A Nineteenth Century Description of the Sierra Leone Krio Language

5/5 ( ratings)

Sierra Leone was founded as a British colony in the late 18th century. It was envisioned as a homeland for poor black people living in Britain. Many of the “black poor” living in Britain were African American Loyalists who had been freed from slavery as a reward for fighting for Britain during the American Revolutionary War. But others had come from the British West Indies, Africa, or elsewhere.

The Sierra Leone colony was set up on a peninsula near modern-day Freetown. The first colonists were black Britons who arrived in 1787, funded by the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, a group founded by British abolitionist Granville Sharp. The colonists’ settlement was named “Granville Town” in his honour.

The black colonists from Britain were joined, in the 1790s, by migrants from Nova Scotia, Canada. The new arrivals were African Americans who had fought for Britain during the American Revolution. After the war many of the whites, blacks, and indigenous Loyalists who had fought for Britain were granted land in Canada by Great Britain. Some of the Black Loyalists and other African American migrants in Nova Scotia were unhappy with their new home, so they moved Sierra Leone.

Another third wave of migration came from Jamaica. The Maroons of Jamaica were descendants of escaped slaves who had made peace with the colonial government in the 18th century. The colonial government had recognized their freedom in return for the Maroons’ help in suppressing future slave revolts. But in In 1796 the Trelawny Town Maroons rebelled. After suppressing the revolt, the Trelawny Maroons were deported to Nova Scotia. The Maroons disliked their new home, so the British government sent them to Sierra Leone in 1800.

Finally, after the abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade in 1807, the Royal Navy freed slaves from captured ships in Sierra Leone. As a result, the colony experienced an influx of Africans who spoke many different languages. The Yoruba became the largest ethnolinguist group of “liberated Africans” in the colony, but there were many other Africans who spoke many mutually unintelligible languages.

Aside from these immigrant groups, there were the ‘native’ Africans living nearby, who came to trade, or sometimes live in the colony. These people belonged to the Temne, Mende, Fula, and other ethnic groups. In addition, there were a small number of Europeans in the colony, but their numbers were limited by periodic disease epidemics that decimated Europeans. A number of the British governors died from disease after only a short time in the colony.

This ethnic and linguist diversity in 19th century Sierra Leone helped to bring about the development of the unique Sierra Leone Creole . Krio was influenced by the forms of English spoken by the African Americans, and the Maroons, and by the many African languages spoken by the “liberated Africans”. Krio is an English-based Creole, but its structure is different from standard English.

The different immigrant groups that settled in the British colony eventually blended together to form the Sierra Leone Creole ethnic group, which spoke Krio as their first language. Although the Sierra Leone Creole people are a minority in modern Sierra Leone, they have had a disproportionate influence on the country, their Krio language has become a lingua franca. It is widely spoken as a second language across the country by Sierra Leoneans of various ethnicities.

This mid-19th century description of the local dialect- an early form of Krio or a predecessor of it- comes from Elizabeth Melville. Melville was a British woman living in the colony in the 1840s.