Creole peoples may refer to different ethnic groups around the world. The term has been used with various meanings, often conflicting or varying from region to region.
Bajan, or Bajan Creole, is an English-based creole language with African and British influences spoken on the Caribbean island of Barbados. Bajan is primarily a spoken language, meaning that in general, standard English is used in print, in the media, in the judicial system, in government, and in day-to-day business, while Bajan is reserved for less formal situations, in music, or in social commentary. Ethnologue reports that, as of 2018, 30,000 Barbadians were native English speakers, while 260,000 natively spoke Bajan.
Jamaican Patois is an English-based creole language with West African, Taíno, Irish, Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Chinese, and German influences, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican diaspora. Words or slang from Jamaican Patois can be heard in other Caribbean countries, the United Kingdom and Toronto, Canada. The majority of non-English words in Patois derive from the West African Akan language. It is spoken by the majority of Jamaicans as a native language.
Iyaric, also called Dread Talk, is a language consciously created by members of the Rastafari movement. When Africans were taken into captivity as a part of the slave trade, English was imposed as a colonial language and their traditional African languages were lost. In defiance, the Rastafari movement created a modified English vocabulary and dialect, with the aim of liberating their language from its history as a tool of colonial oppression. This is accomplished by avoiding sounds and words with negative connotations, such as "back", and changing them to positive ones. Iyaric sometimes also plays a liturgical role among Rastas, in addition to Amharic and Ge'ez.
Antiguan and Barbudan, occasionally Antiguan and Barbudan Creole, is an English-based creole language consisting of several varieties spoken in the Leeward Islands, namely the countries of Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis and the British territories of Anguilla and Montserrat.
Guyanese English Creole is an English-based creole language spoken by the Guyanese people. Linguistically, it is similar to other English dialects of the Caribbean region, based on 19th-century English and has loan words from West African, Indian-South Asian, Arawakan, and older Dutch languages.
Maroon Music is a genre involving people of African descent that were not born on the continent creating songs in an African language. It is named after the Maroon (people), African refugees who escaped from slavery in the Americas and formed independent settlements. Just as the Maroon people created their own societies in lands foreign to them in attempts to retain their freedom, Maroon music is an attempt by African American artists to reacquire their Mother tongue through writing music in an indigenous African language. Maroon Music subject matter centers around stories about Maroon leaders and other historic freedom fighters of African descent, Maroon groups, peace, unity, and righteousness.
Caribbean literature is the literature of the various territories of the Caribbean region. Literature in English from the former British West Indies may be referred to as Anglo-Caribbean or, in historical contexts, as West Indian literature. Most of these territories have become independent nations since the 1960s, though some retain colonial ties to the United Kingdom. They share, apart from the English language, a number of political, cultural, and social ties which make it useful to consider their literary output in a single category. The more wide-ranging term "Caribbean literature" generally refers to the literature of all Caribbean territories regardless of language—whether written in English, Spanish, French, Hindustani, or Dutch, or one of numerous creoles.
Belizean Creoles, also known as Kriols, are a Creole ethnic group native to Belize.
Sprat Morrison (ISBN 0-582-05207-6) is a children's book published in 1972, and the first novel written by Jamaican author Jean D'Costa. The book is about the adventures of a young boy living in Papine, a suburb of Kingston. It is widely studied in Caribbean schools.
Virgin Islander culture reflects the various peoples that have inhabited the present-day British Virgin Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands throughout history. Although the territories are politically separate, they maintain close cultural ties.
Victor Stafford Reid, OJ, was a Jamaican writer born in Kingston, Jamaica, who wrote to influence younger generations to embrace local history. He was awarded the silver (1950) and gold (1976) Musgrave Medals, the Order of Jamaica (1980) and the Norman Manley Award for Excellence in Literature in 1981. He was the author of several novels, three of which were aimed towards children; one play production; and several short stories. Two of his most notable works are New Day - "the first West Indian novel to be written throughout in a dialect form" - and The Leopard.
The languages of the Caribbean reflect the region's diverse history and culture. There are six official languages spoken in the Caribbean:
Buckra or Backra is a term of West African origin. It is mainly used in the Caribbean and in the Southeast United States. Originally, it was used by slaves to address their white slave master. Later the meaning was broadened to describe white people in general.
Afro-Nicaraguans are Nicaraguans of Sub-Saharan African descent. Five main distinct ethnic groups exist: The Creoles who descend from Anglo-Caribbean countries and many of whom still speak Nicaragua English Creole, the Miskito Sambus descendants of Spanish slaves and indigenous Central Americans who still speak Miskito and/or Miskito Coast Creole, the Garifunas descendants of Zambos expelled from St. Vincent who speak Garifuna, the Rama Cay zambos a subset of the Miskito who speak Rama Cay Creole, and the descendants of those enslaved by the Spanish.
Afro-Hondurans or Black Hondurans are Hondurans of Sub-Saharan African descent. Research by Henry Louis Gates and other sources regards their population to be around 1-2%. They descended from: enslaved Africans by the Spanish, as well as those who were enslaved from the West Indies and identify as Creole peoples, and the Garifuna who descend from exiled zambo Maroons from Saint Vincent. The Creole people were originally from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, while the Garifuna people were originally from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Garifunas arrived in the late seventeen hundreds and the Creole peoples arrived during the eighteen hundreds. About 600,000 Hondurans are of Garífuna descent that are a mix of African and indigenous as of Afro Latin Americans. Honduras has one of the largest African community in Latin America.
Alfred Hubert Mendes MM was a Trinidadian and Tobagonian novelist and short-story writer. He was a leading member of the 1930s "Beacon group" of writers in Trinidad and Tobago which included Albert Gomes, C. L. R. James and Ralph de Boissière. Mendes is best known as the author of two novels — Pitch Lake (1934) and Black Fauns (1935) — and for his short stories written during the 1920s and 1930s. He was "one of the first West Indian writers to set the pattern of emigration in the face of the lack of publishing houses and the small reading public in the West Indies." Mendes' experiences in World War I would serve as the inspiration for the 2019 film 1917, written and directed by his grandson Sam Mendes.
Jean Constance D'Costa is a Jamaican children's novelist, linguist, and professor emeritus. Her novels have been praised for their use of both Jamaican Creole and Standard English.
The Sierra Leone Creole people are an ethnic group of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Creole people are descendants of freed African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Liberated African slaves who settled in the Western Area of Sierra Leone between 1787 and about 1885. The colony was established by the British, supported by abolitionists, under the Sierra Leone Company as a place for freedmen. The settlers called their new settlement Freetown. Today, the Sierra Leone Creoles are 1.2 percent of the population of Sierra Leone.
Beverley Bryan is a Jamaican educationist and retired academic who was a professor of language education at the University of the West Indies in Mona. Settling in Britain with her parents in the late 1950s, she went on to become a founding member of the Brixton Black Women's Group and co-authored the 1985 book The Heart of the Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain.
