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The threshold
What this language does
A creole does not conjugate: it places small markers before the verb (ka, té, ké) that carry tense and aspect with a regularity French has lost. It ignores grammatical gender. And it proves that a whole language can be born of a forced encounter in a single generation: the vocabulary comes from French, the grammar from elsewhere.
The untranslatable
On Réunion, someone who comes from mainland France. The word has no French equivalent because it looks at the mainland from the island — not the other way round.
Hello
Bonzour · Bonjou
the French word recast by three islands, each in its own way
Work in progress
Three islands, three spellings, one mechanism — and the political question that follows: at what point does a “patois” become a language? This is where the book stops being purely linguistic.
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Each chapter ends with a conversation with someone who lives in the language.
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