What are the regional varieties of English in the Caribbean?
Standard British English in the Caribbean is mainly used in writing and formal contexts, while Creole varieties are preferred in speech and informal situations.
What are regional varieties of a language?
A regional dialect is not a distinct language but a variety of a language spoken in a particular area of a country. Some regional dialects have been given traditional names which mark them out as being significantly different from standard varieties spoken in the same place.
What languages are spoken in the Caribbean region?
There are six official languages spoken in the Caribbean and many more unofficial languages. Among the official languages are Dutch, English, French, Haitian Creole, Papiamentu, and Spanish. Two of these official languages, Haitian Creole and Papiamentu, are Creole languages.
Which language is most common to the Caribbean region?
Spanish
Spanish-speakers are the most numerous in the Caribbean. English is the first or second language in most Caribbean islands and is also the unofficial “language of tourism”, the dominant industry in the Caribbean region.
What language is spoken in Jamaica?
EnglishJamaica / Official languageEnglish is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, originally spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. Wikipedia
What are the different varieties of language which exist within a language?
Such terms as language, standard language, dialect, style, speech level, register, pidgin, Creole are referred to as varieties of the language. In this relation, Fishman states that each language variety can be identified its sound systems, vocabularies, grammatical features, and meaning (Fishman, 1972:5).
What is a language variety defined?
In sociolinguistics, language variety—also called lect—is a general term for any distinctive form of a language or linguistic expression. Linguists commonly use language variety (or simply variety) as a cover term for any of the overlapping subcategories of a language, including dialect, register, jargon, and idiolect.
Why is it called Caribbean?
The name “Caribbean” is derived from the Caribs, one of the dominant American Indian groups in the region at the time of European contact during the late 15th century.
How many islands are in the Caribbean region?
700 islands
Encompassing more than 700 islands, reefs, and cays in an area of approximately one million square miles, the Caribbean archipelago today counts 13 sovereign island nations and 12 dependent territories, with close political ties throughout the region to Europe and the United States.
What language does Trinidad speak?
EnglishTrinidad and Tobago / Official languageEnglish is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, originally spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. Wikipedia
What is the dominant language in the Caribbean?
English is the first or second language in most Caribbean islands and is also the unofficial “language of tourism”, the dominant industry in the Caribbean region.
What are The lexifiers of Caribbean creole languages?
The lexifiers of most of the Caribbean creoles and patois are languages of Indo-European colonizers of era. Creole languages continue to evolve in the direction of European colonial languages to which they are related, so that decreolization occurs and a post-creole continuum arises.
What is the language situation like in Jamaica and the Caribbean?
Another salient aspect of the language situation in Jamaica and the Caribbean is the fact that children from varying backgrounds are expected to communicate in a language they cannot write or speak.
Is Dutch the official language of the Caribbean islands?
Dutch is an official language of the Caribbean islands that remain under Dutch sovereignty. However, Dutch is not the dominant language on these islands. On the islands of Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire, a creole based on Portuguese and West African languages known as Papiamento is predominant, while in Sint Maarten,…