Péla

Péla
Parla / Pala / Pâla / Pela / Pearlese / Pelese
pela / pal pela
Pronunciation	[pela]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2025
Native to	Pearl Island
Ethnicity	Pearl Island Creoles, Lankous
Native speakers	20,000 (2025) (Including Lankou speakers): 25,000
Language family	Creole French Creole Péla
Writing system	Haitian Creole orthography
Official status
Official language in	Democratic Republic of Lilapela

Péla is a French-based creole language spoken by the Pearl Island Creoles of Pearl Island. It is the sole official language of the Democratic Republic of Lilapela since its independence, and is spoken natively by 20,000 speakers(excluding speakers of the closely related Lankou), around 97% of the Lilapela population.

Phonology

Orthography

Péla(and by extension Lankou) uses the orthography of Haitian Creole.

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Velar	Palatal
Plosive	p b	t d	k g
Nasal	m	n		(ŋ)	ɲ
Fricative	f v	s z	ʃ ʒ	ɣ
Approximant	w	l			j

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Open-mid	ɛ	(ɔ)
Close-mid	e	o õ
Open	a ã

Though /ɔ/ is technically a phoneme, it is rare, and even in the few cases it appears it is often in free variation with /o/ for most speakers.

/ɛ/ and /e/ are separate phonemes, and are often the only differentiation between words that in French would be homophones, such as peche "to fish" and pèche "to sin". However, in Lankou(sometimes considered a dialect of Péla) /ɛ/ and /e/ have merged(and so has /ɔ/ and /o/, though in this case this phenomenon appears in standard Péla as well), meaning words like peche and pèche are homophones, as in its lexifier of French. This feature has, in recent years, seemed to have seeped back into standard Péla, particularly among young speakers.

Grammar

Article

Péla has one article that acts as both an indefinite and definite article based on its position. If it is before a word, as in yan om, it acts as an indefinite article("a man"). However, if it is after the word, it acts as a definite article, as in pajen yan "the old man".

Personal pronouns

	Singular	Plural
First person	man	yon
Second person	ti
Third person	li	lis lich

Yon is from French on, which though formally is the equivalent of the pronoun "one", commonly acts as the first-person plural pronoun(in place of nous) in colloquial French.

Lis/lich are interchangeable and are derived from Portuguese eles "they (m)". Lich is an uncommon variation more closely based on the European Portuguese pronunciation of eles: [ˈe.lɨʃ].}}

Possession

Possession is usually indicated by placing the possessor after the head as in Haitian Creole, e.g.

Patat om yan

"The man's potato"

This also applies to personal pronouns, and these are generally uninflected, e.g.:

Patat ti ye patat man.

"Your potato and my potato."

If the possessor can be inferred from context(usually if a specific personal pronoun was previously used), then son is used(from French son, the third-person genitive personal pronoun):

Yè grène li grèn patat. Man se reman sitè, ka patat son se bon.

"He was sowing potato seeds yesterday. I am very excited, as his potatoes are good."

However, unlike in French, son can also be used as a dummy genitive for first and second person:

Man re keyone, lo keyon son se reman che.

"I like to draw, so my pencils are really expensive."

Ti ya bon, me rezoman son se biza.

"You're right, but your reasoning is weird."

Word order & tense

Tense in Péla is, peculiarly, primarily indicated by word order. SVO(subject-verb-object) indicates present tense, as so(verbs indicated in bold):

Man oule yan fwi.

1.SG want.VB ART.INDEF fruit

"I want a fruit."

Past tense is indicated by a VSO(verb-subject-object) word order:

Ale li yo twa son.

go.VB 3.SG to house 3.SG.GEN

"He went to his house."

And finally, future tense is indicated by an SOV(subject-object-verb) word order:

Apè man fwi yan bouche.

later 1.SG fruit ART.DEF mouth-VB

"I will eat the fruit later."

Word derivation

Many Péla verbs and nouns alike are derived from each other. Verbs always end in -e or -è whereas nouns do not have a fixed ending, allowing for word coinage by simply adding or removing the suffix. For example:

• bouche "to eat" from bouch "mouth"(From French bouche)
• live "to read" from liv "book"(From French livre)
• bousòne "to get drunk, to drink alcohol" from bouson "alcoholic drink"(From French boisson "beverage")
• kreyone "to write, to draw" from kreyon "pencil, pen"(From French crayon "pencil")
• pech "fish" from peche "to fish"(From French pêcher)

However, these can lead to bizarre semantic shifts, e.g.:

• lapech "lost item", from lapeche "to search for [something]"(From French aller à la pêche "to go fishing")