Native to Saint Lucia ISO 639-3 acf Linguasphere 51-AAC-ccg | Native speakers 160,000 (2001) Glottolog sain1246 | |
Language family French Creole
Antillean Creole French
Saint Lucian Creole | ||
Saint Lucian Creole French is a French-based creole, which is the generally spoken language in Saint Lucia.
History
It is a sub-variety of Antillean Creole, which is spoken in other islands of the Lesser Antilles and is very closely related to the varieties spoken in Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago. The intelligibility rate with speakers of other varieties of Antillean Creole is almost 100%. Its syntactic, grammatical and lexical features are virtually identical to that of Martinican Creole, though, like its Dominican counterpart, it includes more English loanwords than the Martinican variety.
Like the other Caribbean Creoles, Saint Lucian French Creole combines syntax of African and Carib origin with a primarily French-derived vocabulary. In addition, many expressions reflect the presence of an English Creole and Spanish influences are also present in the language. The language is not considered to be mutually intelligible with standard French, but is intelligible with the other French creoles of the Lesser Antilles, and is related to Haitian Creole which has a number of distinctive features, but nonetheless are both mutually intelligible.
It is still widely spoken in Saint Lucia, though the actual number of speakers appear to have declined in the past decades. In the mid 19th century it was exported to Panama, where it is now moribund.