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Bajan Dialect
Bajan ( ), or Bajan Creole, is an English-based creole language with West/Central African and British influences spoken on the Caribbean island of Barbados. Bajan is primarily a spoken language, meaning that in general, standard English is used in print, in the media, in the judicial system, in government, and in day-to-day business, while Bajan is reserved for less formal situations, in music, or in social commentary. Ethnologue reports that, as of 2018, 30,000 Barbadians were native English speakers, while 260,000 natively spoke Bajan. Languages Bajan is the Caribbean creole with grammar that most resembles Standard English. There is academic debate on whether its creole features are due to an earlier pidgin state or to some other reason, such as contact with neighbouring English-based creole languages. Due to emigration to the Province of Carolina, Bajan has influenced American English and the Gullah language spoken in the Carolinas. Regionally, Bajan has ties to Belizean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Creole
An English-based creole language (often shortened to English creole) is a creole language for which English language, English was the ''lexifier'', meaning that at the time of its formation the vocabulary of English served as the basis for the majority of the creole's lexicon. Most English creoles were formed in British colonies, following the great expansion of British naval military power and trade in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The main categories of English-based creoles are Atlantic (the Americas and Africa) and Pacific (Asia and Oceania). Over 76.5 million people globally are estimated to speak an English-based creole. Sierra Leone, Malaysia, Nigeria, Ghana, Jamaica, and Singapore have the largest concentrations of creole speakers. Origin It is disputed to what extent the various English-based creoles of the world share a common origin. The ''Monogenetic theory of pidgins, monogenesis hypothesis'' posits that a single language, commonly called ''proto–Pidgin Englis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glottal Stop
The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . As a result of the obstruction of the airflow in the glottis, the glottal vibration either stops or becomes irregular with a low rate and sudden drop in intensity. Features Features of the glottal stop: * It has no phonation at all, as there is no airflow through the glottis. It is voiceless, however, in the sense that it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. Writing In the traditional romanization of many languages, such as Arabic, the glottal stop is transcribed with the Modifier letter apostrophe, apostrophe ʼ, or the symbol ʾ, , which is the source of the IPA character . In many Polynesian languages that use the Latin alphabet, however, the glottal stop is written wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Copula (linguistics)
In linguistics, a copula (; : copulas or copulae; abbreviated ) is a word or phrase that links the subject of a sentence to a subject complement, such as the word ''is'' in the sentence "The sky is blue" or the phrase ''was not being'' in the sentence "It was not being cooperative." The word ''copula'' derives from the Latin noun for a "link" or "tie" that connects two different things. A copula is often a verb or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case. A verb that is a copula is sometimes called a copulative or copular verb. In English primary education grammar courses, a copula is often called a linking verb. In other languages, copulas show more resemblances to pronouns, as in Classical Chinese and Guarani, or may take the form of suffixes attached to a noun, as in Korean, Beja, and Inuit languages. Most languages have one main copula (in English, the verb "to be"), although some (such as Spanish, Portuguese and Thai) have more than one, while ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zero Copula
Zero copula, also known as null copula, is a linguistic phenomenon whereby the subject is joined to the predicate without overt marking of this relationship (like the copula (linguistics), copula ''to be'' in English). One can distinguish languages that simply do not have a copula and languages that have a copula that is optional in certain contexts. Many languages exhibit this in some contexts, including Assamese language, Assamese, Bengali language, Bengali, Kannada, Malay language, Malay/Indonesian language, Indonesian, Filipino language, Filipino/Tagalog language, Tagalog, Turkish language, Turkish, Tamil language, Tamil, Telugu language, Telugu, Malayalam language, Malayalam, Hindi, Guarani language, Guarani, Kazakh language, Kazakh, Turkmen language, Turkmen, Varieties of Chinese, Chinese, Japanese language, Japanese, Ukrainian language, Ukrainian, Russian language, Russian, Belarusian language, Belarusian, Tatar language, Tatar, Azerbaijani language, Azerbaijani, Swahili la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Future Tense
In grammar, a future tense ( abbreviated ) is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French ''achètera'', meaning "will buy", derived from the verb ''acheter'' ("to buy"). The "future" expressed by the future tense usually means the future relative to the moment of speaking, although in contexts where relative tense is used it may mean the future relative to some other point in time under consideration. English does not have an inflectional future tense, though it has a variety of grammatical and lexical means for expressing future-related meanings. These include modal auxiliaries such as ''will'' and ''shall'' as well as the futurate present tense. Expressions The nature of the future, necessarily uncertain and at varying distances ahead, means that the speaker may refer to future events with the modality either of probability (what the sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pluperfect
The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect), usually called past perfect in English, characterizes certain verb forms and grammatical tenses involving an action from an antecedent point in time. Examples in English are: "we ''had arrived''" before the game began; "they ''had been writing''" when the bell rang. The word derives from the Latin , "more than perfect". The word "perfect" in this sense means "completed"; it contrasts with the "imperfect", which denotes uncompleted actions or states. In English grammar, the pluperfect (e.g. "had written") is now usually called the past perfect, since it combines past tense with perfect aspect. (The same term is sometimes used in relation to the grammar of other languages.) English also has a '' past perfect progressive'' (or ''past perfect continuous'') form: "had been writing". Meaning of the pluperfect The pluperfect is traditionally described as a tense; in modern linguistic terminology it may be said to combine tense with gra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Present Perfect
The present perfect is a grammatical combination of the present tense and Perfect (grammar), perfect aspect that is used to express a past event that has consequence in present. The term is used particularly in the context of English grammar to refer to forms like "I have finished". The forms are ''present'' because they use the present tense of the auxiliary verb ''have'', and ''perfect'' because they use that auxiliary in combination with the past participle of the main verb. (Other perfect constructions also exist, such as the past perfect: "I had eaten.") Analogous forms are found in some other languages, and they may also be described as present perfect; they often have other names such as the German , the French ''passé composé'' and the Italian . They may also have different ranges of usage: in all three of the languages just mentioned, the forms in question serve as a general past tense, at least for completed actions. In English, completed actions in many contexts are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uses Of English Verb Forms
Modern standard English has various verb forms, including: * Finite verb forms such as ''go'', ''goes'' and ''went'' * Nonfinite forms such as ''(to) go'', ''going'' and ''gone'' * Combinations of such forms with auxiliary verbs, such as ''was going'' and ''would have gone'' They can be used to express tense (time reference), aspect, mood, modality and voice, in various configurations. For details of how inflected forms of verbs are produced in English, see English verbs. For the grammatical structure of clauses, including word order, see English clause syntax. For non-standard or archaic forms, see individual dialect articles and thou. Inflected forms of verbs A typical English verb may have five different inflected forms: *The base form or plain form (''go'', ''write'', ''climb''), which has several uses—as an infinitive, imperative, present subjunctive, and present indicative except in the third-person singular *The ''-s'' form (''goes'', ''writes'', ''climbs''), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Present Continuous
The present continuous, also called the present progressive or present imperfect, is a verb form used in modern English that combines the present tense with the continuous aspect. It is formed by the present tense form of be and the present participle of a verb. The present continuous is generally used to describe something that is taking place at the present moment and can be employed in both the indicative A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentence Dec ... and subjunctive moods. It accounts for approximately 5% of verbs in spoken English. Formation The present continuous is formed by the present tense form of be and the present participle ( -ing form) of the verb. For example, you would write the verb ''work'' in the present continuous form by adding the -ing suffix to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simple Past
The simple past, past simple, or past indefinite, in English equivalent to the preterite, is the basic form of the past tense in Modern English. It is used principally to describe events in the past, although it also has some other uses. Regular English verbs form the simple past in ''-ed''; however, there are a few hundred irregular verbs with different forms. The term "simple" is used to distinguish the syntactical construction whose basic form uses the plain past tense alone, from other past tense constructions which use auxiliaries in combination with participles, such as the present perfect, past perfect, and past progressive. Formation Regular verbs form the simple past end''-ed''; however there are a few hundred irregular verbs with different forms. The spelling rules for forming the past simple of regular verbs are as follows: verbs ending in -e add only –d to the end (e.g. live – lived, not *liveed), verbs ending in -y change to -ied (e.g. study – studied) and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simple Present
The simple present, present simple or present indefinite is one of the verb forms associated with the present tense in modern English. It is commonly referred to as a tense, although it also encodes certain information about aspect in addition to the present time. The simple present is the most commonly used verb form in English, accounting for more than half of verbs in spoken English. It is called "simple" because its basic form consists of a single word (like ''write'' or ''writes''), in contrast with other present tense forms such as the present progressive (''is writing'') and present perfect (''has written''). For nearly all English verbs, the simple present is identical to the base form (dictionary form) of the verb, except when the subject is third-person singular, in which case the ending ''-(e)s'' is added. There are a few verbs with irregular forms, the most notable being the copula ''be'', which has the simple present forms of ''am'', ''is'', and ''are''. Conj ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chefette
Chefette Restaurants is the largest fast food restaurant chain based in the Caribbean island nation of Barbados. Currently operating throughout the island in 15 locations, Chefette is known for its broasted chicken meals as well as a local curried-'meat + vegetable' (similar to the European gyro) roll-up or wrap, locally known as a roti. Chefette was founded by a Trinidadian businessman named Assad John Haloute, as well as members of the Naime and Nadur families who migrated to Barbados in the 1970s. In 1972 the trio opened the first Chefette Restaurant at Fontabelle, St. Michael. As the success of the chain grew over the next three decades, the restaurant chain continued its expansion. The company's trademark colours are yellow and purple. Several of the outlets push the theme of being a "family restaurant" by constructing play areas for children similar to other major international chains such as McDonald's. Though international restaurant chains (including McDonald' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
