World Englishes: Caribbean

English

Bazhina Yana, group 401

 Location of the Caribbean
The Caribbean is a region that consists of the
Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the
Caribbean Sea & some bordering both the Caribbean
Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean) and the surrounding
coasts. The region is southeast of the Gulf of Mexico
and the North
American
mainland, east
of Central
America, and
north of South
America.
 The region takes its name
from that of the Caribs, an
ethnic group present in the
Lesser Antilles and parts of
adjacent South America at
the time of the Spanish
conquest of America. 7000
islands, islets, reefs and
cays belong to the
Caribbean region.

Resources in the Caribbean

area are sugar, tobacco and
cotton.
 Social status

The status of Caribbean Creole languages is

changing. In some cases, notably in Haiti and in
the Netherland Antilles, Creole languages have
been granted official recognition. These
languages have had standard writing systems
developed for them, and they have become an
official language of instruction in schools.
 Social History

The history and social structure of the Caribbean

had an important influence on their language.

The history, depending on the colonizer, divided

the Caribbean today into English-speaking,
Spanish-speaking, French-speaking and Dutch-
speaking countries.
 English-speaking Caribbean
Jamaica Bermuda St. Vincent & the
Grenadines
The Bahamas Antigua and Barbuda Montserrat

The Cayman Islands Dominica Trinidad and Tobago

Turks and Caicos St. Kitts and Nevis Guyana

U.S. Virgin Islands St. Lucia Belize

Anguilla Barbados British Virgin Islands

SPANISH-SPEAKING DUTCH-SPEAKING FRENCH-SPEAKING
CARIBBEAN CARIBBEAN CARIBBEAN

Cuba Curacao* Haiti

Dominican Republic Aruba* Martinique

Puerto Rico Bonarie* Guadeloupe

St. Marteen* French Guyana

St. Eustatius*

Suriname

Saba*

* All part of the Netherlands Antilles

Caribbean English is influenced by the English-based Creole
varieties spoken in the region, but they are not the same. In
the Caribbean, there is a great deal of variation in the way
English is spoken.

From the early 1700s, thousands of people were transported

as slaves to the Caribbean, particularly from West Africa. As a
result a number of pidgin languages developed.

A pidgin language is a linguistically simplified means of

communication that emerges naturally
when speakers of two or more languages need to understand
each other.
Initially workers on the
colonial plantations in
the Caribbean would
have spoken a variety
of ethnic languages,
but the language
imposed on them by
slave owners was English.

Among the workers themselves, however, a pidgin

language would have been used, based on the
sounds, vocabulary and grammatical structures of all
the contributing languages.
 The term Caribbean English includes:
• Regionally accented varieties of the standard
language: standard Jamaican English.
• Localized forms of English: Barbadian English.
• Mesolects between English and Creole, as found
in most communities.
• Kinds of English used in countries where Spanish
is official or dominant, such as the Dominican
Republic, Nicaragua, and Puerto Rico
• Varieties of English-based Creole: Creolese in
Guyana, Jamaican creole, Sranan in Surinam
 Caribbean English Creole
• Caribbean English Creole is the outcome of
contact among Europeans and West Africans
in the course of European expansionism, the
slave trade, and the colonization of the New
World.
• The regional dialects of the English-speaking
colonists were the dominant source of
vocabulary for Creole before the 20c.
• Large numbers of lexical items and phrases of
West African provenance form part of the daily
vocabulary.
• The grammatical structure of the group shows
patterns that are characteristic of West African
language families, patterns that are particular
to creole languages as a whole, and features
that appear to be restricted to the Caribbean
Creole group.
 Language situation by N. Mechkovskaia
• Number of languages (language varieties) constituting the
LS – multi-component
• Ethnolinguistic variety – multi-component: 8 languages
and so on
• Demographic weight of languages – non-equilibrium
• Communicative power of languages – balanced
• Legal status of languages – different legal status of
• the languages
• Degree of genetic proximity – closely related
• languages
• Relative prestige of languages – diglossia
 Vocabulary

The bulk of the vocabulary of Caribbean Creole

languages comes from the European language
involved in contact at the time of formation of the
particular Creole language.
 The following are a few possibly unfamiliar words and phrases that
occur in the poems:

• Babylan - Babylon (a nickname given to the Police by the Rastafarians of

Jamaica.)
• backra - white man
• duppy - ghost
• ketch - catch
• ketch a fire - catch fire
• mash-up - smash
• massa - master
• peenie wallie - a kind of beetle
• rack stedi - Rock Steady (a Jamaican dance)
• Rastafarian - member of a Jamaican cult
• run-dung - a Jamaican dish
• Walk good - Go safely
 The different varieties of speaking English in the Caribbean

There are five variations of English (Creole E., Erudite

E., Foreign E., Rasta E. and Standard E.) in use in the
Caribbean speaking.

• Creole English

The term Caribbean Creole English or Creole English

establishes a connection between the same or similar
patterns occurring within the Caribbean territories.
 The following are certain
common features:
• Some forms of Caribbean Creole English do not use
vowel sounds in the way that classic phonics-based
teaching approaches require. For example, in Standard
English where the phonic method identifies a short [o]
sound in words such as pot, Jamaicans use an [a] sound
which produces the sound pat. Or, Barbadians may say
tremble as trimble and catch as cetch; the vowel sound
in ch[ee]r is equivalent to the vowel sound in chair,
beer/bare, hair/ here, fare/fear and so on.
• Two consonants after a vowel are usually reduced to one
consonant in Creole English; that is, the last consonant
disappears.
• The following are examples:
• last = [las]
• blind, kind, find = [ -ain]
• bend, bond, band = [b-n]

Where the two consonants are followed by a

vowel (test, testing) the reduction does not
take place. However, the plurals of nouns ending
with [-st], [-sp], and [-sk] are often pronounced as
desses for desk and fesses for test.
• Creole English has a structure which conveys
information in short sentences. The casual observer
identifies these sentences as having no verb.
For example: She real nice or They out there.
It is interesting to note that this usually happens when
Standard English contractions are used – is becomes
['s] or are becomes ['re].
• A notable feature of Caribbean Creole English is the
number of equal stress patterns. In English, words
of more than one syllable have one syllable which is
said with stronger emphasis.
For example: standard, power, creat, record

In spoken or written English, go and come are

sometimes followed directly by another verb.
For example: Go get it; Go fetch; and Come see it.

In Creole English, verb constructions can be

much more elaborate and not restricted to
clauses with the verbs go and come.
• Erudite English
The most well-read people speak and write Erudite
English.
They impress their knowledge by sound, length of
words, many words in Latin and Greek and biblical
phrases.
Erudite English is used in biblical and proverbial
English.
The Bible has a great influence in the Caribbean. It is a
tool of general education. The extensive knowledge of
the Bible shows the people of a higher educated level.
• Foreign English
British, American and Canadian English have an
important influence on the English-speaking
countries in the Caribbean.

Many Caribbean people will imitate a British accent

on the north coast of the island. The result is that
many Jamaicans have developed an acute facility in
moving from one type of English to another.
Although radio and television serve unconsciously
as sources of training in Foreign English, it is
tourism more than any other factor which
contributes to its existence.

Guyana, for example, has had little or no increase

in foreign tourists over the past 25 years and very
few Guyanese returned home during most of this
period. Consequently, there has been little change
in the linguistic development.
• Rasta English
The Rastafarians speak Jamaican Creole. They have a
very strong pronunciation.

The speech of Rastafarians reflects the belief system

(a combination of African cultural issues, Old
Testament of the Bible and elements of Marcus
Garvey’ s preaching) of these people.

The syntax of Jamaican Creole is left intact except for

the substitution of the form I or I and I for the
Jamaican pronoun, me.
 The reason for this change is not entirely to do with
syntax. The sound [ai] is important in the speech of
the Rastafari. It is a sound with a positive force. In
the pure Jamaican Creole, the first person singular in
all its cases is expressed by the pronoun, me:
Me have me book

The spread of Rasta philosophy and the spread of

the language owes much to reggae music and
the popularity of its lyrics sung by Bob Marley, Peter
Tosh, Jimmy Cliff and Burning Spear to
name a few.
• Standard English
Standard English means English without Creole.
The spoken Standard English differs in the pitch, stress and
general tone from the spoken English in Canada, Great Britain
and the United States.

Many factors in Caribbean history and culture have also

provided Caribbean Standard English with characteristic
acceptable words, meanings and phrases. These are of several
sorts:
there are irreplaceable words like calypso, bush tea, and
ackee; there are old words like stupidness and cuffuffle; new
words like shirtjac, irie and ital; and, there are words with
unique Caribbean meanings like tea (any hot drink), lime (to
visit) and cool out (to relax).
• Example: calypso
normal: ca-lyp-so (primary stress and high pitch on
the second syllable)
typical in Caribbean: ca-lyp-so (primary stress on the
first two syllables high pitch on the last syllable).

There are some peculiarities of pronunciation,

vocabulary and style in each Caribbean Country.
For example:
Guyana:

These people speak a instead of o in words

like job – jab, dog – dag, got – gat.
Antigua:

There are many similarities between the speech in Antigua and Jamaica.

The Antiguans speak tr as ch.

• Three → Chee
• Truck → Chuck

They change dr in j.

• Drink → Jink
• Drunk → Junk

The Antiguans use the word min in the past tense.

You min eat. You ate.

 Grammar
The syntax of Caribbean English approximates fairly closely
to general mainstream English.
Special features include:

• Would and could are common where British English has

will and can:
I could swim, I can swim; I would do it tomorrow, I will do it
tomorrow.

• Where British English has a simple past there is often a

past perfect:
The committee had decided. The committee decided.
• They may mark past-tense and plural forms
inconsistently, saying things like:
She give me some book to read.

• Yes-no questions with a declarative word order

and rising intonation are much commoner than
the inversion of auxiliary and subject:
You are coming? Are you coming?
 Phonology
• Two consonants after a vowel is reduced to a
single consonant:
last = las
bend= ben
• The Caribbean Creole English is a phoneme [y]
after consonants (k ) and ( g )before a central
vowel (a )
car = kyar
can't = kyan't
• The Caribbean English are influenced by the Irish
English and Spanish syntax.
• TH-stopping. <th> in words such as think and
three is pronounced using a <t> sound and in
words such as this and that using a <d> sound.
• GOAT vowel. A similar vowel sound as that used
by speakers in Scotland, Wales and the North
East of England on words such as home, show,
boat and toe.
• Rhoticity. The <r> sound is pronounced after a
vowel in words like hard, corn and nurse.
• H-dropping. Initial <h> is deleted in words such
as happy and house.
 Resources:
• http://sjes.esrae.ru/pdf/2016/3/380.pdf
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean
• https://www.slideshare.net/melimey13/puerto-limn-c
aribbean-english
• https://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/case-studi
es/minority-ethnic/caribbean/
• http://en.copian.ca/library/research/caribb/caribb.pdf
• https://
www.poetryarchive.org/articles/guide-language-carib
bean-poetry
• http://
kommunizieren.weebly.com/creole-in-the-caribbean.h