What Are the Bourbonnais Creole Languages?

By Sarah-Claire Jordan

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Bourbonnais Creole is a group of French-based creole languages that are spoken on different islands in the Indian Ocean. They get their name from the former name of one of the islands, Bourbon Island, which is now called Réunion Island. Sometimes the group is also referred to as Mascarene Creole, after the Mascarene Islands.

The Bourbonnais Creole language group is made up of six different creole languages, all spoken on different islands in the Indian Ocean. They are: Mauritian Creole, Réunion Creole, Rodriguan Creole, Seychellois Creole, Agalega Creole, and Chagossian Creole. These can probably be categorized into three groups, as Rodriguan Creole and Agalega Creole are almost like dialects of Mauritian Creole, and Chagossian Creole is very likely a dialect of Seychellois Creole.

Réunion Creole

This French-based creole is spoken on the island of Réunion, which is located to the east of Madagascar. Réunion is one of France’s overseas departments, so the French influence is still very present. The population of Réunion was originally made up of people of Malagasy origin, an ethnic group native to Madagascar, as well as people of French and Indo-Portuguese descent. The Indo-Portuguese people added their own touch to Réunion Creole, which has a good amount of vocabulary from Gujarati, Tamil, and Urdu. The Malagasy language was also a great influence on this particular creole. However, since it is a French overseas department, Réunion Creole tends to resemble French more than some other French-based creoles.

Mauritian Creole, Rodriguan Creole, and Agalega Creole

Native to the Republic of Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean off the coast of southeast Africa, Mauritian Creole is heavily influenced by many African and Asian languages as well as English, since it used to be a British colony. Malagasy, Swahili, and Chinese have definitely had an impact on the formation and evolution of Mauritian Creole.

Rodriguan Creole is considered a dialect of Mauritian Creole, and is native to the Mauritian island of Rodrigues. Still, just like in the rest of the Republic of Mauritius, English remains the official language, which French also being widely spoken. Agalega Creole is spoken on the two Mauritian islands of Agalega, and is influenced deeply by the Malagasy language as well as Seychellois Creole and, of course, Mauritian Creole.

Seychellois Creole and Chagossian Creole

Seychellois Creole originated in the Republic of Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean that was used as a stop in trade routes between Asia and Africa, which set it up to be the birthplace of a creole language. That, plus the decades-long struggle for control between England and France, led to the creation of Seychellois Creole, which is an official language in its native country along with French and English. Chagossian Creole is a dying dialect of Seychellois Creole that was spoken on the Chagos Archipelago, now part of Mauritius, before it was evicted in the 1970s and all of the inhabitants moved to either Mauritius or the Republic of Seychelles.

As you can see, there is quite a variety of French-based creole languages in the Indian Ocean. Most are very similar to each other, but each one is unique in its way thanks to the different histories of each area these creoles are native to. Alpha Omega Translation is well aware of these differences and nuances, and is well-equipped to translate, interpret, and help with anything else regarding French-based creole languages of the Indian Ocean.

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Tags: creole, french, native language

Category: Foreign Language