Krio

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Krio

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-03-13, 21:59

Krio is the lingua franca of Sierra Leone, apparently spoken by 97% of the population. It is an English-based creole. The official language of Sierra Leone is English, and in fact, from what I vaguely recall hearing, ethnic Krios (who are descended from both Africans and English people) often prefer to speak English and get offended if foreigners attempt to speak to them in Krio, but people from other ethnic groups are less likely to speak English...Anyway, Krio is a creole that I happen to be particularly familiar with, because my advisor has done (or perhaps I should even say "has been doing"!) lots of work on it and taught me some in a class I took with him once.

The orthography for Krio is pretty straightforward and phonetic. It does have some English-based digraphs, namely <ch>, <ny>, <sh>, and <zh>, which are pronounced just as in English. It also has <gb> and <kp>, which represent the labial-velar stops (I guess those appear in words that come from certain West African languages, although I'm pretty sure the vocabulary is English-derived for the most part). Other digraphs are very straightforward; for example, <aw> represents [aw], not what it represents in English.

The orthography also includes <ɛ>, <ŋ>, and <ɔ>, which represent the same sounds they do in the IPA.

Finally, one interesting feature of Krio phonology is that the only rhotic it has, <r>, is neither alveolar nor uvular. Instead, it's the voiced velar fricative [ɣ]. IIRC, this sound exists in some of the languages spoken in the area, but the uvular fricative doesn't, so when German missionaries arrived in Sierra Leone to spread Christianity, Sierra Leoneans imitated their uvular fricatives by treating their velar fricatives as rhotics - or something like that.

Anyway, I still have some notes on Krio. I haven't looked back at them yet, but they should come in handy, and I'd like to use them to share what little information I can on this language. :)

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Re: Krio

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-04-09, 17:52

A few more notes about Krio phonology: I think generally, when the character for a nasal follows a vowel (and a consonant does not follow the nasal), that just means the vowel is nasalized, and not that there is actually a nasal after the vowel. For example, the word for 'want' in Krio is written <wan>, but it's pronounced [wã].

Also, according to my notes, Sierra Leone had a large influx of teachers from Germany in the 1820s and 1830s. My notes also claim that speakers of many German dialects have the velar fricative instead of a uvular one.

Finally, I'd just like to make a note about English creoles in general, including (but not limited to) Krio (actually, this is a pretty important point for lots of languages): A lot of what may appear to be unusual pronunciations of English words (to modern English-speakers) and which are stigmatized by teachers in countries where the common vernacular is an English-based creole but the official language is English are in fact simply older pronunciations of those words.

For example, apparently no English-based creole has the word "woman" with the initial consonant. Instead, they (including Krio) have something like "uman" (although presumably some English-based creoles have entirely different words for 'woman', such as (I believe) "meri" in Tok Pisin). And in fact, Shakespeare didn't have the initial [w], either, and (if I'm not mistaken) pronounced it [ˈ(ʔ)ũːmə̃n].

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Re: Krio

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-06-10, 2:41

All right, about time I posted something on this forum! I haven't posted anything on creoles for a long time (two whole months)!

One more note on the phonetics of Krio: My advisor (who taught the class where I got all this information from) claimed that Krio has phonemic tone, but it seems the only tones that it has are low and high (both flat). These are supposed to be represented with grave and acute accents (respectively), but I think I'll just use the stress mark for high tone instead (and none for low tone), because I have no idea how to put accent marks on [ɛ] or [ɔ].

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I think we can finally start talking a bit about non-phonological features of Krio. Not surprisingly, many English words underwent semantic extension in Krio, and there are certain expressions in Krio that can all be formed from the same word to mean very different things. Apparently, the meanings of these expressions are often inspired by West African languages.

For example, the word bɛˈlɛ means (and I guess originally meant) 'stomach' (from English "belly"), but now it also has a few related meanings, such as 'womb'.

The word for 'woman' in Krio is ˈuman. bɛˈlɛ-ˈuman in Krio means 'pregnant'. (I think it just means 'pregnant', but maybe I'm wrong and it means 'pregnant woman'. I definitely didn't get enough time to write it out in my notes (they just say 'pregnan' :lol:)).

Another word that can be combined with bɛˈlɛ is ˈa.n. ˈa.n is made up of two syllables, not just one, and that's why I'm transcribing it with a dot in the middle (<ˈa.n> instead of just <ˈan>). The [a] has high tone, and the [n] has low tone. It comes from 'hand', but in Krio, it means every part of the body from the shoulder down. bɛˈlɛ-ˈan means 'palm'. I guess that's because it's the "womb of the hand" (which suggests, at least, that the original meaning of 'hand' is preserved in some sense).

ˈgi comes from and means 'give', and ˈgi bɛˈlɛ means '(to) impregnate'. ˈtek bɛˈlɛ means 'to give birth' (ˈtek < take).

ˈrɔn bɛˈlɛ means 'dysentery' (ˈrɔn < run). ˈban bɛˈlɛ means 'constipation'; I think ˈban comes from "bind." ˈpwel bɛˈlɛ means 'to miscarry', and I think ˈpwel comes from "spoil."

bɛˈlɛ-ˈwɔd (belly + word) is an expression used to refer to a person's deepest/innermost secrets. ˈnak bɛˈlɛ (knock + belly) means 'to make someone divulge a secret'.

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Re: Krio

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-07-19, 22:45

Some words in Krio come from English words that mean (or can mean) something very different, and apparently, these are serious problems for e.g. Krio-speakers trying to learn English. For example, the word ˈyala comes from the English word yellow, but in Krio, it means 'light-skinned' (and not 'yellow'). ˈSawa can apparently mean both 'sour' (the original meaning) and 'septic' (that is, if a wound has gone septic). Piˈkin can mean not only 'infant' but also 'young woman' (compare babe/baby in English :twisted:) as well as 'son', 'daughter', the smaller one of two things, and 'pupil (of an eye)'. It might also mean the bud of a plant, but I'm not sure.

It seems there is also a word boboluks or something in Krio that means 'fat'. I think there's some kind of onomatopoeia or imagery involved in the etymology of this word, but I don't really remember.

Also in my notes are these:

wet ˈfu 'extremely white'
blæk ˈti 'extremely black' (so here, apparently 'black' is pronounced with the same vowel as in English, even though I haven't seen this vowel in Krio otherwise! Or is it that I recorded this wrong in my notes and it should really just be blak (ˈti)?)
rɛd gain 'extremely red' (pronounced [ɣɛd gaɪn] according to my notes...maybe that should've been [ɣɛd gaɪ̃n] :hmm:)

The same day that my advisor went over all this, he also talked about reduplication, but I think I'll post about that separately so that I can also make a reference to this on the Sranan Tongo thread. There's an interesting parallel he noted between Krio and Sranan Tongo in this regard. :)

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Re: Krio

Postby Lauren » 2014-07-20, 0:28

vijayjohn wrote:wet ˈfu 'extremely white'
blæk ˈti 'extremely black'
rɛd gain 'extremely red'

How do you know which word to use to mean "extremely"? :?
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Re: Krio

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-07-20, 22:31

I...guess I don't really. :lol: I mean, I don't think any of those words is used to mean 'extremely' in general (but I don't think I know what word is used then, either!). But I think ˈfu, ˈti, and gain are intensifiers that are specifically used with those particular colors. (I have no idea or at least no recollection as to where any of those three intensifiers come from, but I guess it's a bit like saying "pitch black" in English, for instance. You wouldn't say *pitch white or *pitch red, right? By the way, [wet] is likely to be pretty close to how British sailors at the time pronounced 'white' :)).

By the way, if you or anybody else wants to hear some Krio, I'm pretty sure I meant to post this video ages ago, lol. It's a short drama promoting family planning. This is pretty deep Krio, so with relatively little interference from the local variety of English:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMcu0V8lIZI

This is the same video in English, but...somehow, I don't think it's too likely that anybody will understand it much better than the Krio version. Or maybe I'm just saying that because I couldn't when I first found it! :lol:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxTJNV7H-5s

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Re: Krio

Postby Lauren » 2014-07-20, 22:55

I understood none of the first, maybe half of the second. :lol:
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Re: Krio

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-07-20, 23:01

Yeah, so there you go. :lol:

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Re: Krio

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-08-15, 17:31

Now, I'll finally talk about reduplication in Krio as promised about a month ago, and then also post about the parallel I mentioned at that time between Krio and Sranan Tongo (on the Sranan Tongo thread).

I have a few examples of reduplication in Krio in my notes that seem to convey fairly different meanings. One is tutu, which means 'by twos'. So tu means 'two', but tutu means 'by twos'.

Another example I have is tonˈton 'stone'. I don't know what the motivation for reduplication is; in particular, what does ton on its own mean, if anything?

A third example, which is kind of interesting, is ˈafaf. I'm pretty sure af in Krio comes from English half, but it means any portion of something, not just half. ˈAfaf, however, means 'mediocre'.

The last example is the one that has a parallel in Sranan Tongo. Here, reduplication is used for the purpose of disambiguation. The word for 'wasp' in Krio is wasˈwas, while was on its own means 'wash'.

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Re: Krio

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-11-25, 7:53

At the time that English sailors arrived in Sierra Leone, English was not standardized in England. The sailors all spoke their own dialects of English, but they probably developed a variety of their own in order to communicate with each other, which was probably a koine, sometimes (at least) known as "Ship English." It was this Ship English, not English as we know it today, that the English sailors brought with them. As a result, there's a lot of nautical terminology in Krio that's used in non-nautical senses. Here are (some of?) the examples of this that I have in my notes:

Bambowt means 'prostitute' in Krio. It's short for bambowt gyal. Gyal just means 'girl' (this is an 18th-century English pronunciation), while bambowt comes from "bumboat," which is a small boat that goes from a ship to the shore in order to get supplies (including female prostitutes, I guess) and bring them back to the ship.

Similarly, in Krio, pailot means 'pimp', and towrowp means the fee that's charged by the pimp.

Bowsin-pep means 'police whistle' and comes from boatswain's pipe [ˈbowsn̩z pʰʌjp̚].

Dek means 'floor', bonk means 'bed', gyali means 'kitchen', and flap means 'fly (on pants)'.

Mo 'to fasten in a spot' comes from "moor."

Finally, there's krank. It comes from "crank," which means a ship rolling into sea, but in Krio, according to my advisor, it means 'heavy-set woman waddling'!

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Re: Krio

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-08-23, 2:36

More words in Krio:

Begnet and bagnet apparently both mean 'bayonet'.

Kovechos means 'covetous' and shows clear evidence of palatalization.

Swinj comes from "singe" but means specifically 'burn feathers off a chicken before plucking'.

I think my advisor may have also said something about something like "hammock" meaning the meeting place in the middle of a village? But I'm not sure.

Dash means a tip or gift.

Kɛkrɛbu means 'to die', apparently from "kick the bucket"(!).

Kyanwud is a kind of dye.

Marabu means 'Muslim' (compare marabout).

There's also this word in my notes: plasas. Apparently, it's short for palaba sɔs. I don't remember (or perhaps never actually found out) what palaba means, but sɔs means 'stew'. Apparently plasas is made out of fish, meat, palm oil, and vegetables.

Rɛdwata, according to my notes, is a "traditional means of judgment."

Totonja means 'loin cloth'. Not sure where that comes from. Also, fritambo apparently means 'bush deer' but is (sometimes? commonly?) mistranslated as "rabbit"(!).

Bigul means 'bugle'.

Kofi means 'curfew', cf. kɔˈfi 'coffee'!

Pala means 'living room', whereas rum means 'bedroom'.

Verbs by default have a past tense meaning, e.g. kam by default means 'came', not 'come'.

Verbs in progressive aspect are apparently expressed by repeating the word dey as follows:

dey sidom dey
is sit.down PROG

So the first dey means 'is' whereas the second indicates that the verb is in progressive aspect.

Just one more note on Krio phonology: according to my advisor, the vowel phonemes of Krio are /i u e o ɛ ɔ a ɛ̃ ɔ̃ ã/, but the nasalized vowels [ĩ ũ ẽ õ] are marginal. Krio also has [ɣ] (as previously discussed), [kp͡], and [gb͡].

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Re: Krio

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-04-02, 23:58

I'll start out with a few comments on my own previous post:
Kɛkrɛbu means 'to die', apparently from "kick the bucket"(!).

This expression is also pretty common in other Atlantic English-based creoles. I wonder whether maybe that might suggest a Ship English origin for "kick the bucket," but I haven't found any evidence of that being a theory or anything yet.
Also, fritambo apparently means 'bush deer' but is (sometimes? commonly?) mistranslated as "rabbit"(!).

In fact, I remember my advisor saying that Br'er Rabbit was originally not a rabbit at all but rather a bush deer. In his course packet, he also includes a drawing with a caption that he calls "The Real Bre'r Rabbit"; the caption reads "Cunnie Rabbit pretends to blow all the horns," but the animal portrayed there, as he points out, clearly is not a rabbit and does look much more like a bush deer.

One more note about phonology: Apparently, in Krio, two adjacent highs undergo upstep. So I guess if one high tone is next to another, the second (in sequence) will be higher than the first. Also, Ruˈbi is a name (Ruby); ˈrubi means 'ruby' as in the stone.

Nouns also aren't marked for number except with the optional pluralizer dɛn. Thus dì pikîn, where the first syllable has a low tone and the last has a falling one, can mean both 'the child' and 'the children', but di pikin dèn (where the last syllable is low) can only mean 'the children'.

Possessors come before the possessum, thus di pikin tois means 'the child's toy' (or 'the child's toys', I guess).

ˈWaka 'to walk' has the same (initial) vowel as its equivalent in Early Modern English, i.e. [wk].

The personal pronouns are a, yu, i, wi, una, and dɛn (this isn't a complete list). A de ˈwaka can mean either 'I am walking (now)' or 'I walk (usually)', de being one of the two main aspect markers in Krio. The other one is ˈdɔn, e.g. yu ˈdɔn ˈwaka. On the surface, in this sentence, ˈdɔn is pronounced with a rising tone, and ˈwaka, with a falling tone. Apparently, "done" in AAVE is related to the usage of ˈdɔn etc. in English-based Atlantic creoles.

OK, I think that's actually enough for now. :P

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Re: Krio

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-11, 7:35

First, a note on the use of piˈkin to mean 'pupil': My advisor said this is a calque from earlier varieties(?) of English and can be compared to the Shakespearean use of the phrase "baby of the eye." I'm not sure why he made a reference to Shakespeare here; perhaps it would make more sense to call this Elizabethan English? Shakespeare doesn't seem to have used this phrase in his works, or did he?

My notes say that dɛf yez means 'deaf' in Krio and that this is an example of a tautology or redundant extension (anyone who is deaf has deaf ears by definition).

Some more notes: Krio often has ky and gy where English would have [k] and [g], respectively. This is apparently due to the fact that Krio preserves 18th-century English pronunciations of various words. In Krio, two adjacent high tones undergo upstep according to my notes. This is why the first syllable of ˈwaka undergoes upstep after ˈdɔn.

Nouns are not marked for number. According to my notes, dì pikîn can mean either 'the child' or 'the children', but di pikin dèm can only mean 'the children'. (These are the spellings I wrote down in my notes, not necessarily consistent with the approach I've been using in this post).

Possessors come before the thing being possessed, e.g. di pikin tois 'the child's toy'.


My notes say, "Kìn is a habitual indicating availability of option."

A ˈno de ˈwaka is apparently pronounced a nó dè wâka. 'I didn't walk' is a nóbà wâkà. Apparently, ˈnoba comes from and ˈdɔn.

Adjectives behave like words, ˈpas is used for comparison (I think) and I think literally means 'to exceed', and ˈbig 'old' is apparently a "very British usage!" My advisor said ˈdis pikin big pas in broda is an example of serialization (serial verbs?).

Wit means 'with' only as in 'accompanying', whereas 'I cut the bread with a knife' would be a ˈtek ˈnɛf ˈkɔt ˈbred, with upstep occurring between every two words with a high tone.

Am is the third singular object pronoun. Tranga comes from strong but really means 'ran'. Ustɛm means 'when', and usai means 'where'. 'Like' or 'as if' is lɛkɛ se. Se is a complementizer whereas we is a relativizer. Apparently, a sabi di yus se i tel mi means 'I know that he told me the news' (unlike I guess a sabi di yus we i tel mi 'I know the news that he told me').
Last edited by vijayjohn on 2017-10-06, 7:38, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Krio

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-10-06, 6:51

I decided to try to figure out what palaba means. According to this, palaba in Krio comes from Portuguese palavra and means something like 'conference' or 'discussion'. I saw one source instead say the Krio form was ˈplaba and glossed it as 'contention'.

All right, now for some new stuff! First, a few points I already know pretty well but don't think I ever pointed out in earlier posts: Fɛn means '(to) look for', and can mean 'must'. Yu fɔ waka means 'you should walk'.

A kin ˈwaka and a blant ˈwaka apparently both mean 'I customarily walk'. ˈBlant comes from "belong to." Apparently, in Cornwall, to say that someone "belongs to" doing something means that they customarily do it. Na waka a waka kam ŋa means 'I walked here!'.

All right, it's about time I started quizzing myself on some of this stuff!

stomach = bɛˈlɛ
pregnant woman? = bɛˈlɛ-ˈuman
body from shoulders down = ˈa.n
palm = bɛˈlɛ-ˈan
to impregnate = ˈgi bɛˈlɛ
to give birth = ˈtek bɛˈlɛ
dysentery = ˈrɔn bɛˈlɛ
constipation = ˈban bɛˈlɛ
to miscarry = ˈpwel bɛˈlɛ
to spoil? = ˈpwel
innermost secrets = bɛˈlɛ-ˈwɔd
to make divulge a secret = ˈnak bɛˈlɛ
light-skinned = ˈyala
septic = ˈsawa
sour = ˈsawa
young woman = piˈkin, also meaning the smaller one of two things, pupil (eye), and maybe the bud of a plant
fat = boboluks(?)
extremely white = wet ˈfu
extremely black = blæk ˈti
extremely red = rɛd gain
by twos = tutu
stone = tonˈton
mediocre = ˈafaf
to wash = was
wasp = wasˈwas
prostitute = bambowt
pimp = pailot
pimp's fee = towrowp
police whistle = bowsin-pep
floor = dek
bed = bonk
kitchen = gyali
pants fly = flap
to fasten in a spot = mo, from moor
heavy-set woman waddling = krank
bayonet = begnet or bagnet
covetous = kovechos
to burn feathers off a chicken before plucking it = swinj
tip, gift = dash
to die = kɛkrɛbu
What is the name of a kind of dye in Krio? Kyanwud.
What is the name of a traditional means of judgment? Rɛdwata.
Muslim = marabu
stew made of fish, meat, palm oil, and veggies = plasas, apparently short for palaba sɔs
discussion, conference? contention?? = palaba or maybe ˈplaba
stew = sɔs
loincloth = totonja
bush deer = fritambo
bugle = bigul
curfew = kofi
coffee = kɔˈfi
living room = pala
bedroom = rum
to be sitting down = dey sidom dey (first dey means 'is', second one is a progressive marker)
Ruby (name) = Ruˈbi
ruby (jewel) = ˈrubi
the child(ren) = dì pikîn
the child(ren?)'s toy(s?) = di pikin tois
to walk = ˈwaka
you have walked = yu dɔ̌n wâka
deaf = dɛf yez
"habitual indicating availability of option" = kin or apparently ˈblant
I'm not walking/I don't walk = a nó dè wâka
I didn't walk = a nóbà wâkà
didn't = ˈnoba = + ˈdɔn
old = ˈbig
hard = tranga
when = ustɛm
where = usai
like/as if = lɛkɛ se
than/unless/except/exceed/surpass = pas
I usually walk = A kin ˈwaka or A blant ˈwaka
I walked here! = Na waka a waka kam ŋa!
with (only in the sense of accompanying) = wit
I cut the bread with a knife. = A ˈtek ˈnɛf ˈkɔt ˈbred. Note: Upstep from each word to the next

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Re: Krio

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-04, 2:55

I changed something in my list. :P Also, it looks like all I have left of the notes at this point is a few days' worth! However, there seems to be an awful lot of data in those few days' worth of notes.

Some more notes: I think 'I have' can be mi gɛt, but it could also definitely be mi dɔn gɛt depending on context. 'But' is bɔt. 'How are you?' is apparently aw yu du?. "I'm glad to meet you" is a gladi fɔ mit yu. 'Use' is apparently yus.

The word for 'house' in Krio is os. The possessive marker is ĩ (I guess spelled <im>), so 'the man's house' is di man ĩ os (di man im os?). 'Stupid' in Krio is apparently chupid (I wrote "chupid = stupid?" in my notes). In addition to being the 3rd person copula, na can also be a preposition. There's a word pan that comes from the English word upon. Nomoh (nomɔ, I guess) means 'only', and noba can be translated as 'never'.

Dey can mean 'day' and 'there', and wey can also mean 'when'. Did means 'indeed'. 'Chair' is chia. Another word I included in my notes was panlamp, but without a translation into English; this indicates that it means 'lantern'. Mowl (or mol?) means both 'bread' and 'to shape', from mould. 'Money' is kopoh (kɔpɔ I guess), and 'move' is muf. Mɛmba means 'think about', and lek (lɛk?) means 'love'. The past tense form of na is na bin, and titi means 'girl'.

'To have good behavior' is apparently get gud trik. Padi can also mean 'free'. I also have beteh in my notes; I guess that means 'better' is spelled either like that or as bɛtɛ (betɛ?? :?)? I also have i bin dey ya naw translated as 'she were here now' (I guess that would be after if). Ge foh/fɔ apparently means 'have to', so is translated as 'the way things are', lekeh is of course 'like', and tan lek means 'be like', from stands like. 'It's raining now' is apparently reyn dey kam so nau. 'Outside' is nado (from na (I guess the preposition) + do 'door'). 'Into (the?) interior' is oplain.

Ambog means '(to?) tease', amos means 'how much/many', safutwan means 'softly', bol means 'curl up into a ball and sleep'(!), toŋ means 'town' or 'Freetown', en ti means 'isn't it', tinap means 'stand', du ya means 'please', and apparently, sowk-sowk (sok-sok?) means 'very well'. There is of course also gladi, apparently from (Anglo-?)Cornish glad-y or something. A min means 'I thought', not 'I mean', and naya means 'here'. is apparently synonymous with mɛk in Krio. Owl (ol?) means 'held'.

Go fos wan flori is listed in my notes to mean 'immediately left him'. Weytin du yu means 'what's bothering you'. Spik means specifically 'to speak English', grap means 'to get up', and of course, meykeys (as it's transcribed in my notes) means 'to speed up' (or I guess also 'to hurry up'; I've seen it translated this way, too).

So here's a new vocab list based on all that:

to have = gɛt
but = bɔt
how are you = aw yu du
use = yus
house = os
the man's house = di man ĩ os
stupid = chupid
never = noba
day = dey
there = dey
when (relativizer) = wey
indeed = did
chair = chia
lantern(?) = panlamp
bread = mol
to shape = mol
money = kɔpɔ
to move = muf
to think about = mɛmba
to love = lɛk(?)
he/she/it was/they were = na bin
to have good behavior = gɛt gud trik
free = padi
better = bɛtɛ(?)
(If?) she were here now = (If?) i bin dey ya naw
to have to = gɛ fɔ
so = the way things are
to be like = tan lɛk
it's raining now = reyn dey kam so nau
into (the?) interior = oplain
door =
outside = nadɔ
to tease = ambɔg
how much/many = amɔs
softly = safutwan
to curl up into a ball and sleep = bɔl
(Free)town = tɔŋ
isn't it = en ti
to stand = tinap
please = du ya
very well = sok-sok(?)
glad = gladi
Pleased to meet you. = A gladi fɔ mit yu.
I thought = a min
here = naya
Another word for mɛk is apparently .
to hold = ol
immediately left him = go fɔs wan flɔri is listed in my notes to mean 'immediately left him'
what's bothering you = wetin du yu
to speak English = spik means specifically 'to speak English'
to get up = grap
to speed/hurry up = meˈkes

vijayjohn
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Re: Krio

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-10-23, 13:22

I think I've gotten to a point where I've begun to realize that I don't have a lot of resources left for learning Krio and may just need to listen to more audio clips in it, so maybe I'll just post some videos in it. :hmm:

Apparently, the stress in blaŋˈkit is the opposite of English. I'm guessing that means 'blanket'? I have it in my notes but without a translation. I'm not sure whether that's because it means the same as in English and so I didn't bother writing it down, or whether it's because my advisor was going over too much stuff in class at the same time and I didn't have time to write down what it meant. :P Apparently, pul klows means 'to take off clothes'. I suppose that's pul klos in the orthography I've been using so far.

My advisor also said the tonal rules for Krio are almost like in Mandinka and that a lot of people think that Krio is a descendant of Jamaican Creole/Patwa (it kind of surprises me even now to think that it wasn't more like the other way around).

Also listed in my notes are i noh bin tan for 'it didn't seem'; I guess that would be i nɔ bin tan in the orthography I've been using. My notes also say: "kontri-klows is basically a wrapper. Ker am = took it. [T]eymley is a kind of blouse. [L]apa [is a kind of] sarong. [...] Sontin du yu = Something's bothering you." I'm not sure whether I meant to write <sontin>, <sɔntin>, or something(!) else. The rest of this page of notes reads: "Nowto so yu don yus foh du. = That isn't how you usu. behave. grap na di matras = get up from the mattress." I'm going to try to make a list from this using the orthography I think I've been using so far.

Finally, in the spirit of using audio clips more, here's my attempt to start transcribing the dialogue in the video I posted (I'm really not sure about that last sentence I tried to transcribe...). I'll post the video again and then my transcription right under it, followed by new vocab to quiz myself over:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMcu0V8lIZI
Sia: Waʃ na, Isa! A nɔ wan si yu araun dis ples. Mi man go fɔ kɔm ova jisno.
Isa: Wai mɛk yu nɔ go fɔ lisin tu mi fɔ sɔm moment?
S: A nɔ gɛ taim fɔ dat! Yu nɔ de si a mared? If...if a nɔ bi mared, a nɔ gɔt natin fɔ du wit yu, yu no aw smɔ-smɔ wɔk! Waʃ aw yu du de dres! Luk a na yu ea! Yu nɔ ɔso sabi se yu na go put mi insaid turabul.
Musa: Yu kam ha? Yu dem usai? A nɔ de wɔn yu se dis ples fɔ dis kɔm an big am uman?

blanket(?) = blaŋˈkit
to take off clothes = pul klos
it didn't seem = i nɔ bin tan
wrapper (basically) = kɔntri-klos
took it = ker am
type of blouse = temle
type of sarong = lapa
That isn't how you usually behave. = Nɔto so yu dɔn yus fɔ du.
to get up from the mattress = grap na di matras


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