Have you ever approached someone from the Caribbean and asked him, her or them what language they were speaking? Well, many persons have asked me this very question on various occasions and so many times have I had to give the same answer: It's just English!
But what makes it so different that it sounds like another language? I've decided to investigate this.
According to an online case study on Caribbean English, the varieties of English spoken in the West Indies are due to the way languages emerge and evolve when people from different cultures come into contact. 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.
It also states that a pidgin language is not a mother tongue. This means it has no native speakers. But if the pidgin remains the main means of communication within a community for a significant length of time — as, for example, on the plantations of the Caribbean - then it becomes the first language of children within the community.
At this point it 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. This process produces what linguists call a creole. A creole is a pidgin that has expanded in structure and vocabulary and has all the characteristics of other languages.
Cool nuh?
· Many speakers drop the verb 'to be', which is required in Standard English, for example, one might say 'Why she so happy?' where as in Standard English it would be 'Why is she so happy?' In Jamaican Creole or Guyanese Creole, persons often use a + verb and/or a + verb + ing to indicate the present progressive aspect. (Me a cook/ing something sweet)
· On occasion, syntax may be different here as well. One might say 'Why she happy so?' however, this varies with region.
· Creole speakers often use me, him or her as subject pronouns e.g. 'James and me went to the movies'
· Some use double negatives, which is actually very common in other languages (such as French) e.g. 'She didn't give me none' and 'I ain't seen nobody'
· Many use them as a demonstrative pronoun e.g. 'give me them books'
· Most speakers use don't and was with all persons e.g. 'She don't like it' and 'We was there'
Here we see that that the differences lie not only the way we pronounce words like 'have' as /æv/ rather than /hæv/ but the way we speak due to the merging and evolution of languages.
Now, the real question: should these dialects be recognised as an actual language? Join the debate at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/caribbean/news/story/2009/10/091002_forumdialects.shtml
Sources:
Adding English: A Guide to Teaching in Multilingual Classrooms
By Elizabeth Coelho, Dyanne Rivers
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_RDWv9QBJc0C&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=sentence+structure+caribbean+english&source=bl&ots=WxiBcoqsST&sig=h7OsmkNkooARJjYxSqQd9xqi3gc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YEKJVcWvFebg7QajhbeABA&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=sentence%20structure%20caribbean%20english&f=false
Language & Literature Case Study: Sounds Familiar?
http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/case-studies/minority-ethnic/caribbean/
Caribbean Creole in Class
Rebecca Karli and Brynna Larsen
Structure of English
Prof. Baron
https://www.american.edu/cas/tesol/resources/upload/Larsen_Brynna_and_Karli_Rebecca.pdf
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