English in West Africa - Sierra Leone
A Research Project at the Department of Linguistics
Institute of English and American Studies
Humboldt University, Berlin
Sierra Leone: Brief Introduction
Extract from: Wolf, Hans-Georg (2001). English in Cameroon. Contributions to the Sociology of Language 85. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
[see this volume for the references given]
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The country has about 5,080,000 inhabitants (July 1995 est., see US.G.CIA 1999f, online), of which some 2% are classified as “Creoles” (Görlach 1984: 36; Der Grosse Brockhaus vol. 10 1980: 443) or “Krio.” English trading posts existed since 1651 (Der Grosse Brockhaus vol. 10 1980: 444). Sierra Leone has a certain significance in that the Creoles were the first “Western” black community (Görlach 1984: 36). The first group that were to make up this community were Blacks who had formerly worked as servants in England, and people of African descent who had come to England from across the Atlantic, where they had served in the British forces or had escaped from slavery. Their repatriation to Africa is associated with the name of Granville Sharp. This group founded Freetown in 1787. In 1792, they were joined by the Nova Scotians (former slaves who had fought on the British side in the American War of Independence and had been settled in Nova Scotia for some years). In 1800, the Maroons, militant escaped slaves from Jamaica, were deported to Sierra Leone. The largest of the groups which formed the Creole community were West African recaptives, slaves rescued from slave ships between 1807 and the 1860s, mostly of Yoruba descent. In 1808 Sierra Leone (Freetown, to be precise) was declared a British colony (Hansen 1993: 307). The territory of Sierra Leone expanded when its hinterland became a British protectorate in 1896; Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961 (Der Grosse Brockhaus vol. 10 1980: 444). |
Speech sample Sierra Leonean English