Seychellois Creole


Seychellois Creole, 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49 fables of La Fontaine were adapted to the dialect around 1900 by Rodolphine Young but these remained unpublished until 1983.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.
DependentIndependentAdnominal possessive
1st singularmonmwanmon
2nd singularououou
3rd singularilison
1st pluralnounounou
2nd pluralzotzotzot
3rd pluralzotzotzot

Verbs

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 or when an adverb is present and the long verbs being used otherwise.
Long VerbShort Verb
retourn-enretourn
donn-endonn
sant-esant

Causative voice are marked by the word fer while reflexive voice is marked with either the express lack of a marking; or the words li, mekor, and limenm.

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 has become part of the word; for example, 'future' is lavenir. 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 has become Zil Elwanyen Sesel in Creole. Note the z in Zil — in French, les Îles is pronounced, with liaison.

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.