What Mauritius speaks

On the question of language, Mauritius has the rare advantage of knowing itself through a recent and simple figure. The population census of July 2022 asked everyone which language they spoke most often at home. The answer fits in three lines, and it leaves no room for doubt: Creole remains, by a very wide margin, the most commonly spoken language on the island.

Three figures

In 2022, 90.0 per cent of Mauritians spoke only Creole at home, against 89.8 per cent in 2011. Some 5.1 per cent spoke only Bhojpuri, against 5.5 per cent eleven years earlier. And 4.4 per cent spoke only French, against 4.3 per cent.

Set side by side, these figures tell of a remarkable stability. In eleven years, Creole gains two tenths of a point and French one tenth, while Bhojpuri slips back by four tenths. No language collapses; none bursts onto the scene. The linguistic landscape of Mauritian homes in 2022 is, to within very little, that of 2011.

It is simply worth bearing in mind what these percentages count. The question concerned the language of the home, and the three answers describe households where only one language is spoken. It did not concern the language of shop signs and menus, nor that of newspapers, schools, government or the courts.

The country this census describes

The 2022 census was the country’s first to be conducted digitally: answers were entered on tablets, in the course of computer-assisted interviews.

It counted 1,235,260 inhabitants in the Republic of Mauritius, of whom 1,191,280 were on the island of Mauritius, 43,650 on Rodrigues and 330 on Agalega. The population of the Republic has fallen by 1,830 people since 2011: little on the scale of the country, but a decline nonetheless.

The literacy rate of the population aged ten and over rose from 90.1 per cent in 2011 to 91.9 per cent in 2022. It stands at 93.6 per cent among men and 90.3 per cent among women, and the gap between the two has narrowed, from 4.8 to 3.3 points.

What a visitor can infer

First, this: the language of daily life, in the great majority of homes, is Mauritian Creole. Nine people in ten make it the only language of the household. A visitor who expects an island where French is spoken at home is out by a factor of twenty. At home, French even comes after Bhojpuri: 4.4 per cent for the one, 5.1 per cent for the other, which few travellers expect.

Second, that French is not marginal for all that. It is the language of the home for only a little more than one person in twenty, but the life of a country does not come down to its households. The language spoken at the table is not necessarily the one people read or write, nor the one in which a stranger is welcomed.

Finally, that the journey brings a singular experience. The visitor will hear all around them a language they will probably not understand, spoken by almost everyone, in a country where they will nonetheless be understood. This is no contradiction: it is precisely what the figures describe.

Creole and Bhojpuri: two words, rightly heard

“Creole” is here the name Mauritians themselves give their language when asked. It is also called Mauritian Creole, or Kreol Morisien in its own spelling. It is the common language of the island, that of almost every household, and it continues to gain, slowly, a few tenths of a point.

“Bhojpuri” refers to a language still spoken at home by one person in twenty. It is receding gently, by four tenths of a point in eleven years, but it holds its ground. This single figure says more about the history of the island’s settlement than many pages of narrative: no language is kept in a household, generation after generation, without a memory to carry it.

For the traveller, the practical consequence is modest and worth knowing. There is no need to learn Creole to be understood, but it helps to know that this is what one hears in the street, at the market, on the bus: the language of nine households in ten.