The language emerged from contact between French settlers and enslaved Africans during the Atlantic slave trade in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). Although its vocabulary is mostly taken from 18th-century French, it also has influences from Spanish, Portuguese, Taino, English and West African languages It is not mutually intelligible with standard French and has its own distinctive grammar. Haitians are the largest community in the world speaking a modern creole language.