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Republic of Mauritius (Mauritian Africa) is the Motherland of Creole Language spoken around the World. Living in Mauritius - At home with Creole

L'Express (Port Louis)

NEWS

June 20, 2006

Posted to the web June 20, 2006

By Angela Keessoondyal

Port Louis

No one is sure exactly when it happens, but after the meeting porcelain has been collected, corporate Mauritians, masters of linguistic osmosis with their eloquent French and English, throw off the powdered wigs of formality and "get down" in Creole.

It's the language that binds Mauritians, so to speak, and it is uniquely theirs, no matter what linguists say. Over 71% of the Mauritian population considered Creole as their "mother tongue" according to the 2000 census and it has grown since then. And it's not to be confused with a dialect either. Creole is a language based on two parent languages, but it has so many distinctive features that haven't been inherited from either parent language. A dialect is something that develops from only one language, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

While we won't argue that Mauritians truly own their unique Creole it is interesting to note that "Creole" comes from the Portuguese word "to raise" and was used in colonial times to differentiate between the new generation of people born in the colonies of European immigrants and the original colony natives.

While many of the French-based Creole languages spoken are well known, for example, the Creole spoken in Mauritius, Reunion, Seychelles and the Caribbean islands of Antilles, Haiti, Brazil, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Dominica and St. Lucia, there exists an even larger world of Creole that you may not be aware of!

Creole languages exist all over the world, each varying vocabulary based on the English, German, Arabic, Dutch, French, Malaysian, Ngbandi, Portuguese and Spanish languages. Consider the English-based kamtok Creole spoken in Cameroon for example: the word afdai is made up of the English words "half" and "die". It means difficult. The word driai is made up of "dry" and "eye". It means courage. The word puthan is made up of "put" and "hands". It means help.

Other English Creoles are found in the US coastal regions of South Carolina, Georgia and North Florida. Traces are also spoken in Jamaica and natives in Panama and Costa Rica speak a Creole similar to that spoken in Belize, Bahamas, Sierra Leone, Grenada and St. Vincent.

Closer to home, some 10,000 aboriginal Australians still speak their own Creole based on English! German Creole called Unserdeutsch (meaning our German), spoken by the Papua New Guinean and North Eastern Australian children of a German-run orphanage still has some 115 people speaking this language. A simple sentence translated:

English: "I will tell you later, I haven't read it yet."

Today's German: "Ich wird nich nachher sagen, ich habe es nicht gelesen."

Unserdeutsch: "I wird sage du nachher, i hat ni gelesen."

Arabian Creoles such as Nubi, are spoken by descendants of Sudanese soldiers mainly in Kenya and Uganda. And Juba Arabic is spoken in Equatoria (Southern Sudan) and Babalia Creole is spoken in South Western Chad.

Dutch-based Creoles still exist in Guyana, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Indonesia, whereas the Mohawk Dutch Creole once used in the U.S., like Jersey Dutch and Albany Dutch, are now extinct. The islands of Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao and Suriname still speak a Dutch Creole.

Hawaiian Creole has remained an interesting mix of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese and Hawaiian. Venetian Italian, spoken by the inhabitants of the picturesque waterways of Venice is considered to be an Italian Creole!

The main thing about Creole, no matter what linguistic base it has, is that it is precious and unique and makes wherever you are "home".