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Caribbean English is a set of dialects of the English language which are spoken in the Caribbean and most countries on the Caribbean coasts of Central America and South America. Caribbean English is influenced by, but is distinct to the English-based creole languages spoken in the region. Though dialects of Caribbean English vary structurally and phonetically across the region, all are primarily derived from British English and West African languages. In some countries with a plurality Indian population, such as Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, Caribbean English has further been influenced by Hindustani and other South Asian languages.
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Belizean Creole, or Kriol, also called Belizean Patwah, is an English-based creole language spoken by the Belizean Creole people; which is a dialect of Jamaican Patwah, similar to Miskito Coastal Creole, and San Andrés-Providencia Creole.
Berbice Creole Dutch is a now extinct Dutch creole language, once spoken in Berbice, a region along the Berbice River in Guyana. It had a lexicon largely based on Dutch and Eastern Ijo varieties from southern Nigeria. In contrast to the widely known Negerhollands Dutch creole spoken in the Virgin Islands, Berbice Creole Dutch and its relative Skepi Creole Dutch were more or less unknown to the outside world until Ian Robertson first reported on the two languages in 1975. The Dutch linguist Silvia Kouwenberg subsequently investigated the creole language, publishing its grammar in 1994, and numerous other works examining its formation and uses.
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A lexifier is the language that provides the basis for the majority of a pidgin or creole language's vocabulary (lexicon). Often this language is also the dominant, or superstrate language, though this is not always the case, as can be seen in the historical Mediterranean Lingua Franca. In mixed languages, there are no superstrates or substrates, but instead two or more adstrates. One adstrate still contributes the majority of the lexicon in most cases, and would be considered the lexifier. However, it is not the dominant language, as there are none in the development of mixed languages, such as in Michif.
According to the theory of monogenesis in its most radical form, all pidgins and creole languages of the world can be ultimately traced back to one linguistic variety. This idea was first formulated by Hugo Schuchardt in the late 19th century and popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Taylor (1961) and Thompson (1961). It assumes that some type of pidgin language, dubbed West African Pidgin Portuguese, based on Portuguese was spoken from the 15th to 18th centuries in the forts established by the Portuguese on the West African coast. This variety was the starting point of all the pidgin and creole languages. This would explain to some extent why Portuguese lexical items can be found in many creoles, but more importantly, it would account for the numerous grammatical similarities shared by such languages.
The languages of North America reflect not only that continent's indigenous peoples, but the European colonization as well. The most widely spoken languages in North America are English, Spanish, and to a lesser extent French, and especially in the Caribbean, creole languages lexified by them.
Cayman Islands English, or Caymanian Patwah, also called Caymanian Creole English, is a semi-creolised form of Jamaican English spoken in the Cayman Islands. While not much has been written on Cayman Islands Creole English, according to one text, it "seems to have borrowed English-based creole features similar to Jamaican Patois, Bay Islands English and San Andrés and Providencia Creole without having undergone creolization". African-American vernacular English and Jamaican Patois have also heavily influenced the way younger Caymanians speak.
References
- ↑ Velupillai, Viveka (2015). Pidgins, Creoles and Mixed Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 519. ISBN 978-90-272-5272-2.
- ↑ Hancock, I. F. (1969). "A provisional comparison of the English-based Atlantic creoles". African Language Review. 8: 7–72.
- ↑ Gilman, Charles (1978). "A Comparison of Jamaican Creole and Cameroon Pidgin English". English Studies. 59: 57–65. doi:10.1080/00138387808597871.
- 1 2 3 Eberhard, David M.; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2022). Ethnologue: Languages of the World (25th ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
- ↑ "Virgin Islands English Creole". Ethnologue . Retrieved 27 March 2023.
- ↑ Villanueva Feliciano, Orville Omar. 2009. A Contrastive analysis of English Influences on the Lexicon of Puerto Rican Spanish in Puerto Rico and St. Croix
- ↑ "Virgin Islands Creole English". Find a Bible. Retrieved 11 February 2023.
- ↑ Staff Consortium. "What Does the USVI and Puerto Rico Have in Common? A Summary of a Stimulating Discussion on Self-Determination in the Virgin Islands". The Virgin Islands Consortium. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
- ↑ Sprawe, Gilbert A. "About Man Betta Man, Fission and Fusion, and Creole, Calypso and Cultural Survival in the Virgin Islands" (PDF). Retrieved 6 April 2023.
- ↑ "Afro-Seminole Creole". Ethnologue . Retrieved 11 February 2023.
- ↑ "Creoles in Texas – 'The Afro-Seminoles'." Kreol Magazine. March 28, 2014. Accessed April 11, 2018.
- ↑ Kuiper, Kathleen. "Black Seminoles." In: Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed April 13, 2018.
- ↑ Holm, John A. (2000). An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles. Cambridge University Press. p. 95. ISBN 9780521584609.
- ↑ Sasaoka, Kyle (2019). "Toward a writing system for Hawai'i Creole". ScholarSpace.
- ↑ Velupillai, Viveka (2013). "Hawai'i Creole". In Michaelis, Susanne Maria; Maurer, Philippe; Haspelmath, Martin; Huber, Magnus (eds.). The Survey of Pidgin and Creole Languages. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. pp. 252–261. ISBN 978-0-19-969140-1.
- ↑ "Hawai'i Pidgin". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2018-06-25.
- ↑ Velupillai, Viveka (2013), "Hawai'i Creole structure dataset", Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online, Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, retrieved 2021-08-20
- ↑ Avram, Andrei (2003). "Pitkern and Norfolk revisited". English Today . 19 (1): 44–49. doi:10.1017/S0266078403003092. S2CID 144835575.
- ↑ Long, Daniel (2006). "English on the Bonin (Ogasawara) Islands". American Speech . Publication of the American Dialect Society, 91. 81 (5). American Dialect Society (Duke University Press). ISBN 978-0-8223-6671-3.
