Belizean English is the set of
varieties
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
of the
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...
spoken
in Belize and by members of the Belizean diaspora.
History
The development of
Caribbean English
Caribbean English (CE, CarE) is a set of dialects of the English language which are spoken in the Caribbean and Liberia, most countries on the Caribbean coast of Central America, and Guyana and Suriname on the coast of South America. Carib ...
, including Belizean English, is dated to the West Indian exploits of
Elizabethan sea dogs, which are credited with introducing to
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
names for Caribbean flora, fauna, and various other things via, for instance,
Hakluyt's ''Principall Navigations'' of 1589 and
Raleigh's
Raleigh Haberdasher, more commonly called Raleigh's, was a high end, local men's and women's furnishings store based in Washington, D.C.
History
The first store opened on February 16, 1911, at 1109 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, in the Raleigh Hotel. M ...
''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.'
Phonology
Pronunciation in Belizean English tends towards Caribbean English, except that the former is
non-rhotic
Rhoticity in English is the pronunciation of the historical rhotic consonant by English speakers. The presence or absence of rhoticity is one of the most prominent distinctions by which varieties of English can be classified. In rhotic variet ...
.
In 2013, it was noted that spoken Belizean English is heavily influenced by Belizean Creole, as 'both the
lexicon and
syntactic constructions often follow creole.' The influence has been deemed strong enough to argue 'that spoken
elizeanEnglish is simply a
register
Register or registration may refer to:
Arts entertainment, and media Music
* Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc.
* ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller
* Registration (organ), th ...
of creole,
relexified and restructured through contact with mainstream
on-BelizeanEnglish.' However, it has been further noted that one may describe this phenomenon 'from the opposite perspective and claim
elizeancreole to be a register of
elizeanEnglish.'
Lexicology
The largest proportion of the lexicon unique to Belizean English is thought to name local
flora
Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous (ecology), indigenous) native plant, native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms '' ...
,
fauna
Fauna is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is ''flora'', and for fungi, it is ''funga''. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively referred to as ''Biota (ecology ...
, and
cuisine. Notably, the most significant donor language to this portion of Belizean English lexicon is thought to be the
Miskito language
Miskito ( in the Miskito language) is a Misumalpan language spoken by the Miskito people in northeastern Nicaragua, especially in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, and in eastern Honduras.
With 700,000 speakers, Miskito is the most ...
, not
Mayan languages
The Mayan languagesIn linguistics, it is conventional to use ''Mayan'' when referring to the languages, or an aspect of a language. In other academic fields, ''Maya'' is the preferred usage, serving as both a singular and plural noun, and as ...
, 'as might be expected.' Other donor languages include Mayan languages,
African languages
The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families:
* Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Souther ...
(via
Jamaican English
Jamaican English, including Jamaican Standard English, is a variety of English native to Jamaica and is the official language of the country. A distinction exists between Jamaican English and Jamaican Patois (or Creole), though not entirely ...
), and
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
(particularly for cuisine).
In 2013, it was noted that spelling in official contexts, such as in government, tended to follow British conventions, while that in commercial spaces tended to prefer American usage, with spelling in popular written media described as 'highly inconsistent, following the conventions of the writer.'
Sociolinguistics
In 2017, it was noted that –
The aforementioned study suggested that such attitude towards Belizean English might be related to attitudes towards
code-switching
In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Code-switching is different from plurilingualis ...
between English and Kriol, as the latter was described by the study's Belizean informants 'as an index for educational attainment and therefore for class, as it apparently requires formal training to learn to differentiate the two
e English and Kriol' However, the social regard for exogamous dialects of English is thought to be decreasing in Belize, though this has been linked to a concomitant rise in the prestige of Belizean Creole, rather than that of Belizean English.
Study
The earliest scholarly dictionary of Caribbean English is thought to have been the 1967 ''Dictionary of Jamaican English''. During Easter of that same year, the
Caribbean Association of Headmasters and Headmistresses resolved –
Said resolution was promptly forwarded to Richard Allsopp, who by mid-1967 'already had some ten shoe-boxes each of about 1,000 6 × 4 cards and many loose unfiled cuttings, notes and other material
rom Guyana, the Lesser Antilles, Belize, Jamaica, and Trinidad
Rom, or ROM may refer to:
Biomechanics and medicine
* Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient
* Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac
* R ...
' In 1971, Allsopp introduced the Caribbean Lexicography Project as 'a survey of
nglishusage in the intermediate and upper ranges of the West Indian speech continuum.' This set the stage for the seminal ''Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage,'' first published 1996.
In 2013, it was noted that Belizean English may not constitute a single dialect. For instance, the English spoken in Garifuna-majority settlements in the southeastern coast of Belize 'includes distinctive borrowings which are not found elsewhere in the country.' It was further noted that, though Belizean English is not a
tonal language
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...
, some of its words 'are not ''correctly'' pronounced unless the relative pitch heights are accurate.'
Notes and references
Explanatory footnotes
Short citations
Full citations
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Dialects of English
Languages of Belize