Also Known As: Patois,Creole,Krio
Description:
Krio is the national language of Sierra Leone. The language is the lingua franca language spoken throughout the country. The Krio language is spoken by 97% of Sierra Leone's population and unites all the different ethnic groups in the country, especially in their trade and interaction with each other.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 Britain).
The Krio language is an offshoot of the language brought by the Nova Scotians from North America and the numerous liberated Yoruba slaves who settled in Sierra Leone. The vocabulary of Krio is derived primarily from English, while its sound system, grammar and sentence structure are heavily influenced by African languages ( at least 12 African languages), including aspects from the Yoruba language of Nigeria and Twi of Ghana. Krio's standard greeting kushe, for instance, is derived from the Yoruba greeting è kú işé ("greetings on your work"), while the krio word "pan" meaning (on top of/doing something) descends directly from the Jamaican patois word "pon" meaning the same thing, the krio expression "chaka-chaka"..... full article at Wikipedia |