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| Trinidadian and Tobagonian English | |
|---|---|
| Region | Trinidad and Tobago |
Indo-European
| |
Early forms | |
| Dialects | |
| Latin (English alphabet) Unified English Braille [1] | |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
| IETF | en-TT |
Trinidadian English (TE) or Trinidad and Tobago Standard English is a dialect of English used in Trinidad and Tobago. TE co-exists with both non-standard varieties of English as well as other dialects, namely Trinidadian Creole in Trinidad and Tobagonian Creole in Tobago. Both islands as one consider the dialect as Trinbagonian Creole.
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways to refer to two different types of linguistic phenomena:
English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and eventually became a global lingua franca. It is named after the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes that migrated to the area of Great Britain that later took their name, as England. Both names derive from Anglia, a peninsula in the Baltic Sea. The language is closely related to Frisian and Low Saxon, and its vocabulary has been significantly influenced by other Germanic languages, particularly Norse, and to a greater extent by Latin and French.
Trinidad and Tobago, officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is a twin island country that is the southernmost nation of the West Indies in the Caribbean. It is situated 130 kilometres south of Grenada off the northern edge of the South American mainland, 11 kilometres off the coast of northeastern Venezuela. It shares maritime boundaries with Barbados to the northeast, Grenada to the northwest, Guyana to the southeast, and Venezuela to the south and west.
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Trinidadian English was originally based on a standard of British English. Located in the Americas, TE now uses many Americanisms, including apartment and trunk (of a car). It is understandable by speakers of international standard English, although it uses a number of terms that are unique to it (perhaps coming from Trinidadian Creole), such as "to lime", meaning "to hang out". Speech in Trinidad (and, to some degree, in Tobago) may vary by location and circumstance and is often remarked for its "sing-song" (i.e. a rising and falling inflection) intonation.
British English is the standard dialect of English language as spoken and written in the United Kingdom. Variations exist in formal, written English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland and Ireland, and occasionally Yorkshire, whereas little is predominant elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom, and this could be described by the term British English. The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken, so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language. According to Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English, British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions in the word 'British' and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity".
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States.
Standard English is the dialect of English language that is used as the national norm—the standard language—in an English-speaking country, especially as the language for public and formal usage. In England and Wales, the term standard English is associated with British English, the Received Pronunciation accent, and the United Kingdom Standard English (UKSE) grammar and vocabulary. In Scotland, the standard dialect is Scottish Standard English; in the United States, General American is the standard variety spoken in that country; and in Australia, the national standard is called General Australian English.
