Linguistic Affiliation
Pichi is a member of the African branch of the family of Atlantic English-lexicon Creoles. It descends directly from Krio, the English-lexicon Creole that rose to become the language of the Creole community of Freetown, Sierra Leone in the late 18th century (cf. Huber 1999). Throughout the better part of the 19th century, this community, which had emerged from the horrors of slavery and the slave trade, began to forge a vibrant African-European culture and economy along the West African seaboard (cf. e.g. Fyle 1962; Wyse 1989). Mutual intelligibility within the African branch is quite high. However, an impediment to fluid communication between speakers of Pichi and its sister languages is the divergent path of development of Pichi since 1857. In that year, Spain began to actively enforce colonial rule in Equatorial Guinea. From then onwards, Pichi was cut off from the direct influence of English, the language from which it inherited the largest part of its lexicon. Some of the present-day differences between Pichi and its sister languages can be attributed to internal developments in Pichi. But without doubt, an equally important reason for the separate development of Pichi is the extensive degree of language contact with Spanish, the colonial and present-day official language of Equatorial Guinea.
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