Rather than reinvent the wheel, Wikepedia has a great article on Haitian Creole which gives a good background and introduction to the language. Important notes are that Haitian Creole, as other creole and pidgin languages, are a conglomeration of other languages that become more of less fixed in their structure sometime along the mixing. Haitian Creole is a pidgin language unique to the country of Haiti due to its specific history and influencing cultures. To sum up Haitian history in a very small nutshell, Haiti is on the western half of the island of Hispaniola, originally a holding of Spain, the island was split into western and eastern colonies held by the French (Haiti) and Spain (Dominican Republic) respectively. The French imported African slaves from many different tribes and areas of Africa with the hope they would be unable to communicate and stage any type of uprising. To make a very long story short, these languages along with a large influence from the national French language, combined to create a language of the masses which we now know as Haitian Creole.

Haiti has two national languages, French and Haitian Creole. French is more or less the language of the higher class and educated populus while Creole is the language of the majority of the population, lower classes, and uneducated. For many of these reasons there aren’t a lot of resources available to learn Haitian Creole, and it’s structure and vocabulary are more susceptible to changes.