Sierra Leone Creoles Gambian Creoles Krio Fernandinos[1]
Nigerian Creoles[2]
Native speakers
830,000 (2022)[3] 7.5 million L2 speakers in Sierra Leone (2022)[3]
Language family
English Creole
Atlantic
Krio
Dialects
Fernandino Creole English
Language codes
ISO 639-3
kri
Glottolog
krio1253
Linguasphere
52-ABB-bb
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Video of an L2 speaker of the Krio language
The 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,[3][4] and it unites the different ethnic groups in the country, especially in their trade and social interaction with each other.[5] Krio is the primary language of communication among Sierra Leoneans at home and abroad,[6] and has also heavily influenced Sierra Leonean English.[7] The language is native to the Sierra Leone Creole people, or Krios, a community of about 104,311[3] descendants of freed slaves from the West Indies, Canada, United States and the British Empire, and is spoken as a second language by millions of other Sierra Leoneans belonging to the country's indigenous tribes. Krio, along with English, is the official language of Sierra Leone.
^Lynn, Martin. 1984. Commerce, christianity and the origins of the ‘creoles’ of Fernando Po. Journal of African History 25(3). 257–278.
^Dixon-Fyle, Mac, "The Saro in the Political Life of Early Port Harcourt, 1913–49", The Journal of African History, Vol. 30, No. 1, p. 126.
^ abcd"CIA World Factbook (2022)". www.cia.gov. 22 September 2022.
^"Translators without borders: Language data for Sierra Leone". www.translatorswithoutborders.org.
^Oyètádé, B. Akíntúndé; Fashole-Luke, Victor (15 February 2008). "Sierra Leone: Krio and the Quest for National Integration". Language and National Identity in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 122–140. ISBN 978-0-19-928675-1.
^Thompson, V. A. D. (2013). The Transformation of Freetown Christianity, 1960–2000. Doctoral Dissertation, University of London.
^Saidu Bangura, 2015 A Roadmap to Sierra Leone English: A Sociohistorical and Ecological Perspective, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, PhD thesis, p. 124, 222, 232-242.
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nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many Gambian Creoles speak the Kriolanguage, an English-based creole also spoken by Sierra Leonean Creoles. In Sierra...
constitute about 1.2% of the population. English is the official language, while Krio is the lingua franca, spoken by 97% of the population. The country...
official language, and Krio is the most widely spoken language among the different ethnic groups across Sierra Leone. Other major languages include Mende...
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reflect any lexical pitch differences. Nigeria portal Languages portal Krio Pichinglis Languages of Nigeria Nigerian Pidgin at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023)...
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African Kriolanguage and Gullah, the creole language of the Black people of the isolated Sea Islands of South Carolina, and points out that the Krio expression...
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and creole languages, as he is in the world of Romani studies and Romani social activism. In addition to his research on the Kriolanguage of Sierra Leone...
the Kriolanguage of the Sierra Leone Creole people is Freetown's primary language of communication and is by far the most widely spoken language in the...
West African languages from Nigeria and Liberia, as well as Portuguese vocabulary, which forms a considerable part of the Kriolanguage, which had developed...
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language spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. It is an offshoot of the Kriolanguage of Sierra Leone, and was brought to Bioko by Krios who...
Stones Town village are members of the Krio ethnic group, and the Kriolanguage is widely spoken in the village. The Krio culture and tradition, which are primarily...
Temne is the largest ethnic group. Although the Temne language is spoken alongside, the Kriolanguage of the Sierra Leone Creole people is by far the most...
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fiction writer Gladys Casely-Hayford, first author to write in the Kriolanguage Doris Darlington, one of Jamaica's first sound system operators, and...
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