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English in the Caribbean

Brief historical overview

History

  • Colonized by Spain in the 15th century and much of the 16th century (discovered by Christoper Colombus in 1492).

  • From the early 17th century, other European powers, including France and England, settled in the region.

  • The English settled St Kitts in 1624, Barbados, Montserrat and Antigua in 1627 and Nevis in 1628, while France established colonies in Martinique and Guadeloupe.

  • The spread of sugar plantations necessitated more workers. As a result, some 5 milllion Africans were transported as slaves to the Caribbean from the early 1700s.

Pidginization

Pidgin: A linguistically simplified means of communication that emerges naturally when speakers of two or more languages need to understand each other

The slaves needed a means to communicate with their plantation owners, and the lingua franca imposed on them was English

A number of pidgin languages started to develop

Creolization

Creole: A pidgin that has expanded in structure and vocabulary and has all the characteristics of other languages.

The history of English use across the Caribbean is not uniform; each Caribbean nation has a different colonization

history

Linguistic variations in the creoles used

Process of creolization

1

3

2

Process

Becomes the first language of children within the community.

The pidgin remains the main means of communication within a community for a significant length of time.

Begins to increase in complexity as it is spoken in a wider range of contexts and adapts to serve the purposes of a

fully-fledged language.

Role of English

Role of English in the Caribbean

  • Official language of Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize

  • Only Jamaica lists Patois alongside English as a co-official language

  • Generally, a standard form of English is used in the public sphere whereas creole English is used in social spheres

Features

Features of Caribbean English

Phonemic variation

FACE vowel

A similar vowel sound as that used by speakers in Scotland, Wales and the North East of England on words such as game, tray, plain, reign, they and great.

Vowel mergers

In Trinidadian English, vowels in minimal pairs are merged, e.g. in bird-bud, body-buddy.

H-dropping

Initial [h] is deleted in words such as happy and house.

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.

Phonemic variation

Consonant cluster reduction

Complex strings of consonants are often simplified by omitting sounds, so that best becomes ‘bes’, respect becomes ‘respec’, from becomes 'fom'.

Rhoticity

Some varieties in the Caribbean, such as Bajan (Barbadian English), are fully rhotic; others, such as Jamaican English, have a more complex system in which the <r> sound is pronounced in some phonetic environments but not in others.

Unreduced vowel in weak syllables

Vowels in unstressed syllables are not reduced, so that speakers use a comparatively strong vowel on words such as about, bacon.

Dental fricatives (TH-stopping)

The stopping of voiced and voiceless dental fricatives, with /theta/ realised as [t] as in think, and /eth/ realised as [d] as in these.

Grammar / syntax

Zero indefinite article

The indefinite article, a or an, is occasionally omitted.

Grammar-syntactic variation

Zero past tense marker

Verbs are left unmarked for tense, although other signals (adverbs of time, such as yesterday, last week etc.) often give linguistic clues about the timing of an event.

Zero plural marker

Nouns are left unmarked for plurality.

Prosodic variation

High rising tone

Prosodic variation

Vowel assimilation

In Jamaican English, vowel assimilation occurs across syllables, as in see it pronounced [si:t], and syllable amalgamation occurs across syllables like do it pronounced [dwi:t]

Pitch differentiation

Homonyms are differentiated using a difference in pitch in Jamaican Creole and Tobagonian English.

Attitudes towards Standard English in the Caribbean

Attitudes

Language attitudes in The Bahamas

The Bahamas

  • The Bahamian creole is considered as the language of solidarity, national identity, emotion and humor, and Standard the language of education, religion, and officialdom

  • Bahamian English outranks the two metropolitan standards.

Trinidadian's attitudes towards accents of Standard English

Trinidad and Tobago

  • There is a general coexistence of different standards since no standard serves as a superordinate norm.

  • No clear-cut distinction between

exo and endo-normative accents

  • American-British influence
  • Distinction between English and Patois as co-official language.

  • English is mostly used in formal public settings whereas patois is used in informal discourse.

Jamaica

Language attitudes toward linguistic variation on Jamaican Radio

  • Jamaican radio uses a mixed methodology and focusing on two distinct genres, newscasts and talk shows.
  • Strong awareness of when the use of Jamaican Creole is appropriate and when it is not: Jamaican Creole is stigmatized

Works Cited

Galloway, N., & Rose, H. (2015). Introducing global englishes. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Lambert, D. (2017, August 7). An introduction to the Caribbean, empire and slavery. The British Library. https://www.bl.uk/west-india-regiment/articles/an-introduction-to-the-caribbean-empire-and-slavery.

Nero, S. (2006). Language, identity, and education of Caribbean English speakers. World Englishes, 25(3-4), 501–511. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-971x.2006.00470.x

Robinson, J. (2014, January 17). Caribbean English. The British Library. https://www.bl.uk/british-accents-and-dialects/articles/caribbean-english.

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