CARIBBEAN ENGLISH

HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT

• The West Indies has captured the English imagination since the beginning of the
sixteenth century.
• England established plantations on a number of Caribbean islands in the 1620s.
• England’s Caribbean colonies became the most profitable of her New World empire.
• 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.
• Standard varieties of English, propagated by contemporary mass media and the
increased availability of schooling.
Caribbean English is a broad term for the dialects of the English
language spoken in the Caribbean, most countries on the
Caribbean coast of Central America, and Guyana
 THERE ARE DIFFERENT DIALECTS:

• Barbados
• Bermuda
• Dominican
• Martinique
• Republic Haiti
• Montserrat
• Jamaica
• Puerto Rico

• Saint Lucia

• Trinidad
 LEXICAL FEATURES

"Poohar" (Trinidad, Guyana):

"Ratchet" (Jamaica): A folding Messy
knife

"Dooflicky" (Barbados): A
typical celebration
"Cafuffle" (Barbados): Totally
confused.
"Laylay" (Jamaica): To loiter or
procrastinate. To waste time.

"Poppy show" (Jamaica): A person

(or thing) that looks ridiculous.

"Guineos enanos" (Trinidad): Baby

bananas.
PHONOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS
 CARIBBEAN ENGLISH CREOLE

Analysis has shown that the grammar and phonological rules of Caribbean
English Creole can be described as systematically as those of any other
language, including English. Furthermore, Caribbean English Creole is as
distinct from English as French and Spanish are from Latin.
Most speakers of Caribbean English Creole can switch between Creole
and standard English, as well as intermediate forms between the two. At
the same time, however, they may retain some distinctive features of
Creole grammar. They may mark past-tense and plural forms
inconsistently, for example, saying things like: «She give me some book to
read.»
 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

• 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.
• It shows some features 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.
• In the Caribbean, there is a great deal of variation in the way English is spoken.
 QUESTIONS

• Who captured the English imagination since the beginning of the

sixteenth century?
• What resulted in the formation of Caribbean English Creole?
• What dialects belong to Caribbean English? Name a few.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!