Fifty years of quarrelling over how to spell Haitian Creole turn out to be quarrels about who Haitians are. Schieffelin and Charlier Doucet show that the technical dispute, above all over whether the front rounded vowels belong in the writing system, maps onto social distinctions speakers already mark with labels such as kreyol fransize and kreyol rek. A spelling that looks French flatters the small bilingual elite and the literate tradition attached to it; one that looks visibly unlike French asserts a separate language with its own grammar and an African substrate. Acceptance of a writing system turns on political and social judgement, which makes these debates an unusually clear view onto rival ideas of nationhood. The evidence is drawn from public argument in Haiti, the history of writing the language up to the official 1980 system, and comparison with other French Creole territories.