Krio: The Language of Freetown and Its Many Roots

"Kushɛ-o! Aw di bodi?" — Hello! How are you? "Di bodi fayn, tɛnki." — I'm fine, thank you. Walk down a street in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, and you will hear conversations like this everywhere. The language is Krio. At first, an English speaker might think they almost understand it: many words sound familiar. But Krio is not broken English. It is a full language with its own grammar, sounds and history, a history that begins with the founding of Freetown itself.

A city for freed people

In the late 18th century, British abolitionists planned a settlement in West Africa for freed Black people. In 1787, a group of so-called "Black Poor" from London, many of them formerly enslaved people who had fought for Britain in the American War of Independence, arrived on the Sierra Leone peninsula. The first settlement struggled and was largely destroyed.

In 1792, more than a thousand Black Loyalists who had moved to Nova Scotia in Canada after the American war sailed to Sierra Leone and founded Freetown. In 1800, they were joined by Maroons from Jamaica, descendants of people who had escaped slavery and fought the British in the island's mountains.

After Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, the Royal Navy began capturing slave ships off the West African coast. Tens of thousands of Africans freed from these ships, known as "Liberated Africans" or "recaptives", were landed at Freetown during the 19th century. They came from many parts of West and Central Africa, but a large number were Yoruba, from what is now Nigeria.

Out of this mix of peoples, from the Americas, Britain and Africa, a new community emerged: the Krio (or Creole) people, and with them, a new language.

How Krio was born

Krio is an English-based creole: most of its vocabulary comes from English, but its grammar, sounds and many of its expressions come from African languages, especially Yoruba and other West African languages, with influences from Portuguese, French and the languages of Sierra Leone such as Temne and Mende. Scholars have also noted similarities with the English-based creoles of the Caribbean, brought by the Nova Scotians and Jamaican Maroons.

Some examples show how Krio works:

• Kushɛ (hello, greetings) comes from the Yoruba greeting kú iṣẹ́ ("well done for your work").
• Pikin (child) comes ultimately from Portuguese pequeno, "small", found in many Atlantic creoles.
• Sabi (to know) comes from Portuguese saber.
• Wetin means "what".
• Verbs are not changed for tense; instead, Krio uses markers. A de go means "I am going"; A bin go means "I went" or "I had gone"; A go go means "I will go".
• Una means "you" (plural), a form also found in Nigerian Pidgin and thought to come from West African languages such as Igbo.

The language of a nation

The Krio people are a minority in Sierra Leone, making up only a small percentage of the population. But the Krio language is spoken as a second language by the great majority of Sierra Leoneans, making it the country's main lingua franca. It is used in markets, music, radio, politics and everyday life across the country, among people whose first languages may be Temne, Mende, Limba, Fula or others. English remains the official language.

Krio is also closely related to other English-based creoles and pidgins of West Africa, including Nigerian Pidgin, described in our story on Nigerian Pidgin, Cameroonian Pidgin and the Pichi of Bioko in Equatorial Guinea.

Krio culture

The Krio people developed a distinctive culture in Freetown. They were among the first West Africans to receive Western education in large numbers, at institutions such as Fourah Bay College, founded in 1827, the oldest Western-style university in West Africa. Krio teachers, clergy, traders, lawyers and administrators worked across West Africa in the 19th century, from the Gambia to Nigeria.

Krio culture blends African and European elements: there are distinctive Krio houses of wood with verandas, Krio cuisine (including dishes such as cassava leaf stew and fufu), Krio weddings and the awujoh feast, a Yoruba-derived ceremony for the ancestors.

Literature in Krio

Krio has a growing written tradition. The writer Thomas Decker translated Shakespeare's Julius Caesar into Krio in the 1960s, and others followed with translations and original plays, poems and stories. The Krio–English Dictionary by Clifford Fyle and Eldred Jones, published in 1980, was a landmark. Today, Krio is used in radio, music, social media and some literacy materials.

Useful Krio phrases

• Kushɛ — hello
• Aw di bodi? — how are you? (literally "how is the body?")
• Di bodi fayn — I'm fine
• Tɛnki — thank you
• Wetin na yu nem? — what is your name?
• Mi nem na... — my name is...
• A de go — I'm going

Why it matters

Krio tells the story of a city founded by people who had survived slavery: freed Africans from the Americas, Britain and the slave ships themselves. From their many languages and cultures, they created something new. Krio shows how creole languages are not "broken" versions of European languages, but creative, complete languages born from history. And today, it is the language that allows Sierra Leone's many peoples to speak to one another.

Further reading

• Akintola Wyse, The Krio of Sierra Leone: An Interpretive History (Hurst / Howard University Press, 1989)
• Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (Oxford University Press, 1962)
• Clifford N. Fyle and Eldred D. Jones, A Krio–English Dictionary (Oxford University Press / Sierra Leone University Press, 1980)