English and Krio in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is a centrepiece in the emergence of the Englishes and English-lexifier contact languages of West Africa. The movement of people of African origin from the Americas and other parts of West Africa to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, established the English language and the English-lexifier creole language Krio in Sierra Leone, and thereafter, in West Africa. Krios founded communities in major towns along the West African coast in British-occupied West Africa. Sierra Leone English and Early Krio assumed central roles as inputs to all other Englishes and English-lexifier contact languages in West Africa. The English-lexifier contact languages that arose from the interaction of Krio founder communities with local populations are today used by up to one hundred and forty million people across West Africa in varying degrees of nativization. This chapter provides an overview of the history, structure and trajectory of Sierra Leone English and Krio, and the impact of these two ‘Englishes’ on the linguistic ecology of West Africa in the present and future.