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: waslo 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.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar
Plosive	p b		t d			k g
Nasal	m	(ɱ)	n		ɲ	ŋ
Fricative	f v		s z	ʒ
Affricate			t͡s~d͡z	t͡ʃ (d͡ʒ)
Semivowel	w		r		j
Lateral approximant			l

/t͡s/ and /d͡z/ exist in free variation, while /dʒ/ is an allophone of /ʒ/ after /n/. /r/ also exists as a phoneme, but its pronunciation is incredibly variable among Creole speakers. At the very least, it has been attested as an alveolar trill /r/, an alveolar tap /ɾ/, an alveolar approximant /ɹ/, the retroflex tap /ɽ/, the retroflex approximant /ɻ/, uvular trills /ʀ/ or voiced fricatives /ʁ/, and in some cases(particularly with families of Korean and Japanese origin) merging with /l/, particularly in initial positions(rejo la "king" [rejo] > [lejo]). At the most extreme, in the Progmarola dialect, /r/ in non-initial positions is often dropped entirely, as in krjolo [krjolo] > [kjolo].

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	e	o
Open	a

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

Possession

There are two ways to indicate possession(pesejo) in Creole. First, the article a can be placed before the possessor, as in:

A mi butejo

"My bottle"

The second way is by simply placing the possessor after the head, as in:

Butejo mi

"My bottle"

Pronouns

Pro-dropping

Generally in Creole, it is common for the subject, including personal pronouns, to be dropped when this can be inferred from the context. In this context, for example, somebody is apologising as they will be late.

A mi mal, mi o tad.

"Sorry, I'm going to be late."

If you think about it, it's already kind of obvious the speaker is talking about themselves being late. Thus, a Creole speaker would probably drop any of use of mi "I" in that sentence.

A mal, o tad.

To most Creole speakers, this can be as well understood as A mi mal, mi o tad, and is even more concise. Thus, most Creole speakers often choose to drop any personal pronouns in these contexts.

Demonstrative

	Singular	Plural
Proximal	ti	ti je
Distal	ci	ci je

Though ti and ti 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
	2nd		vi
	3rd		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/or 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.

Though the 3rd person pronouns li and li je are ungendered, one can specify the gender if they so wished with the use of the words omo "man" or ino "woman". If the gender to be specified is neutral(e.g. non-binarity or simply a mixed group of men and women), li womo je can be used, though this is uncommon. Instead, most speakers use the standard li/li je or simply womo je "the people".

	Male	Female
Singular	li omo	li ino
Plural	li omo je	li ino je

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	falun	falu	falej
Present	fal	falya
Future	falo	falwa

Copula

Rose Island Creole only really uses ei, the copula, when the pronoun is dropped. Ei is conjugated based on tense: a for present, e for past and o for future tense. For example:

O tad.

"[I] will be late."

Ei 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:

Tempo la adka, blujo la blua.

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

Existential verb

The existential("there is") verb in Creole is pes, which is also used to mean "to have"(derived from Esperanto posedi "to possess"). For example:

Pes ingxo ci la.

"There is a dog there."

Vocabulary

Rose Island Creole	Esperanto	English
Sal	Saluton	Hello
	Sal	Hi
Petu	Bonvolu	Please
Ĉao	Adiaŭ	Bye
Ĉus
Ĉan
Lo pi tad!	Ĝis revido!	See you later!
O tad	Mi malfruos	I will be late
Bo nok	Bonan nokton	Good night
Bo matem	Bonan matenon	Good morning
	Bonan tagon	Good day
Danki	Dankon	Thank you
Danki mwal	Koran dankon	Thank you very much
Pregon	Nedankinde	You're welcome
No (mi) gwotya	Mi ne komprenas	I do not understand
A (mi) mal	Pardonu (min)	Sorry

Example texts

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

Je womo nacit lib k wotuwotu na garimo k na rajto. Li je pes gwotejo k migwotejo k dun kopat lo ala na a fradewa swolo.

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

Ĉiuj homoj estas denaske liberaj kaj egalaj laŭ digno kaj rajtoj. Ili posedas racion kaj konsciencon, kaj devus konduti unu al alia en spirito de frateco.

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.