Caribbean English

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, Indigenous languages 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.

Overview

The daily-used English in the Caribbean has a different set of pronouns, typically me, meh or mi, you, yuh, he, she, it, we, wi or alawe, wunna or unu, and dem or day. Central Americans use I, mi, my, he, she, ih, it, we, wi or alawe, allayu or unu, and dem, den, deh.
Consonant changes like h-dropping or th-stopping are common.
Some might be "sing-songish" in Trinidad and the Bahamas.
Rhotic: Bajan, Guyanese
Influenced by Irish English: Jamaican, Bajan
Influenced by any of the above, as well as Spanish and indigenous languages: Central American English dialects like the Belizean Creole, or the Mískito Coastal Creole and Rama Cay Creole spoken in Nicaragua

However, the English that is used in the media, education, and business and in formal or semi-formal discourse approaches the internationally understood variety of Standard English but with an Afro-Caribbean cadence.

Dialects

The first-order dialects deemed constituent of Caribbean English vary within scholarly literature. For instance, the Oxford English Dictionary includes only 'the forms of English as spoken in Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, Belize, the Bahamas and Barbados, as well as in some of the smaller Eastern Caribbean nations' in deriving its phonetic transcriptions. The Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage further includes the dialects of Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Virgin Islands, the Netherlands Antilles, Suriname, and the Turks and Caicos.
Caribbean English-based creole languages are commonly or sometimes considered dialects of Caribbean English.

History

The development of Caribbean English is dated to the West Indian exploits of Elizabethan Sea Dogs, which are credited with introducing to England names for new-found flora and fauna via, for instance, Hakluyt's Principall Navigations of 1589 and Raleigh's Discoverie of the Empyre of Guiana of 1596. As English settlements followed shortly thereafter, Caribbean English has been deemed 'the oldest exportation of that language from its British homeland.'
Two sorts of anglophone immigrants to the seventeenth-century West Indies have been described in literature – the first, consisting of indentured servants and settlers mainly from southwestern England, predominantly speaking non-standard vernaculars of English; the second, consisting of colonial administrators, missionaries, and educators, predominantly speaking more standard forms of the language. The former, along with African slaves, are credited with the development and spread of English-derived creole languages, while the latter are noted as frequent sources of derision of such speech.

Features

Caribbean English accents and pronunciation are variable within and across sub-dialects. For instance, Barbadian English is fully rhotic, while Jamaican English is not. Further, within Jamaican English, h-dropping is common in some social classes, but uncommon in others. Additionally, in territories with English-derived creole languages, the phonetic distinction between English and creole is thought to be continuous rather than discrete, with the creole acrolect differing 'only trivially' from English.
Nevertheless, there is thought to be 'a general sense in which a "West Indian accent" is distinguishable as such anywhere in the world.' Likely reasons for this have been described as 'the general quality of CE vowels, the sharp reduction in the number of diphthongal glides and, the most distinguishing feature of all, the phrasal intonation separation of syllabic pitch and stress in CE.' Broadly, the middle-register of Caribbean English is thought to contain eight fewer phonemes than Received Pronunciation.
The lexicon of Caribbean English varies, to an extent, across and within sub-dialects. 'he bulk of the vocabulary,' however, has been described as 'identical' across the region. Additionally, in territories with English-derived creole languages, the lexical distinction between English and creole is thought to be continuous rather than discrete, such that 'structurally it is impossible to draw exact lines between them.'

Tables

Feature	Gloss	Notes
zero indefinite article	indefinite articles omitted e.g. in in _ couple of days	cf
zero past tense marker	verbs left unmarked for tense e.g. in I work_* a few months*	cf
zero plural marker	nouns left unmarked for plurality e.g. in my relative_* were*	cf
functional shift	part-of-speech and sense of words shifted e.g. noun to verb shift of rice in to rice somebody	cf
zero subject–verb inversion	subject-verb order not inverted in questions e.g. in You going back?	cf
reduplication	emphatic repetition of words or phrases e.g. in fool-fool, big big big	cf

Set	CarE	BrE	AmE	Notes
		–	–	–
		–	–	–
		–	–	–
		+		–
			–	–
			+	–
		–		–
		–	–	–
		–		–
		–		–
				–
	/			–
	/			–
	/			–
	/			–
	+		+	–
	/		/	–
	/		/	–
	/	+	/	–
				–
				–
	+			–
	+			–
				–
		–	–	–
				–
			–	–
				–
		–		–
			–	–
				–
			+	–

Unit	CarE	BrE	AmE	Notes
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	–	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	–	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	×	×	×	–
	–	×	×	–
	–	×	–	–

Standardisation

The standardisation of Caribbean English is thought to have begun upon the advent of government-funded public education in the West Indies in 1833. Notably, the earliest public teachers, credited with first developing Standard Caribbean English, had been 'imported direct from Britain, or recruited from among the "coloured" class on the islands who had benefited from their mixed parentage by receiving the rudiments of education.' Linguistically, however, the growth of public education in said standard register resulted in 'a practical bilingualism' that has been described as a typical example of diglossia. By the late twentieth century, as most territories transitioned to sovereignty and adopted English as their official language, 'efforts were made to define norms for Caribbean English usage in public, formal domains, and more specifically examination settings.' These are thought to have culminated in the 1996 publication of the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage, commonly deemed the authority on Standard Caribbean English, with the former defining the latter as 'the total body of regional lexicon and usage bound to a common core of syntax and morphology shared with , but aurally distinguished as a discrete type by certain phonological features.'