Mauritian Creole

History

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to visit Mauritius, but they did not settle there. Only a small portion of Mauritian vocabulary derives from the Portuguese element in European maritime jargon (e.g., the Mediterranean Lingua Franca) or from enslaved Africans or Asians who came from areas in which Portuguese was used as a trade language (e.g., Angola and Mozambique). Similarly, the Dutch had a colony on Mauritius from 1638 to 1710, but ultimately evacuated to Réunion. A few runaway slaves remained, leaving no discernible impact on the Mauritian language.

The French ultimately claimed Mauritius and first settled it from 1715 to 1721, building a plantation economy based on slave labour. People from West and Southeast Africa came to form 85% of the population by 1777, which led to linguistic fragmentation. The size of the native French settler population on the island remained small and the enslaved population lacked formal education. The common language that developed was based on French, but a dialect that differed greatly from the language spoken by the slave owners. Mechanistically, this was similar to the process of creolization in other parts of the world. The pidgin language used for daily communication by people from varying linguistic backgrounds eventually became the native language of children born in these communities. Eventually, this evolved into a creole language, with the complexity and completeness required for young children to use it as their mother tongue. Historical documents from as early as 1773 note the "creole language" that the slaves spoke.

The British took over Mauritius during the Napoleonic era, but few native English speakers ever settled there. Mauritian Creole had already been firmly entrenched and continued to be the language used after British occupation began.

The abolition of slavery in the 1830s made many Africans leave the plantations. Indentured workers from India were brought to replace the freed slaves. The widely variable linguistic background of these immigrants mirrored that of the African slaves before them; therefore, no native language was dominant enough to become the basis for a shared language. Though Indians soon became the majority population on the island, their own linguistic fragmentation, as well as their alienation from the English- and French-speaking plantation owners, led them to take up Mauritian Creole as their lingua franca.

The native English and French population have long enjoyed greater social status, in addition to dominating government, business, education, and the media; however, Mauritian Creole's popularity in most informal domains has persisted, with around 85% of the population speaking this language.

Phonology

The phonology of Mauritian Creole is very similar to that of Standard French. However, French and have respectively depalatalised to and in Mauritian, and the front vowels and have respectively been unrounded to and .

The consonant /t/ and /d/ undergoes palatalisation when it occurs before the vowel /i/. This process causes the /t/ and /d/ to sound more like /tɕ/ and /dʑ/. The word tifi (meaning girl) would be more pronounced as tɕifi, rather than tifi.

Orthography

The language has several published dictionaries, both monolingual and bilingual, written by authors such as Philip Baker (1987) and Arnaud Carpooran (2005, 2009, 2011). The number of publications is increasing steadily; however, the orthographies used in them are significantly different.

The Mauritian government began supporting an orthographic reform in 2011, with a system that generally follows French but eliminates silent letters and reduces the number of different ways in which the same sound can be written. It was codified in the Lortograf Kreol Morisien (2011) and used in the Gramer Kreol Morisien (2012) as well. The language became standard upon the publication of the second edition of the Diksioner Morisien.

Sample vocabulary

Numbers

Examples shown are in Mauritian Creole and French only.

Pronouns

Examples shown are in English, Mauritian Creole and French.

• *pl means plural
• *obj means object

Interrogative pronouns

Directions

Tamil loanwords

Altered French words

Most words in Mauritian Creole can be found in French, but some have altered meaning or is considered literary in French whilst in Mauritian Creole, it is still common or somewhat used.

English vocabulary

Some vocabulary from the English language has also been incorporated into Mauritian Creole as well.

Lexicon

Most words come from French but are not always used in the same way. For example, the French article le, la, les is often fused with the noun in Mauritian: French rat is Mauritian lera and French temps is Mauritian letan. The same is true for some adjectives and prepositions: French femme ("woman") and riz ("rice") are bonnfam (from bonne femme) and diri (from du riz) in Mauritian. Some words have changed their meanings: Mauritian gagn ("to get, obtain") is derived from French gagner ("to win, earn").

Other words come from either Portuguese or Spanish. The word ziromon meaning pumpkin is from Portuguese jerimum, originally from Tupi jirumun. The word lakaz meaning house is originally from Portuguese casa.

There are also several loanwords from the languages of the African Malagasy slaves, who contributed such words as Mauritian lapang from Malagasy ampango (rice stuck to the bottom of a pot), Mauritian lafus from Malagasy hafotsa (a kind of tree), and Mauritian zahtak from Malagasy antaka (a kind of plant). In some cases, as with some of the nouns from French, the Mauritian word has fused with the French article le/la/les.

Words of East African origin include Mauritian makutu from Makua makhwatta (running sore), Mauritian matak from Swahili, and Makonde matako (buttock).

Recent loanwords tend to come from English, such as map instead of plan or carte in French (plan or kart in Mauritian Creole). English words used in Mauritian Creole retain their English spelling but should normally be written with inverted commas.

Only two common Mauritian Creole words derive from Chinese: minn (from Yue Chinese: 麵, romanized: mihn), meaning "noodle", and malang, meaning "dirty" or "poor".

Grammar

Nouns do not change in accordance with grammatical number. Whether a noun is singular or plural can usually be determined only by context. However, the particle bann (from bande) is often placed before a word to indicate that it is plural. French un/une corresponds to Mauritian enn but its use has slightly different rules. Mauritian has an article (la), but it is placed after the noun. Compare French un rat, ce rat, le rat, les rats, and Mauritian enn lera, lera-la and bann lera.

In Mauritian, there is only one form for each plural pronoun and the third-person singular pronoun, regardless of case or gender; li can thus be translated as "he, she, it, him, his, her, hers" depending on the context.

Verbs do not change their form according to tense or person. Instead, the accompanying noun or pronoun determines who is engaging in the action, and several preverbal particles are used alone or in combination to indicate the tense: ti (from French étais) marks past tense, pe, short for the now-rare ape (from "après", as Québec French) still uses to mark the progressive aspect, (f)inn (from French fini) marks the completive or perfect, and pou or sometimes va or ava (from French va, rarely used however) marks the future tense.

For example, li finn gagn ("he/she/it got/had") can also be shortened to li'nn gagn and pronounced as one word. The Réunion version is li té fine gagne for past, li té i gagne for past progressive, and li sava gagne for present progressive or near future.

Verbs do change their form if there is an object in the sentence. Verbs that end in "e" drop the "e" when there is an object.

For example, the base verb "to eat" in Mauritian Creole is manze. To say, "I am eating", you say mo pe manze, but when an object is added, the "e" is lost. For example, to say "I am eating bread", you say mo pe manz dipin.

Even if it is an indirect object, the "e" is lost. For example, to say "I am going to a shop", (the base verb is ale) you say mo pe al enn magazin.

To negate a sentence, the marker "pa" (which comes from the word "pas" in French) is used, like in the sentence li pa manz dipin (he/she/it doesn't eat bread).

The causative voice is marked by the word fer (do) whilst the reflexive voice is marked with either the express lack of a marking, or the words li, and limem.

For example, the sentence "the bread is eaten by him", you say, dipin-la finn manze par li (which, when translated literally, is the bread eaten by him).

Sample

Here is the Lord's Prayer in Mauritian Creole, French and English:

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Mauritian Creole:

Tou imin vinn lor later lib ek egal an drwa ek an dignite. Zot ne avek fakilte rezone e avek enn konsians e zot bizin azir enn anver lot dan enn espri fraternite.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.