Mauritian Creole

Mauritian Creole is a French-based creole language, closely related to the Seychellois, Rodriguan and Chagossian Creoles. Its relationship to other French-based creole languages is controversial. Robert Chaudenson (2001) and Henri Wittmann (1972, 1987, etc.) have argued that Mauritian Creole is closely related to Réunion Creole, but Philip Baker and Chris Corne (1982) have argued that Réunionnais influence on Mauritian was minimal and that the two languages are barely more similar to each other than they are to other French-based creoles.

Although the Portuguese were the first Europeans to visit Mauritius, they did not settle there. Rather, the small Portuguese element in the vocabulary of Mauritian derives from the Portuguese element in European maritime jargon (such as the Mediterranean Lingua Franca) or from enslaved Africans or Asians who came from areas in which Portuguese was used as a trade language. Similarly, while the Dutch had a colony on Mauritius between 1638 and 1710, all the Dutch settlers evacuated the island to Réunion, leaving behind only a few runaway slaves who would have no discernible impact on Mauritian. The French then claimed Mauritius and first settled it between 1715 and 1721.

As they had done on Réunion and in the West Indies, the French created on Mauritius a plantation economy, based on slave labour. Slaves became a majority of the population of Mauritius by 1730 and were 85% of the population by 1777. They came from West Africa, East Africa and Madagascar.[2]

Given the resulting linguistic fragmentation, French became the lingua franca among the slaves. However, the small size of the native French population on the island, their aloofness from most of their slaves, and the lack of formal education for slaves ensured that the slaves' French developed in very different directions from the slave owners' French. In the generally agreed upon genesis of creole languages, this pidgin language learned by new slaves as the language for daily communication with people from varying linguistic backgrounds eventually became the native language of children born in these communities, and this is the point where a pidgin language evolves into a creole language, with the complexity and completeness of a language 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Historical documents from as early as 1773 note the "creole language" that the slaves spoke.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 English speakers ever settled there and Mauritian Creole had already been firmly entrenched.

The abolition of slavery in the 1830s made many leave the plantations, and Indian indentured workers replaced them after they had been brought in by plantation owners. These indentured labourers' linguistic background mirrored that of the West African, East African and Malagasy enslaved labourers whose linguistic backgrounds were so varied and diverse that no native language or even group of closely related native languages was dominant enough or widely intelligible enough to become the basis for a shared language of inter-ethnic communication. Though the Indians soon became the majority on the island, and they remain the majority to this day, 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 main lingua franca.

English and French have long enjoyed greater social status and dominated government, business, education, and the media, but Mauritian Creole's popularity in most informal domains has persisted, with around 85% of the population speaking the language as their mother tongue.

The phonology of Mauritian Creole is very similar to that of Standard French. However, French /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ have respectively depalatalised to /s/ and /z/ in Mauritian, and the front vowels /y/ and /ø/ have respectively been unrounded to /i/ and /e/.[3]

The language has several published dictionaries, both monolingual and bilingual, written by authors such as Philip Baker (1987), the group "Ledikasyon pu travayer," and Arnaud Carpooran (2005, 2009, 2011), among others. 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. It has become standard upon its adoption by the second edition of the Diksioner Morisien, which previously had been spelt as the Diksyoner Morisyen.[4]

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 altogether: Mauritian gagn ("to get" or "to obtain") is derived from French gagner ("to win" or "to earn").

Other words come from either Portuguese or Spanish. The word ziromon meaning pumpkin is from Portuguese originally from tupi.

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.

Chinese words in Mauritian Creole only number 3: these are matakwi, min and malang. Matakwi is a derogatory term for police; mata means "eye" in Malay and kwi means "ghost" in Hakka. Min means comes from Cantonese and means "noodle". Malang means "dirty" or "poor".

Nouns do not change in the according to 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 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.[5]

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 av (from French va) marks the future tense.

For example, li finn gagn ("he/she/it had") can also be shortened to linn 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.

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

• Creole language
• Agalega creole
• Chagossian creole
• Rodriguan creole
• Seychellois Creole

• Adone, Dany. The Acquisition of Mauritian creole. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1984.
• Anonymous. Diksyoner Kreol-Angle / Prototype Mauritian creole-English Dictionary. Port Louis: L.P.T., 1985.
• Baker, Philip and Chris Corne, Isle de France Creole: Affinities and Origins. Ann Arbor: Karoma, 1982.
• Baker, Philip and Vinesh Y. Hookoomsing. Morisyen-English-français : diksyoner kreol morisyen (Dictionary of Mauritian creole). Paris : Harmattan, 1987.
• Carpooran, Arnaud. Diksioner morisien [version prototip/let A–E]. Quatre Bornes, Ile Maurice : Editions Bartholdi, 2005.
• Carpooran, Arnaud. Le Créole Mauricien de poche. Chennevières-sur-Marne : Assimil, 2007. ISBN 978-2-7005-0309-8.
• Carpooran, Arnaud. Diksioner morisien[version integral/1e edision]. Sainte Croix, Ile Maurice : Koleksion Text Kreol, 2009, 1017pp.
• Carpooran, Arnaud. Diksioner morisien. [version integral/2em edision]. Vacoas, Ile Maurice : Edition Le Printempss, 2011, 1200pp.
• Chaudenson, Robert. Les créoles francais. Évreux: F. Nathan, 1979.
• Chaudenson, Robert. Creolization of language and culture; translated and revised by Salikoko S. Mufwene, with Sheri Pargman, Sabrina Billings, and Michelle AuCoin. London ; New York : Routledge, 2001.
• Choy, Paul. Korek – A Beginners Guide To Mauritian Creole (Grand Baie, Mauritius: Pachworks 4th ed., 2014)
• Corne, Chris. Essai de grammaire du créole mauricien, Auckland : Linguistic Society of New Zealand, 1970.
• Corne, Chris. A contrastive analysis of Reunion and Isle de France Creole French: two typologically diverse languages. In: Isle de France Creole: affinities and origins, Philip Baker & Chris Corne, 8–129. Ann Arbor: Karoma, 1982.
• Corne, Chris. "Mauritian creole Reflexives", Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Volume 3, Number 1, 1988, pp. 69–94, 1988. doi:10.1075/jpcl.3.1.03cor
• Corne, Chris. From French to Creole, Battlebridge Publications (Westminster Creolistics), 1999.
• Frew, Mark. Mauritian creole in seven easy lessons. 2nd ed. Port Louis, Republic of Mauritius : Ledikasyon pu Travayer, 2003.
• Holm, John. Pidgins and Creoles, Volume II: Reference Survey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
• Lee, Jacques K. Mauritius : its Creole language : the ultimate Creole phrase book : English-Creole dictionary. London: Nautilus Pub. Co., 1999.
• Strandquist, Rachel Eva. Article Incorporation in Mauritian creole. M.A. thesis, University of Victoria, 2005. hdl:1828/820
• Wittmann, Henri. Les parlers créoles des Mascareignes: une orientation. Trois-Rivières: Travaux linguistiques de l'Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières 1, 1972.
• Wittmann, Henri. « Lexical diffusion and the glottogenetics of creole French. » CreoList debate, parts I–VI, appendixes 1–9. The Linguist List, Eastern Michigan University & Wayne State University. 2001.
• Wittmann, Henri & Robert Fournier. "L'agglutination nominale en français colonial." Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 2:2.185–209, 1981.
• Wittmann, Henri & Robert Fournier. "Interprétation diachronique de la morphologie verbale du créole réunionnais". Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 6:2.137–50, 1987; in response to the hypothesis put forward by Corne (1982) in Baker and Corne (1982).