SIERRA LEONE

SIERRA LEONE. A country of West Africa and member of the COMMONWEALTH. Languages: English (official); KRIO (an English-based creole), Mende, and Temne widely spoken. The first Europeans to visit the area were Portuguese navigators and British slavers. In the 1780s, British philanthropists bought land from local chiefs to establish settlements for freed slaves, whence the name of the capital, Freetown. In 1808, the coastal settlements became a British colony, and in 1896 the hinterland became a protectorate. Sierra Leone became independent in 1961 and a republic in 1971. The English of Sierra Leone is a variety of WEST AFRICAN ENGLISH; it is distinct from KRIO, but the two shade into each other and into VERNACULAR usage. English is the language of all education, all newspapers and magazines, 95% of television and cinema, and the medium for documenting local history and culture. Its distinctive vocabulary includes: (1) Words derived from local languages: agidi a paste made from fermented cornflour, bondo a secret society for women, fufu grated and fermented cassava cooked into a paste and eaten with soup or sauce, woreh a cattle ranch. (2) Extensions of sense: apprentice a young man who loads and unloads vehicles, bluff to be elegantly dressed, to have a neat appearance (‘She's bluffing today’), cookery cheap food eaten outside the home, foolish to make (someone) appear stupid (‘The teacher was foolished’), woman damage money paid to a husband by another man as compensation for having a sexual relationship with his wife.