A French creole, or French-based creole language, is a creole language (contact language with native speakers) for which French is the lexifier. Most often this lexifier is not modern French but rather a 17th-century koiné of French from Paris, the French Atlantic harbours, and the nascent French colonies. French-based creole languages are spoken by millions of people worldwide, primarily in the Americas and in the Indian Ocean. This article also contains information on French pidgin languages, contact languages that lack native speakers.
Haitian Creole or Kreyòl ayisyen, a language spoken primarily in Haiti: the largest French-derived language in the world, with a total of 12 million fluent speakers. It is also the most-spoken creole language in the world. French is its superstrate language, some indigenous Amerindian languages providing substrate input. Some words also derive from English and from Spanish.
Louisiana Creole (Kréyol la Lwizyàn, locally called Kourí-Viní and Creole), the Louisiana creole language.
Antillean Creole is a language spoken primarily in the francophone (and some of the anglophone) Lesser Antilles, such as Martinique, Guadeloupe, Îles des Saintes, Dominica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago and many other smaller islands. Although all of the creoles spoken on these islands are considered to be the same language, there are noticeable differences between the dialects of each island. Notably, the Creole spoken in the Eastern (windward) part of the island Saint-Barthélemy is spoken exclusively by a white population of European descent, imported into the island from Saint Kitts in 1648.
Seychellois Creole, spoken everywhere in the Seychelles and locally known as Kreol seselwa. It is the mother tongue and shares official status with English and French.
^ abwith variants ap and pe, from the koinéFrenchprogressive aspect marker àprè <après> Henri Wittmann. 1995, "Grammaire comparée des variétés coloniales du français populaire de Paris du 17e siècle et origines du français québécois", in Fournier, Robert & Wittmann, Henri, Le français des Amériques, Trois-Rivières: Presses universitaires de Trois-Rivières, pp. 281-334.[1]
^from the Karipúna substratum (Henri Wittmann. 1995, "Grammaire comparée des variétés coloniales du français populaire de Paris du 17e siècle et origines du français québécois", in Fournier, Robert & Wittmann, Henri, Le français des Amériques, Trois-Rivières: Presses universitaires de Trois-Rivières, pp. 281-334.[2]
