Seychellois Creole (), also known as Kreol, Seselwa Creole French, and Seselwa Creole is the

French-based creole language A French creole, or French-based creole language, is a creole for which French is the lexifier. Most often this lexifier is not modern French but rather a 17th- or 18th-century koiné of French from Paris, the French Atlantic harbors, and the ...

spoken by the Seychelles Creole people of the

Seychelles Seychelles (, ; ), officially the Republic of Seychelles (; Seychellois Creole: ), is an island country and archipelagic state consisting of 155 islands (as per the Constitution) in the Indian Ocean. Its capital and largest city, Victoria, ...

. It is one of the

national languages '' '' A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection— de facto or de jure—with a nation. The term is applied quite differently in various contexts. One or more languages spoken as first languag ...

of the

History

The Seychelles were first settled in 1770, by French settlers from the island of

Mauritius Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, about off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar. It includes the main island (also called Mauritius), as well as Rodrigues, Ag ...

. 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 The Bantu peoples are an Indigenous peoples of Africa, indigenous ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct native Demographics of Africa, African List of ethnic groups of Africa, ethnic groups who speak Bantu languages. The language ...

from

East Africa East Africa, also known as Eastern Africa or the East of Africa, is a region at the eastern edge of the Africa, African continent, distinguished by its unique geographical, historical, and cultural landscape. Defined in varying scopes, the regi ...

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49 fables of La Fontaine were adapted to the dialect around 1900 by Rodolphine Young (1860–1932) but these remained unpublished until 1983.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 Mass media include the diverse arrays of media that reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit information electronically via media such as films, radio, recorded music, or television. Digital media comprises b ...

in the Seychelles. Though Seychellois literature has been increasingly replaced by

English literature English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world. The English language has developed over more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian languages, Anglo-Frisian d ...

. While Seychellois laws are written in English, the working language of the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repr ...

is Creole and the verbatim record of its meetings provides an extensive corpus for its contemporary use in a formal setting. In 2024,

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

announced it would be adding Seychellois Creole to

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingualism, multilingual neural machine translation, neural machine translation service developed by Google to translation, translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a web applic ...

; 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.

Verbs

Verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

s in Seychellois Creole take one of two forms, long and short. Short verbs are used when the verb is directly followed by a

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

or when an

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ...

is present and the long verbs being used otherwise.

Causative In linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound produ ...

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

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

s. The only distinct non-standard dialect of Seychellois Creole is Chagossian Creole spoken by

Chagossians The Chagossians — also called Chagos Islanders or — are an Afro-Asians, Afro-Asian ethnic group originating from freed African slaves as well as people of Asian (Indian and Malay) descent brought to the Chagos Islands, specifically Diego ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, Mauritius, and the Seychelles.

Lexicon

In several Seychellois Creole words derived from French, the French

definite article In grammar, an article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" ...

(, and ) has become part of the word; for example, 'future' is (). 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 Liaison or Liaisons may refer to: General usage * Affair, an unfaithful sexual relationship * Collaboration * Co-operation * Liaison, an egg-based thickening used in cooking Arts and entertainment * Liaisons (''Desperate Housewives''), a 2007 ...

Loanwords

Among

loanwords A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

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 The Lord's Prayer, also known by its incipit Our Father (, ), is a central Christian prayer attributed to Jesus. It contains petitions to God focused on God’s holiness, will, and kingdom, as well as human needs, with variations across manusc ...

)

Notes

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. .

External links

Seychelles Creole Vocabulary List
(from the World Loanword Database)
Seychelles Creole Magazine (Discover the Creole Culture)
online triglot text in English, French and Seychellois Creole digitized by Richard Mammana
Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Seychellois Creole
{{#related:History of Seychelles Languages of Seychelles French-based pidgins and creoles French language in Africa Subject–verb–object languages