Haiti has two official languages: Creole and French. They are mutually comprehensible to some extent, but Creole has a different grammar structure and influences from various languages, and is the language mostly spoken at home and in informal settings, while French is the language of commerce, business and education. Creole is a special type of language that starts when speakers of a language adopt a simplified version of another language, often in the context of conquest. This simplified language, called “pidgin”, becomes a “creole” when it establishes grammar rules of its own and is spoken and taught as a native language to children. Haitian Creole is in fact originally based on French.