Chagossian Creole
creole language
Chagossian Creole, also known as Chagossian Kreol, (also créole îlois, kreol Ilwa, or just Ilwa) is a French-based creole that was still spoken in 1994 by the 1,800 or so Chagossians, the former inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelago in the British Indian Ocean Territory. Ilwa is a variety of Mauritian Creole with influences from Seychellois Creole. It is currently spoken mainly in Mauritius and the Seychelles. There is also a small minority community speaking the language in the United Kingdom.
History
Chagossian creole was developed on what would become the British Indian Ocean Territory, following the abolition of slavery within the British Empire as a way for the native Chagossians as well as the indentured Indian and Chinese labourers of the island to communicate. Chagossian creole also gained the shorthand name of "Zilois" as a result. Sega tambour Chagos dancing is performed including Chagossian creole singing, which originated from these workers.
Even after Chagossian removal from the British Indian Ocean Territory and their subsequent resettlement within the United Kingdom, Chagossian creole continued to be spoken by the Chagossians as a symbol of their culture and identity. This had occasionally led to conflict with the British, with some schools banning the use of Chagossian creole from their grounds. It has also been used as a language of protest, with it being featured by Chagossians protesting the proposal by the British government to hand over the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius without consulting them.
“Chagossian Creole” enters the record as creole language. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Chagossian, Creole and creole can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Chagossian Creole” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Chagossian, Creole and creole provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q36657. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1994.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chagossian Creole” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.