Australian Kriol

Australian Kriol
Native toAustralia
RegionRoper River, Katherine areas, Ngukurr, Northern Territory; Kimberley, Western Australia; Gulf Country, Lower Cape York Peninsula, Queensland
EthnicityAboriginal Australians
Native speakers
7,500 (2021 census)[1]
L2 speakers: 10,000 (1991)[2]
English Creole
  • Pacific
    • Australian Kriol
Early forms
Dialects
  • Roper River Kriol
  • Bamyili Creole
  • Barkly Kriol
  • Fitzroy Valley Kriol
  • Daly River Kriol
Kriol Alphabet based off of English Alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3rop
Glottologkrio1252
AIATSIS[3]P1
Linguasphere52-ABB-ca (varieties:
52-ABB-caa to -caf

Australian Kriol also known as Roper River Kriol, Fitzroy Valley Kriol, Northern Australian Creole or Aboriginal English[4] is an English-based creole language that developed from a pidgin used initially in the region of Sydney and Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia, in the early days of European colonisation. Later, it was spoken by groups further west and north. The pidgin died out in most parts of the country, except in the Northern Territory, where the contact between European settlers, Chinese people and other Asian groups, and the Aboriginal Australians in the northern regions has maintained a vibrant use of the language, which is spoken by about 30,000 people. Despite its similarities to English in vocabulary, it has a distinct syntactic structure and grammar. It is a language in its own right and is distinct from Torres Strait Creole.

  1. ^ Australian Bureau of Statistics (2021). "Cultural diversity: Census". Retrieved 13 October 2022.
  2. ^ Australian Kriol at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  3. ^ P1 Australian Kriol at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
  4. ^ The Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures. Oxford.