Sango

Is Sango a creole or not

William J. Samarin and linguists who follow him classify it as a creole based on Ngbandi. Marcel Diki-Kidiri and Charles H. Morrill reject that and argue its changes can be explained without creolisation. If it is a creole, it is one with an African rather than a European base, since French gave it many loanwords but its structure stayed Ngbandi.

How Bangui turned Sango into a first language

The French army recruited Central Africans, who used Sango among themselves, and missionaries promoted it through the 20th century. Bangui has grown fast since the 1960s. Migrants to the city spoke many languages and used Sango only between groups, but their children grew up with it as their main language, sometimes their only one, and its vocabulary expanded. Morrill's work of 1997 found three emerging norms: an urban radio variety with few French words, a pastor variety and a functionary variety, full of French loans.

Who set the spelling of Sango

A presidential decree, No 84.025, set an official alphabet of 22 letters in 1984. Before that, Catholic and Protestant missionaries had spelled it slightly differently, and the 1966 Bible and 1968 hymnal are still used. Sango has three tones: low is left unmarked, mid takes a diaeresis and high a circumflex, so do-re-mi is written do-rë-mî. Outside religion, little has been written in it.

In the Central African Republic it is also used beside French in fields where French was once the rule. It is spoken as a lingua franca in southern Chad, where its use is falling, and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where it is growing.