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Morisyen, Seselwa, Créole réunionnais
Mauritian and Seychelles Creole are together classified as Isle de France Creole (Baker and Corne 1982). Isle de France Creole originated in Mauritius in the eighteenth century, when Mauritius was known as Isle de France and the Seychelles were administered as a dependency of Mauritius" (Baker, personal communication, 1985). "Isle de France Creole is a French-based creole with at least 85 percent of the vocabularies of both of these languages of French origin and the remainder from various African, Asian and European Sources" (Philip Baker, personal communication, 1986). (Webbook)
The Creole of Reunion is apparently somewhat different.
Ethnologue lists their classification as: Creole, French based
Mauritius, Seychelles, Reunion
There are minor but recognizable phonological and vocabulary differences between Mauritian and Seychelles Creole and its dependencies of Rodrigues and Agalega. These differences do not affect intelligibility, however. Mauritian Creole is referred to as Morisyen, Morisieh, or Morisiê; Seychelles Creole as Seselwa or simply Kreol. (Webbook)
According to information compiled from Ethnologue:
This is the principal language of these islands. (Webbook)
Notes from Ethnologue:
At least four different phonemically based orthographies have been devised for Mauritian Creole (Virahsawmay 1967, Baker 1972, Ledikasyon pu Travayer ca. 1977, and Baker and Hookoomsing 1983, devised for both Reunion and Seychelles), but none of these as yet have achieved official recognition. In the Seychelles, the D'Offay and Lionnet (1981) orthography has achieved official status, but this orthography is not suitable for writing Mauritian Creole. Only Baker and Hookoomsing's lortograph-linite is specifically designed for both Mauritian and Seychelles Creole. (Webbook) (All of these are Latin-based systems.)
Geonames "Unicode test page...: Seychelles Creole alphabet - alfabe seselwa" http://www.geonames.de/alphrs.html#crs
Sample texts from the "Language Museum" site (NB, not clear which orthographies are used):
Probably any standard Latin font would suffice for any orthography [need verification]
The SPIP interface has been translated into Kréol réyoné (créole réunionnais) http://www.spip.net/cpf
The Ubuntu "Reunion Team" mentions a long-term project to translate Gnome (or even KDE) in Creole: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReunionTeam
Creoles and pidgins, French-based (other) / Créoles et pidgins français (autres)
Morisyen
Seselwa Creole French
Réunion Creole French
There was an experiment in 1999 using audio files, photos, and limited Creole text on computers in Mauritius for agricultural extension.
Any localisation effort might well seek to benefit from the similarities and complementarities betwen Seselwa and Morisyen.
On the other hand, Mason and Allen (2001) suggest that variations in creoles would not facilitate common localisation of texts.
Dwyer, David (1997), Webbook of African Languages, http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/hiermenu.html (page on "Isle de France Creole," http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/Isle_root.html )
Mason, Marilyn, and Jeffrey Allen. 2001. "Is there a Universal Creole for localization efforts?" LISA Newsletter, Vol. X, No. 3, August 2001 (pp. 39-42). http://www.lisa.org/archive/newsletters/2001/3/mason.html?access=leit1 & http://hometown.aol.com/marilinc/mason.pdf
SIL International, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, "Morisyen," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=mfe
______, "Réunion Creole French," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=rcf
______, "Seselwa Creole French," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=crs
SIL International, "ISO 639 Code Tables," http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp
U.S. Library of Congress, "ISO 639.2: Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages: Alpha-3 codes arranged alphabetically by the English name of language," http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php
Wikipedia, "Mauritian Creole," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauritian_Creole
______, "Réunion Creole," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9union_Creole
______, "Seychellois Creole," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seychellois_Creole
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