haitian family and attending a top school where the instruction was in
French, Degraff reports that despite being a top student, he often felt that French was a hindrance as not speaking it well caused complexes of inferiority among otherwise bright children.
He remembers believing that he spoke one and a half languages,
Haitian Creole being the "half", when in fact the language that all children spoke well by default was Creole.
He recalls that French, although imposed at home and at school, was never used for jokes or on the soccer field.
Education
Dr. DeGraff holds a PhD in computer science from the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
.
Prior to his PhD, he studied computer science at
City College of New York.
He arrived at City College from Haiti in 1982.
He developed an interest in linguistics during an internship at
Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...
in
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
in 1985.
Work in Haiti
Dr. Degraff currently works with introducing ICT to Haitian children being instructed in Creole at the Matènwa school in La Gonâve. The children are encouraged to use Google Translate to read what is available on the web in languages other than Creole. With a National Science Foundation grant, he is also using computer games in Creole to teach them math skills.
See also
*
Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen
References
External links
Platfòm MIT-AyitiOpen access repository of Creole teaching materials
Official Website
Living people
Haitian academics
Linguists from Haiti
Linguists of pidgins and creoles
City College of New York alumni
University of Pennsylvania alumni
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty
Computational linguistics
1963 births
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