Tayo

Tayo, also known as "patois de Saint-Louis", is a French-based Creole spoken in New Caledonia. It is spoken by about 3000 people in the village of Saint-Louis, about from the New Caledonian capital Nouméa. The language developed out of the contact of speakers of many different Kanak languages in the mission, and the use of French for official purposes and as the language of prestige. The language contains structural elements primarily from Melanesian languages and lexical elements mainly from French. History Saint-Louis was founded as a Marist mission in 1860 in the early French colonial period of the island, in order to convert the native Kanak population to Christianity and a European way of life. The missionaries took converts from surrounding Kanak tribes, especially the Cèmuhi, Drubea and Xârâcuu to live in the mission. Saint-Louis therefore became a highly multilingual society with a diverse range of Kanak languages as well as French. In order for different ethnic groups to communicate and also because French was the language imposed by the missionaries, a simplified French became the language of communication and the native language of the next generation, which developed into Tayo Creole, mixing French vocabulary with mainly Melanesian language structures. The Role of the Girls' Mission School The girls school in Saint-Louis has been widely considered instrumental in creating the conditions for the formation of Tayo, especially by Speedy (2013). There, Kanak girls were schooled in standard French, and Kanak languages were forbidden, although in practice girls used many linguistic resources to communicate such as code-switching, translation and the use of interlanguages. These communicative practices resulted in a form of French with Melanesian structures. Men and boys meanwhile had less exposure to French working in the field. When the girls married husbands from the community their language had greater prestige than Kanak languages, thanks to the ideology of the missionaries. Therefore, despite the societal multilingualism that had been the norm in New Caledonia at the time, in which children would learn the different native languages of their mother and father, couples communicated with each other and their children primarily in simplified French and this became the first language of the next generation, as Tayo Creole.