Table Of ContentA harmonized writing system
for
the Mauritian Creole Language
Grafi-larmoni
Vinesh Y Hookoomsing
September 2004
1 Introduction
In the history of humanity, language codification in written form goes back to the early
days of civilization when the first writing system was invented in Mesopotamia. At about
the same time, the Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Chinese ideograms represented
advanced systems of written communication. Then came the invention by the Phenicians
of the first alphabet.
From the parchment to the printed book: the first knowledge revolution that started
the slow but steady process of democratization of knowledge and information is
attributed to Gutenberg’s invention of printing. But well before Gutenberg, the first
printed book appeared in China around 1390.
From the printed to the eletronic medium: the latest knowledge revolution has
abolished the barriers of time and space, making information and communication
immediately accessible in real time anywhere, any time.
From the first printing machine in 18thC Mauritius to desktop publishing: several
millennia of language and technological evolution have been compressed in three
centuries, the time it took for the Mauritian Creole language (MCL) to free itself from the
shackles of history and become the most popular SMS and internet medium. A product of
language contact, innovation and creativity in extreme human and social conditions,
MCL evolved rapidly to become within such a short time the first language par
excellence of the Mauritian linguistic community. Independence and the need for national
symbols gave a new destiny to MCL as the language of national unity and the marker of
our distinctiveness. Ever since, the task of codification and standardization of MCL has
been on our agenda. The work accomplished through individual and group initiatives has
already taken the language quite a long way on the road towards formal recognition. It
represents a considerable achievement which must be duly acknowledged
2 Writing Mauritian Creole: a brief historical perspective
How best to write Mauritian Creole? The relevance of Philip Baker’s question, raised in
1978, was self-evident (see below for more details). No one would imagine that in the
early years of 19th century Mauritius, such an idea would come to the mind of a colonial
writer naturally belonging to the dominant Francophone group. Indeed the earliest written
traces of MCL and comments on the language invariably referred to the language as the
slave’s patois or broken French. As early as 1749, Baron Grant1 in one of his letters
from 18th century Ile de France, refers to a group of slaves pointing towards the horizon
and exclaiming “in their corrupted French, ça blanc là li beaucoup malin; li couri
beaucoup dans la mer là-haut; mais Madagascar li là.”
Bernardin de St Pierre2, in his letters contained in the Voyage à l’Ile de France
published in 1773, gives a brief account of his encounter with a slave boatman : “Le
Patron me dit dans son mauvais patois : ‘ça n’a pas bon Monsié’. Je lui demandai s’il y
avoit quelque danger, il me répondit : ‘Si nous n’a pas gagné malheur, ça bon’.”
C Thomi Pitot3(1805), in his refutation of B de St Pierre’s account of slavery in Voyage
à l’Ile de France, has recourse to an imaginary conversation in Creole with a slave to
portray the latter, ‘un noir mozambique, entre la fleur et la vigueur de l’âge, paré d’un
simple langoutis (un linge autour des reins)’, as a happy man well treated by his master.
Freycinet4 (1827), who visited Mauritius in 1818, refers for his part to the ‘patois inventé
par les noirs’ and comments on the potential linguistic value of ‘les règles de cette
langue’:
1Source: “The History of Mauritius, or the Isle de France, etc., composed principally from the papers and
memoirs of Baron Grant, who resided twenty years in the island, by his son Charles Grant, Viscount de
Vaux”.1801, London. Reprinted by Asian Educational Services, New Delhi, 1995, p. 297
2 Bernardin de St Pierre, Voyage à l’Ile de France, I, 257, Paris, 1773.
3 C. Thomi Pitot, “Quelques observations sur l’ouvrage intitulé Voyage à l’Ile de France par un officier du
Roi” presented to the Société d’Emulation de l’Ile de France on 3 August 1805.
4 Louis de Freycinet, Voyage autour du monde, tome 1, vol. 2, p. 406, Paris, 1827.
Indépendamment du français, qui forme la base du langage à l’Ile de France, une
sorte de patois a été inventé par les noirs, qui, ne pouvant se plier à notre
syntaxe, prononcer nos mots difficiles, et saisir la valeur propre de quelques-unes
de nos expressions., les ont travestis à leur manière. Peu à peu l’usage a fait loi ;
et peut-être ne seroit-il pas sans intérêt aujourd’hui d’examiner les règles de
cette langue créole, qui n’est pas dénudée de charmes.
His remarks on the varieties of MCL are also extremely interesting from a sociolinguistic
perspective, with the Malagasy variety occupying one extreme and the European variety
(« usité, par goût et par habitude, parmi les mulâtres et les personnes riches de l’île ») at
the other extreme.
To the visitors, Creole is unquestionably the language of the slaves, whereas Thomi Pitot,
a colon settled on the island, does not even state the language in which his conversation
takes place, which would imply that the language is shared by both slave and master.
The relation thus established with Creole appears to indicate a process of nativisation
confirmed by another colon, François Chrestien5, author of the first collection of songs
and poems as well as adaptations of La Fontaine’s fables in MCL. His reflexions on the
difficulty of writing in Creole are worth quoting as they constitute the first orthographic
statements on the language:
Il est fort difficile d’écrire le Créole; surtout de façon à en conserver la
prononciation, qui en fait une partie du mérite, et à le plier aux règles de la
poésie …. Il m’a donc fallu créer une espèce d’orthographe et écrire dans le genre
des Vadé ; mais plutôt pour me rapprocher de la prononciation que du français,
comme dans ces mots :
Çanté (chanté), la-bousse (la bouche), la-sasse (la chasse).
Ein’ jour, prononcez Ei-n’zour (un jour).
Ein’ coup-là, id. Ei-n’coup là (dans le moment).
Ein’ béf, id. Ei-n’béf (un bœuf)
Pour chaqu’en’ id. pour chaquène (pour chacun) sans faire marquer l’e muet
dans la mesure du vers etc. ce qui d’abord présente quelque difficulté pour la
conception rapide, je pense cependant que cette note et une légère attention
suffiront.
Baissac’s monumental work on MCL (language, 1880; and folklore, 1888) is well
known. The orthographic conventions adopted by the author are explained at length in his
5 François Chrestien, Essais d’un bobre africain, Isle Maurice, 1822. The extract appears in the “Avant-
propos nécessaire” p. 3-4, reproduced in the 1998 edition by Norbert Benoît, p. 112.
introduction to Etude sur le patois créole mauricien. While being explicitly etymological,
they are based on a number of principles that are worth quoting :
Pour dérouter le moins possible l’œil habitué à la physionomie du mot français,
nous la lui avons conservée partout où nous l’avons pu. Nous avons, cependant,
toujours réuni l’article au substantif, avec lequel il fait corps, ainsi que nous
l’avons établi. Nous avons, de même, pour être conséquent avec notre analyse,
donné aux verbes en er la terminaison é du participe passé, duquel est provenu le
verbe créole ; et nous écrivons d’après le même principe, couderoce, coudepoing
pour coup de roche, coup de poing, la préposition de étant devenue partie
intégrante d’un mot composé.
A l’aide de l’accent aigu, de l’accent circonflexe, du tréma et de l’e muet, nous
avons figuré de notre mieux la prononciation créole, sans hésiter, dans certain
cas, à nous affranchir complètement de l’orthographe française : c’est ainsi que
nous écrivons fére pour faire, lhére pour l’heure, léquére pour le cœur, laliquére
pour la liqueur, tranzé pour étranger, zoréye pour oreille, Zôrze pour Georges,
maïe pour maïs, àçthére pour à cette heure. Enfin, quoique le pluriel ne se
manifeste jamais en créole dans la forme des mots, nous avons, pour guider l’œil
du lecteur, conservé l’s du français, mais au substantif seulement. (1880:LIV-
LVI)
For all his erudition, Baissac had a very poor opinion of MCL and of its potentialities as
a language. Many decades later, in his Chroniques du pays créole, Clément Charoux6
reacted strongly against some of Baissac’s derogatory statements on MCL:
Charles Baissac, expert philologue, le compare à un mur en pierres sèches ne
permettant que l’érection d’une bâtisse de quelques pieds de haut: bâtisse si l’on
veut, ma « bâtisse » m’est chère!
before ending on a more lyrical, though ambiguous note :
l’âme profonde et collective du pays créole s’émeut au contact de notre vieux parler
colonial – peut-être peut-on dire national.
3 Independence: from Creole patois to Morisyen. The
standardization process (1970s – 1980s)
6 Clément Charoux, Chroniques du Pays Créole, Maurice, 1953.
The 1960s ushered in a new era not only for the country but also for MCL. With
independence at the crossroads, the country needed symbols and markers that could
function at national level and bring the diverse Mauritian population together. MCL was
one of them. Thus, in 1965, after the successful outcome of the final round of
constitutional conferences that paved the way to independence, Sir Seewosagur
Ramgoolam is reported to have addressed from London the following message through
BBC to the nation in the making:
Mo banne frères hindous, musulmans, créole, chinois, franco-mauriciens, zotte
tout travaille ensemble. Faire Maurice paisible et prospère dans l’intérêt
publique.7
The role and function of MCL as the medium of national unity was developed by Dev
Virahsawmy in a series of pioneering articles which appeared in the local press in 1967.
Combining the drive of nationalism, the insights of Linguistics and the power of rhetoric,
Dev Virahsawmy was the first to set the agenda for the recognition, development and
standardization of MCL. Its major items may be summarized as follows:
- MCL is the language par excellence of our national unity and identity
- It is distinctively Mauritian and therefore should be called Morisyen rather
than Creole, to avoid the confusion between the language and the ethnic
marker
- Morisyen is neither a patois nor a broken variety of French. It is a
language in its own right with a distinct system of pronunciation, grammar
and vocabulary
- The linguistic structures of Morisyen must be studied and described in
view of the standardization of the language
- A standard orthography must be devised for Morisyen to be developed as
a full-fledged written language
- Morisyen should become the vehicle for the production of a new truly
Mauritian literature
Another pioneer creolist emerged more or less at the same time: Philip Baker. He
developed a standard orthography for MCL which differed from the one proposed by Dev
Virahsawmy on several points and more importantly on nasal vowel transcription. Philip
Baker also developed a correspondence course in MCL. In 1972 he published the first
7 Quoted in Moonindranath Varma, The Struggle of Dr Ramgoolam, Mauritius, 1975, p. 210
comprehensive description of MCL which has remained a reference until now. The initial
work of compiling MCL words in view of the first MCL dictionary, which subsequently
became a joint Baker/Hookoomsing publication, also goes to his credit.
From the mid 1970s onward, the Ledikasyon Pu Travayer (LPT) movement emerged as
the main if not the sole organisation actively involved in the standadization of MCL,
using it for literary contests and promoting it as a literary medium.
The first decades of the post-independence period represent indeed MCL’s golden era,
during which the creative power of a new generation of writers and cultural artists is
unleashed in a variety of media: songs and short stories, poems and plays, pamphlets and
manifestos, novels and translations, readers and educational materials.
To complete this brief overview of the early initiatives that paved the way for the
recognition and promotion of MCL, mention must be made of the first post-independence
creative publication, Tention Caïman, by René Noyau8 in 1971. Written in the non-
standard French-based orthography, Tention Caïman represents a solitary attempt to
revive the traditional Creole narrative and recast it into a literary mode of expression of
popular wisdom and clairvoyance. It is also a stark reminder of the complex and
conflicting language-culture-identity link that was to resurface in the 1990s in the form of
the collective “malaise créole”.
8 René Noyau, Tention Caïma, Mauritius, 1971. He writes in his introduction: “Quand nous fini lire so
créole, éna éne commentaire qui nous lire avec réflexion. Après ça, nous lire so français zistoire-la”; and in
his end notes: “…nous bisin prend plime comance écrire cé qui nous conné…nous écrire pou travailleur
coma nous…nous aprane lire…nous aprane pou nous capave écrire bien dans nous langaze…Soi-disant
nous langaze créole-la, éne langaze bébête…Tout cé qui parmi nous qui capave écrire éne ti livre, faire li.
4 MCL orthographies viewed in the broader context of Creole
language standardization
The process of standardization of MCL was initiated in the late 1960s in the favourable
context of independence. However it must be borne in mind that the standardized
orthographies proposed for MCL were not created ex nihilo. Indeed the theoretical and
practical issues related to the transformation of Creole languages from oral to written
languages have been on the agenda of Creole-speaking societies for quite some time.
Creolists working in isolation came together for the first time at the international
conference on Creole languages held at the University College of West Indies in Mona,
Jamaica in March 1959. It was hailed as a historic meeting which gave birth to Creole
Studies as a field of study. The conference ended with an open session during which the
role of Creole in the schools was lengthily debated with members of the public.
Well before the Mona Conference, an American Methodist priest, McConnell, had
proposed a standardized orthography for Haitian Creole. His diacritic model with the
circumflex accent as nasalizer was already in use in Haiti in the 1940s and was
subsequently replaced by the “n/nn” model in the 50s.
The “circumflex accent” model known in Haiti as the McConnell-Laubach orthography
comprised:
• the following eighteen symbols based on the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA): a, b, d, f, g, I, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, v, w, z;
• the following eight symbols based on the French alphabet: ch, é, è, gn, j, ou, u
(representing the semi-vowel found in uit, réuni) and y (as in payer);
• the following nasal vowel symbols: â, ê, ô, and the oral vowel ò.
Following criticisms from a group of Haitian intellectuals led by C-F Pressoir, a
governmental committee was set up in 1951 to review the McConnell-Laubach
orthography. The committee proposed the following changes:
• the nasal vowels /ã/, /ẽ/, /õ/, represented by â, ê, ô should be replaced by the
following digraphs: an, in, on;
• the sequence vowel + pronounced nasal consonant n, represented by ân, ên, ôn,
should be represented as follows: ann, inn, onn;
• the semi-vowel w (as in wi, bwat) should be replaced by ou (as in oui, bouat);
• the semi-vowel /j/ represented by y in certain positions (as in words ending in –
yon) should be replaced by i (-ion).
The revised orthography, known as the Faublas-Pressoir orthography, and later as the
ONAAC orthography (Office National pour l’Alphabétisation et l’Action
Communautaire), was adopted and used by the government for its literacy projects, by
religious bodies and by organisations and individuals as well as by political groups.
Some twenty years later, Haitian orthography was again the object of fresh debate as a
result of variations, divergences and inconsistencies noted in actual usage. A team of
linguists from l’Université Paris-V, in collaboration with the local Institut Pédagogique
National (IPN) revisited the ONAAC orthography and proposed several modifications.
The revised orthography, known as the IPN orthography, was adopted by the government
as the official writing system to be used for Haitian Creole in the 1979 legislation
introducing the language as medium of instruction in the primary school.
The IPN orthography brought several significant modifications, such as:
• the nasal vowel /ẽ/ is now represented by en instead of in;
• consequently, /ẽ/ + n is represented by enn, instead of inn;
• the sequence i+n is made up of the oral vowel /i/ and the nasal consonant /n/ as in
the given example: bekasin;
• the oral vowel /e/ is represented by e instead of é;
• the semivowels /j/ and /w/ are represented exclusively by y and w;
• the digraph gn is replaced by y.
Haitian orthography went through a process of experimentation and harmonization that
lasted more than half a century. The problematic aspects presented above are very similar
to those encountered in the course of writing MCL in a standardized orthography. An
additional feature shared by both Haitian Creole and MCL is that the standardization
process was initiated not by the state but by motivated individuals and NGOs.
Seychellois Creole language (SCL) too experienced a similar process of harmonization
during the early years of the post-1977 revolutionary period. In 1978 Annegret Bollée
and Danielle d’Offay proposed a new standardized orthography for SCL, presented as
“une sorte de compromis entre une transcription purement phonémique et l’orthographe
traditionnelle en usage aux Seychelles” (p. 12).
The major features of the compromise concern:
• Mute e and é: the two forms are used word-finally in a number of words, and their
distribution is determined by a set of more or less complex rules;
• The nasal vowels represented by an, en, on, become oral vowels+pronounced n
with the addition of final mute e, (e.g., bane, zene, zone);
• The digraphs ou, oi, ui, as in“fou, fouet, lafoi, fuite” have the same values as their
French equivalents;
• i and y as complementary semi-vowels: e.g., lipié, nasion, yer, veyé, may;
• gn as in gagne/gagné.
In 1983, the Bollée-D’Offay orthography is replaced by a modified orthography from
which most of the above features are absent. Thus:
• é is eliminated;
• the sequence oral vowel+ne is replaced by oral vowel+nn (e.g., bann, zenn);
• the distinction between i and y as semi-vowels is removed: thus, lipye, nasyon;
• the digraph ou is maintained as (in fou), but not oi and ui: the latter two are
replaced by w+ oral vowel, as in: aswar, lerwa, fwet, lafwa, fwit;
• gn is replaced by ny, as in gany/ganyé.
A new feature, reflecting automatic nasalization of the vowel preceding a nasal
consonant, has been added, as a result of which the written form is unnecessarily
burdened, e.g., fanm (femme), zanmen (jamais), konnen (connais).
The 1983 revised orthography was made official and is still in force.
Writing Creole in a standardized orthography is now an accepted principle in the Creole
speaking world, particularly in the case of French-based Creole languages. In the French
“Départements d’Outre-mer”, linguists and creative writers played a crucial role, whereas
in independent Haiti and the Seychelles, the decisive factor has been state recognition and
taking over from individual and group initiatives.
Mauritius has followed a liberal middle road with the standardization process left into the
hands of private initiative while the state continues to acknowledge the national role and
function of MCL and its practical importance as the natural language for communicating
