Seychellois Creole

File:La Digue - Creole (1).JPG

Sign in Seychellois Creole, La Digue. , meaning 'Please help to keep La Digue clean'.

Seychellois Creole (Template:IPAc-en), also known as Kreol, Seselwa Creole French, and Seselwa Creole is the French-based creole language spoken by the Seychelles Creole people of the Seychelles. It is one of the national languages of the Seychelles.

History

The Seychelles were first settled in 1770, by French settlers from the island of Mauritius. The islands population was mostly made up of slaves with a few whites and free blacks. Over time the Mauritian creole that was spoken by the slave population diverged enough from Mauritian Creole to be considered its own creole separate from Mauritian Creole. It further diverged after the freeing of Seychelles slaves in 1835 and the subsequent influx of Bantu peoples from East Africa to the islands.

49 fables of La Fontaine were adapted to the dialect around 1900 by Rodolphine Young (1860–1932) but these remained unpublished until 1983.

Status

The Seychelles gained independence in 1976 and since 1978 Seychellois Creole has been one of the country's three official languages. It is currently the native language of over 99% of the country's population. Seychellois Creole is the primary language of music, literature, politics, public usage, and mass media in the Seychelles. Though Seychellois literature has been increasingly replaced by English literature.

While Seychellois laws are written in English, the working language of the National Assembly is Creole and the verbatim record of its meetings provides an extensive corpus for its contemporary use in a formal setting.

In 2024, Google announced it would be adding Seychellois Creole to Google Translate; it was added under the name Seselwa Creole French.

Morphology and syntax

Seychellois Creole follows in subject verb object word order.

Pronouns

Pronouns in Seychellois Creole fall into three categories: dependent subject, independent subject, and adnominal possessive, with there being no gender distinctions. dependent pronouns can only be subjects not objects but independent pronouns can be both.

	Dependent	Independent	Adnominal possessive
1st singular
2nd singular
3rd singular
1st plural
2nd plural
3rd plural

Verbs

Verbs in Seychellois Creole take one of two forms, long and short. Short verbs are used when the verb is directly followed by a noun or when an adverb is present and the long verbs being used otherwise.

Long vs Short verbs

Long Verb	Short Verb

Causative voice are marked by the word ('make') while reflexive voice is marked with either the express lack of a marking; or the words , , and .

Dialects

There is some variation in the language spoken in the Seychelles based on geography with limited differences in morphosyntax and lexicon, but not enough to speak of separate dialects. The only distinct non-standard dialect of Seychellois Creole is Chagossian Creole spoken by Chagossians in the United Kingdom, Mauritius, and the Seychelles.

Lexicon

In several Seychellois Creole words derived from French, the French definite article (, and ) has become part of the word; for example, 'future' is (Template:Langx). The possessive is the same as the pronoun, so that 'our future' is . Similarly in the plural, in French ('the Outer Seychelles Islands') has become in Creole. Note the in  — in French, is pronounced , with liaison.

Language	Word
Creole
French (IPA)
French
Translation	we		all	need	to	work	together	to	create	our	future
Gloss	we	have	all	need	to	work	together	for	create	our	future

Loanwords

Percentages of loanwords from different languages in different word types

	English	French	Eastern Bantu	Malagasy	Indian Languages	Portuguese	Can languages	Chinese	Arabic	Unknown	Total Loanwords	Non loanwords
Nouns	5.6%	2.6%	2%	1.3%	0.9%	0.7%	0.3%	0.1%	0.1%	1.1%	14.6%	85.4%
Verbs	2.4%	0.2%	0.2%	0.8%			0.2%			0.2%	4.1%	95.9%
Adjectives	2.2%		1.6%	1.4%	2.2%						7.3%	92.7%
Adverbs											0%	100%
Function Words				0.9%							0.9%	99.1%
total	4.2%	1.6%	1.4%	1.2%	0.9%	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.7%	10.7%	89.3%

Among loanwords in Seychellois Creole they have different frequencies words for the modern world, warfare/hunting, food and drink, animals, and the home show loanword rates over 10 percent. while words relating to cognition, emotions, social and political relationships, and the physical world show no loanwords.

Samples

(Lord's Prayer)

References

• Annegret Bollée. 1977a. Le créole français des Seychelles: Esquisse d’une grammaire, textes, vocabulaire. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
• D'Offay, Danielle & Lionnet, Guy, Diksyonner Kreol - Franse / Dictionnaire Créole Seychellois - Français. Helmut Buske Verlag, Hamburg. 1982. Template:ISBN.

External links

• Seychelles Creole Vocabulary List (from the World Loanword Database)
• Seychelles Creole Magazine (Discover the Creole Culture)
• Liv Servis online triglot text in English, French and Seychellois Creole digitized by Richard Mammana
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Seychellois Creole

Template:Languages of Seychelles Template:Gallo-Romance languages and dialects {{#related:Languages of Seychelles}} {{#related:English River, Seychelles}} {{#related:History of Seychelles}}