Merico or Americo-Liberian (or the informal colloquial name "American") is an
English-based creole language
An English-based creole language (often shortened to English creole) is a creole language for which English was the '' lexifier'', meaning that at the time of its formation the vocabulary of English served as the basis for the majority of the cr ...
spoken until recently in
Liberia
Liberia (), officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to its northwest, Guinea to its north, Ivory Coast to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean to its south and southwest. It ...
by
Americo-Liberians
Americo-Liberian people or Congo people or Congau people in Liberian English,Cooper, Helene, ''The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood'' (United States: Simon and Schuster, 2008), p. 6 are a Liberian ethnic group of Afr ...
, descendants of original settlers, freed slaves, and
African Americans who emigrated from the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...
between 1821 and the 1870s. It is distinguished from
Liberian Kreyol
Liberian Kreyol is an Atlantic English-lexicon creole language spoken in Liberia.[Liberian English](_blank) and from
Kru, and may be connected to
Gullah
The Gullah () are an African American ethnic group who predominantly live in the Lowcountry region of the U.S. states of Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, within the coastal plain and the Sea Islands. Their language and cul ...
and
Jamaican Creole
Jamaican Patois (; locally rendered Patwah and called Jamaican Creole by linguists) is an English-based creole language with West African influences, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican diaspora. A majority of the non-English wo ...
.
The original settlers numbered 19,000 in 1860.
By 1975 the language was partly
decreolized, restricted to informal settings.
Grammatical features
Plurals are unmarked, as in "rock", "rocks", or marked with a
suffix, as in "rocks". The
verb expressing "to be" is , as in "she is small", but adjectives may be used without it, as in "he is big". Verbs are not inflected for past tense.
Separate particles are used to indicate some verb tenses:
* for negation ( "I didn't ask the child"),
* or for continuing action ( "he is talking at great length", "she is crying"),
* for future ( "we will come"),
* or for completed action ( "they have gone that way", "not a little piece was left")
The pronouns include:
* Subject: /, //, /, , , /
* Object: , , /, , /, '
* Possessive: /, /, /, /, ,
See also
*
Krio language
Sierra Leonean Creole or Krio is an English-based creole language that is lingua franca and de facto national language spoken throughout the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Krio is spoken by 96 percent of the country's population, and it u ...
References
Americo-Liberian people
English-based pidgins and creoles of Africa
Languages of Liberia
Languages attested from the 19th century
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