Krio language
| Krio | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Sierra Leone |
| Ethnicity | Sierra Leone Creole, Aku |
|
Native speakers
|
500,000 (1993) 4 million L2 speakers in Sierra Leone (1987) |
|
English Creole
|
|
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | krio1253 |
| Linguasphere | 52-ABB-bb |
Sierra Leonean Creole, Krio or Patois () is the lingua franca and the de facto national language spoken throughout the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Krio is spoken by 97% of Sierra Leone's population and unites the different ethnic groups in the country, especially in their trade and social interaction with each other. Krio is the primary language of communication among Sierra Leoneans at home and abroad. The language is native to the Sierra Leone Creole people or Krios, (a community of about 300,000 descendants of freed slaves from the West Indies, United States and Great Britain), and is spoken as a second language by millions of other Sierra Leoneans belonging to the country's indigenous tribes. English is Sierra Leone's official language, while Krio, despite its common use throughout the country, has no official status.
The Krio language is an offshoot of the languages and variations of English brought by the Nova Scotian Settlers from North America, Maroons from Jamaica, and the numerous liberated African slaves who settled in Sierra Leone.
All freed slaves—the Jamaican Maroons, African Americans, and Liberated Africans—influenced Krio, but the Jamaican Maroons, Igbo and Yoruba Liberated Africans were the most influential. It seems probable that the basic grammatical structure and vowel system of Krio is an offshoot of Jamaican Maroon Creole spoken by the Maroons, there are well-documented and important direct historical connections between Jamaica and Sierra Leone. The language was also influenced by African American Vernacular English while the majority of the African words in Krio come from the Yoruba and Igbo languages.
...
Wikipedia