Rose Island Creole

Rose Island Creole
krjolo rozinslo
Flag of the Republic of Rose Island
Pronunciation	[krˈjolo roˈzinslo]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2025
Setting	Alt-history Earth
Native to	Republic of Rose Island
Native speakers	145,000 (2024) (As of 2022, the number of Rose Island Creole native speakers has surpassed those of Esperanto.)
Language family	Esperanto Creole Rose Island Creole

Rose Island Creole(Rose Island Creole: krjolo rozinslo, [krˈjolo roˈzinslo]; Esperanto: kreolo de la Insulo de la Rozoj or kreolo Roza, [kreˈolo ˈroza]) is an Esperanto-based creole language and one of two official languages(aside from Esperanto) of the Republic of Rose Island(Rose Island Creole: respubliko rozinslo), and is spoken by the vast majority of the population alongside Esperanto.

The language emerged during the Second Great Migration(Rose Island Creole: uaslo la; Esperanto: La dua granda alveno), a period between 1981-1994 where thousands of migrants from across the world arrived in the rapidly expanding and economically developing Republic of Rose Island, where contact between primarily already Esperantist inhabitants with the vastly non-Esperantist new arrivals led to the need for a pidgin language to facilitate communication. Vocabulary is derived from many sources, with standard Esperanto making a surprisingly small ~25% of it. The grammar is also completely unique from Esperanto and takes inspiration from many sources, though some have noticed similarities with Haitian Creole. As such, Rose Island Creole is mostly mutually unintelligible with standard Esperanto.

Grammar

Word order

In Esperanto, aside from existential verb phrases, word order is completely free thanks to the accusative case, which marks the direct object in any sentence. Thus, mi parolas Esperanton, parolas mi Esperanton and Esperanton mi parolas all mean "I speak Esperanto". However, in Creole, the accusative case was dropped, thus word order is now always subject-initial. However, the verb-object order after the subject remains free, so mi pal krjolo and mi krjolo pal are both grammatically correct and mean "I speak Creole"; however, *krjolo mi pal would literally be "Creole speaks me", and is thus grammatically incorrect.

Nouns

Number

Without articles, number is uninflected in Creole. This differs from Esperanto, where plurality is inflected with the suffix -j. Instead, in Creole, the -j suffix developed into the plural definite article, je.

Definite articles

Like Esperanto, Rose Island Creole has no indefinite articles, but unlike Esperanto, Creole has two definite articles, singular la and plural je. They are placed after the word and must agree with the number of the noun.

		Singular	Plural
Indefinite	Cr.	bisiko
	Esp.	biciklo	bicikloj
Definite	Cr.	bisiko la	bisiko je
	Esp.	la biciklo	la bicikloj

Pronouns

Demonstrative

	Singular	Plural
Proximal	tu	tu je
Distal	ci	ci je

Though tu and tu je are derived from Esperanto tiu "that" and tiuj "those", the proximity have been swapped. This has been speculated to be because the actual words for "this" and "these" in Esperanto, ĉi tiu and ĉi tiuj, are more complex than tiu and tiuj, which may have led to an association of proximality with the simpler term, hence the swapping of meanings.

Personal

			Singular	Plural
Person	1st	inclusive	mi	ni
		exclusive		mi je
	2st		vi
	3st		li	(li) je

Rose Island Creole is a peculiar creole in that incorporates distinction of clusivity in plural first person pronouns. For example, the inclusive ni would refer to the speaker, the addressee and somebody else, while the exclusive mi je would refer to the speaker and somebody else while excluding the addressee. This distinction does not occur in standard Esperanto.

Verbs

The verbal paradigm

Creole mimics the verbal paradigm of Esperanto, though they are significantly altered. The verb falej "to fall" is used in the following table to demonstrate.

	Indicative	Active participle	Conditional	Volitive	Infinitive
Past	fali	falea	falus	falu	falej
Present	fal	falya
Future	falo	falua

Copula

Rose Island Creole only uses copula as an existential ("there is") verb. The existential copula is conjugated based on tense: a for present, e for past and o for future tense. For example:

A jundo tia.

"There is a dog there."

(In Esperanto: Estas hundo tie.) Copula is also used to mark the passive participle, as in mi levya "I am rising" and mi a levya "lit. I am being risen; I am being carried upwards". In all other cases, copula is dropped, as in:

Vetero la adka, ĉelo la blua.

"The weather is warm, the sky is blue."

However, if the tense of the copula wants to be specified, then the inflected copula can be re-inserted, as in:

Vetero la e adka, ĉelo la e blua.

"The weather was warm, the sky was blue."

However, this is rare in general conversation.

Vocabulary

Rose Island Creole	Esperanto	English
Sal	Saluton	Hello
	Sal	Hi
Petu	Bonvolu	Please
Ĉyao	Adiaŭ	Bye

Example texts

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Rose Island Creole:

Cuje womo nacit liblib k egalua na digno k na je rajto. Li je av rasuan k koncjenco, k devus carufej un le ala en spirito d fraciko.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:

All humans are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.