English is Liberiaʼs official language. There is a Liberian variety of Standard English; it is the language of Liberiaʼs media and institutions of higher learning, and it is the target of language instruction in Liberian schools. Liberian Settler English is the language of the Settler ethnic group, i.e. descendants of the 16,000 African Americans who immigrated to Liberia in the nineteenth century after the abolition of slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean. It is a direct descendant of the nineteenth-century African American English that the immigrants brought with them.