Réunion Creole, or Reunionese Creole (; ), is a French-based

creole language A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable form of contact language that develops from the process of different languages simplifying and mixing into a new form (often a pidgin), and then that form expanding and elaborating into a full-fl ...

spoken on

Réunion Réunion (; ; ; known as before 1848) is an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department and region of France. Part of the Mascarene Islands, it is located approximately east of the isl ...

. It is derived mainly from French and includes terms from Malagasy,

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

, Portuguese, Gujarati and

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

. In recent years, there has been an effort to develop a spelling dictionary and grammar rules. Partly because of the lack of an official orthography but also because schools are taught in French, Réunion Creole is rarely written. Notably, two translations of the French comic ''

Asterix ''Asterix'' ( or , "Asterix the Gauls, Gaul"; also known as ''Asterix and Obelix'' in some adaptations or ''The Adventures of Asterix'') is a Franco-Belgian comics, French comic album book series, series about a Gaulish village which, thanks ...

'' have been published. Réunion Creole is the main

vernacular Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...

of the island and is used in most colloquial and familiar settings. It is, however, in a state of

diglossia In linguistics, diglossia ( , ) is where two dialects or languages are used (in fairly strict compartmentalization) by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled "L" or "low" v ...

with French as the high language – Réunion Creole is used in informal settings and conversations, while French is the language of writing, education, administration and more formal conversations.

History

Reunionese Creole first formed within the first 50 years of Reunion being inhabited. Most of the people living in Reunion were French, Malagasy or Indo-Portuguese. Most families at this time had at least one native French speaker.Holm, John. ''Pidgins and Creoles. Volume II: Reference Survey''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. It is now the native language of 90% of the island's population.Insee - Conditions de vie-Société - Le créole encore très largement majoritaire à La Réunion

References

Bibliography

* Gunet, Armand (2003). ''Le Grand Lexique Créole de l'Ile de la Réunion''. Azalées Éditions. . * Marion, Pascal (2009), ''Dictionnaire étymologique du créole réunionnais, mots d'origine asiatique'', Carré de sucre, French-based pidgins and creoles Languages of Réunion French language in Africa {{Pidgincreole-lang-stub

History

See also

References

Bibliography