Sociolinguistic Situation
Mauritian Creole is the lingua franca of Mauritius. Mauritius, formerly a British colony, has kept English as its official language, although French is more widely spoken. Mauritians tend to speak Creole at home and French in the workplace. Creole is a French based language. French and English are spoken in schools. However, although a large percentage of Mauritians are of Indian descent, they primarily speak Creole, which is their mother tongue in the sense that their ancestors along with those of African, European and Chinese descent helped build the creole languages together centuries ago, when Mauritius was the merging place of peoples from different continents who together founded a nation with its own culture and history.
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“The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision.”
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