Seychellois Creole

Seychellois Creole(/seɪˈʃɛlwɑː/), also known asKreol,Seselwa Creole French, andSeselwa Creoleis theFrench-based creole languagespoken by theSeychelles Creole peopleof theSeychelles. It is one of thenational languagesof theSeychelles.
The Seychelles were first settled in 1770, by French settlers from the island ofMauritius. The islands population was mostly made up of slaves with a few whites andfree 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 ofBantu peoplesfromEast Africato the islands.
49 fables of La Fontaine were adapted to the dialect around 1900 by Rodolphine Young (1860–1932) but these remained unpublished until 1983.
TheSeychelles gained independencein 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, andmass mediain the Seychelles. Though Seychellois literature has been increasingly replaced byEnglish literature.
While Seychellois laws are written in English, the working language of theNational Assemblyis Creole and the verbatim record of its meetings provides an extensive corpus for its contemporary use in a formal setting.
On June 27th 2024Googleannounced it would be adding Seychellois Creole toGoogle Translate. Later Seychellois Creole was added under the name Seselwa Creole French.
Seychellois Creole follows insubject verb objectword order.
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 besubjectsnotobjectsbut independent pronouns can be both.
Verbsin Seychellois Creole take one of two forms, long and short. Short verbs are used when the verb is directly followed by anounor when anadverbis present and the long verbs being used otherwise.
Causativevoiceare marked by the wordfer(make) whileReflexivevoice is marked with either the express lack of a marking; or the wordsli, mekor,andlimenm.
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 separatedialects.The only distinct non-standard dialect of Seychellois Creole isChagossian Creolespoken byChagossiansin theUnited Kingdom, Mauritius, and the Seychelles.
In several Seychellois Creole words derived from French, the Frenchdefinite article(le,laandles) has become part of the word; for example, 'future' islavenir(Frenchl'avenir). The possessive is the same as the pronoun, so that 'our future' isnou lavenir.  Similarly in the plural,les Îles Éloignées Seychellesin French ('the Outer Seychelles Islands') has becomeZil Elwanyen Seselin Creole.  Note thezinZil, as, in French,les Îlesis pronounced/le.z‿il/.
Amongloanwordsin 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.
(Lord's Prayer)