Merico or Americo-Liberian (or the informal colloquial name "American") is an
English-based creole language
An English-based creole language (often shortened to English creole) is a creole language for which English was the '' lexifier'', meaning that at the time of its formation the vocabulary of English served as the basis for the majority of the cre ...
spoken until recently in
Liberia
Liberia (), officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to Guinea–Liberia border, its north, Ivory Coast to Ivory Coastâ ...
by
Americo-Liberians
Americo-Liberian people or Congo people or Congau people in Liberian English,Cooper, Helene, ''The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood'' (United States: Simon and Schuster, 2008), p. 6 are a Liberian ethnic group of Afr ...
, descendants of original settlers, freed slaves, and
African Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
who emigrated from the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
between 1821 and the 1870s. It is distinguished from
Liberian Kreyol and from
Kru
KRU was a Malaysian pop boy band formed in 1992. The group comprises three brothers, namely Datuk Norman Abdul Halim, Datuk Yusry Abdul Halim and Edry Abdul Halim'. Apart from revolutionising the Malaysian music scene with their blend of pop, ...
, and may be connected to
Gullah
The Gullah () are an African American ethnic group who predominantly live in the Lowcountry region of the U.S. states of Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, within the coastal plain and the Sea Islands. Their language and cultu ...
and
Jamaican Creole.
The original settlers numbered 19,000 in 1860.
By 1975 the language was partly
decreolized, restricted to informal settings.
Grammatical features
Plurals are unmarked, as in "rock", "rocks", or marked with a
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...
, as in "rocks". The
verb expressing "to be" is , as in "she is small", but adjectives may be used without it, as in "he is big". Verbs are not inflected for past tense.
Separate particles are used to indicate some verb tenses:
* for negation ( "I didn't ask the child"),
* or for continuing action ( "he is talking at great length", "she is crying"),
* for future ( "we will come"),
* or for completed action ( "they have gone that way", "not a little piece was left")
The pronouns include:
* Subject: /, //, /, , , /
* Object: , , /, , /, '
* Possessive: /, /, /, /, ,
See also
*
Krio language
Sierra Leonean Creole or Krio is an English-based creole language that is lingua franca and de facto national language spoken throughout the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Krio is spoken by 96 percent of the country's population, and it uni ...
References
Americo-Liberian people
English-based pidgins and creoles of Africa
Languages of Liberia
Languages attested from the 19th century
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