Italian Eritrean

Habte’s account of its sociolinguistic setting (1976: 170-4) and what we know of recent Eritrean history make it quite clear that it is not likely to become a creole, and in fact seems likely to die out within the next generation or two.

[6] Examples: Italian is still widely spoken and understood and remains a principal language in commerce and education in Eritrea; the capital city Asmara still has an Italian-language school since the colonial decades.

It is as if all the sounds moved from the front to the back of the palate; the effect on the mother tongue listener is surprising given that in Italy nobody speaks in this way.

Another characteristic element is the elision of the final vowel to the first plural person of verbs such as 'essere' and 'avere': "siam pronti, abbiam fretta".

It is still used today in some linguistic areas of Northern Italy even if at the ear of the third millennium it sounds vaguely nineteenth-century, not to mention literary; it was probably imposed in the initial phase of colonization and remained unchanged through the decades.While phonology and intonation are affected by native Eritrean languages, including Tigrinya and Arabic, Eritrean Pidgin Italian is based on standard European form.