Seychellois Creole


Seychellois Creole, also known as kreol, is the French-based creole language of the Seychelles. It shares official language status with English and French.

Description

Since its independence in 1976, the government of the Seychelles has sought to develop the language, with its own orthography and codified grammar, establishing Lenstiti Kreol for this purpose.
In several Seychellois Creole words derived from French, the French definite article has become part of the word; for example, 'future' is lavenir. The possessive is the same as the pronoun, so that 'our future' is nou lavenir. Similarly in the plural, les Îles Éloignées Seychelles in French has become Zil Elwanyen Sesel in Creole. Note the z in Zil, as, in French, les Îles is pronounced /le.z‿il/.

Samples

49 fables of La Fontaine were adapted to the dialect around 1900 by Rodolphine Young but these remained unpublished until 1983.
While Seychellois laws are written in English, the working language of the National Assembly is Creole and the verbatim record of its meetings provides an extensive corpus for its contemporary use in a formal setting.