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Seychellois Creole
.JPG) Seychellois Creole (/seɪˈʃɛlwɑː/), 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 shares national language status with English and French (in contrast to Mauritian and Réunion Creole, which lack official status in Mauritius and France). HistoryThe 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.[2] 49 fables of La Fontaine were adapted to the dialect around 1900 by Rodolphine Young (1860–1932) but these remained unpublished until 1983.[3] StatusThe Seychelles gained independence in 1976 and since 1978 Seychellois Creole has been one of the country's three official languages.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.[2] 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.[4] 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.[5] On June 27th 2024 Google announced it would be adding Seychellois Creole to Google Translate. Later Seychellois Creole was added under the name Seselwa Creole French.[6] Morphology and syntaxSeychellois Creole follows in subject verb object word order.[2] PronounsPronouns 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.[2]
VerbsVerbs 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.[2]
Causative voice are marked by the word fer (make) while Reflexive voice is marked with either the express lack of a marking; or the words li, mekor, and limenm.[2] DialectsThere 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.[4] The only distinct non-standard dialect of Seychellois Creole is Chagossian Creole spoken by Chagossians in the United Kingdom, Mauritius, and the Seychelles.[7] LexiconIn several Seychellois Creole words derived from French, the French definite article (le, la and les) has become part of the word; for example, 'future' is lavenir (French l'avenir). The possessive is the same as the pronoun, so that 'our future' is nou lavenir. Similarly in the plural, les Îles Éloignées Seychelles in French ('the Outer Seychelles Islands') has become Zil Elwanyen Sesel in Creole. Note the z in Zil, as, in French, les Îles is pronounced /le.z‿il/.
Loanwords
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.[8] Samples
Notes
References
External links For a list of words relating to Seychellois Creole, see the Seychellois Creole language category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.  Wikivoyage has a phrasebook for Seychellois Creole.
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