These are a few of my favorite things...

...that Haitians say. I've said before here that Haitian Creole has a lot of colorful expressions, perhaps to offset the utter simplicity of the grammar and vocabulary. Here's some of the more interesting expressions I've learned in the last few weeks:

Tèt nèg
Literally, it means a black man's head. In normal conversation, it's used to describe something that's expensive. If Haiti had Starbucks, you'd probably hear someone say "You're getting a frappuccino?! Those things are a black man's head!" The expression probably goes back well over two hundred years, to the days of slavery, when saying that something cost as much as a human being may have been shorthand for "it ain't cheap."

Radyo trant-de
Or, Radio 32. It's another way of saying "the grapevine." Why number 32? Because there's 32 teeth in most people's mouths. "What? Those two hooked up? That's crazy! Where did you hear that?" "Oh, you know, Radio 32!" I don't know if I've ever seen people that love talking as much as Haitians, which of course means that they're also terrific gossips. I can attest to this by the fact that I've heard at least 4 other expressions for "the grapevine" in addition to Radio 32.

Bèt
A friend of mine, a Haitian journalist, was recently in Geneva for a human rights seminar. When he got back I called him up and asked how it was. He replied. "Li te vreman enteresan. Te gen anpil bet la." Translation: "It was really interesting. There were a bunch of animals there." Huh? I got off the phone with him and asked one of my coworkers about it. He just laughed and said, that's a way of saying a lot of useful information was shared. "Bèt" comes from the same latin word that gives us "beast" in English. Here, it refers to any animal. Insects are called "ti bèt," or little beasts. But in the context of a classroom, a seminar, or a long conversation with a wise person, when you say that there were animals there, or that a person had a bunch of animals, or that you gained a bunch of animals, you're saying that you learned a lot. This has become one of my favorite sayings; my theory is that it reflects how much Haitians value knowledge. Since animals are a form of wealth for most Haitians, it means that learning something new is like someone handing you a nice fat pig. But that's just my theory.

Depi berejenn goumen ak konkonmb
This one is rare, and it makes absolutely no sense to me. When something has been a certain way for a long time, Creole has a couple ways of remarking on it. You can say "se konsa", or "that's how it is." You can say "it's been like that since the king was a colonel," which has a nice ring to it, even in English. Or you can say "se konsa depi berejenn goumen ak konkonmb." Which means, literally, "it's been like that since eggplant fought with cucumber." I've asked people to explain this to me, and so far everyone is at a complete loss. Of course, those are some of the best expressions, the ones that nobody can figure out, though we go on using them, like habits we don't remember picking up.

Sa ki pa touye w, li angrese w
"What doesn't kill you makes you fatter." I'm not sure if this means the same as, or the polar opposite from "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." It could go either way.