Morisyen (Mauritian Creole) Lessons
Morisyen, or Mauritian Creole, is the everyday language of most of Mauritius, with somewhere around 1.3 million speakers. It is also one of the hardest languages in the world to find a proper course for.
I teach it one to one, online, and write the materials as I go, because there is no shelf to take them off.
If you would rather talk than read, book a free 15-minute call.
Who I work with
- Heritage speakers who understand far more than they can say, or who have never learned to read and write the language
- Families with Mauritian roots who want children to keep it, or to be able to talk to grandparents
- Partners and in-laws marrying into a Mauritian family and tired of being the only person at the table who is lost
- Travellers going to Mauritius who would rather not fall back on French or English
- Linguists and language enthusiasts, because creoles are genuinely interesting, and this one is well documented and badly taught
Adults and children both. Absolute beginners welcome, and so are people who grew up hearing it and stopped speaking it.
It is more approachable than you expect
People who found French hard at school often assume Morisyen will be harder. It generally is not, and the reason is structural.
- Verbs do not conjugate. Tense and person are carried by a small set of particles placed before the verb, and the verb itself does not change. There is no je vais, tu vas, il va to memorise.
- Nouns do not change for number in the way French and English nouns do.
- Pronouns keep one form regardless of case or gender.
- Articles follow the noun rather than coming before it. Unfamiliar, but a single rule rather than a system of exceptions.
Most of the vocabulary comes from French, which gives anyone with school French a substantial head start. But it is not French: there are also words from Portuguese and Spanish, Tamil, Malagasy, East African languages and Chinese, and the French-derived words are often not used the way French uses them. Assuming Morisyen is "French with the grammar removed" is the commonest mistake and produces sentences no Mauritian would say.
The grammar is set out in more detail in the free Kreol syntax guide.
The spelling question
This is worth understanding before you start, and it is where most self-taught learners get stuck.
For a long time Morisyen was written ad hoc, using French spelling conventions, and different writers spelled the same word differently. A standardised orthography, Lortograf Kreol Morisien, was published in 2011, followed by a reference grammar in 2012, and the language is now regulated by the Akademi Kreol Morisien.
The practical consequence: a heritage speaker who searches online will find the same word spelled three or four ways, mostly in the older French-influenced style, and reasonably conclude that the language has no rules. It does.
I teach the standardised orthography. It is consistent, it reflects how the language actually sounds rather than how French would write it, and it is what is used in Mauritian schools and publishing. If you have only ever seen the French-style spellings, the first lesson or two is partly unlearning them, and it is usually the point at which the writing system suddenly makes sense.
What a lesson looks like
Because there is no standard course, lessons are built around what you actually want to do with the language. In practice that tends to be one of three things:
- Speaking to family. We work from the conversations you actually need, the kitchen, the phone call, the wedding, rather than a textbook's idea of useful phrases.
- Reading and writing. The orthography, then real texts. This is the most common request from heritage speakers, who can often already speak.
- Starting from nothing. Structured from the beginning, and built the same way I teach any language.
That means chunks rather than word lists, usable phrases with the grammar already inside them; a great deal of listening, always with a task attached, because new language has to be familiar in the ear before anyone should be asked to produce it; grammar taught explicitly and in sequence, after you have heard a structure working rather than before; and then a lot of small tasks that make you process the language rather than copy it.
Materials are written for you and you keep them. Lessons are on Zoom, in the UK timezone.
Pricing
| Single lesson | Block of five | |
|---|---|---|
| 30 minutes | £22.50 | £100 |
| 55 minutes | £45 | £200 |
Blocks of five work out at £20 and £40 a lesson. Rescheduling is free with at least 24 hours' notice.
For a language you are learning to speak rather than to be examined in, two 30-minute lessons a week often works better than one longer one. Little and often suits speaking practice.
See all Morisyen lesson packages
Start free
There is no reason to pay before you know whether you like it.
- A free Morisyen taster course in the course library, everyday phrases for absolute beginners.
- Kreol: History and Evolution, where the language came from and how it formed.
- Kreol: Syntax, how sentences are built, and how that differs from French.
- Kreol: Pronunciation, a phonetic guide.
- Kreol: To or Ou?, the polite form of "you", and when each is expected. Heritage speakers get this wrong more often than beginners do.
Common questions
I can understand it but not speak it. Is that normal? Extremely. It is the single most common starting point, and it is a good one, because comprehension is the slow part and you already have it.
Do I need French first? No. French helps with vocabulary and hinders with grammar, so it is roughly a wash.
Is it a dialect of French? No. It is a language in its own right, with its own grammar, its own standardised spelling and its own academy. The vocabulary overlap is real but the systems are different.
Can you teach children? Yes, from about seven. Keeping a heritage language alive in a child is mostly about making it ordinary rather than special, and short regular lessons help with that.
Which spelling will you teach? The standardised one. If you need to read older or French-influenced spellings, such as family letters, song lyrics or social media, we can cover those too.
Do you teach other languages? Yes. French from beginner to A Level, and English and 11+.
Start with a conversation
Book a free 15-minute call and tell me what you want to use the language for. Add it to your basket and check out, the total is £0, and you will receive an email with the link to choose a time.
Or send me a question first if you would rather write.
Speaker numbers and information about the standardised orthography and the Akademi Kreol Morisien are drawn from published reference sources on Mauritian Creole.