Bermudian English is a regional dialect of English found in

Bermuda Bermuda is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. The closest land outside the territory is in the American state of North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. Bermuda is an ...

, a British

overseas territory A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, belonging or connected to a particular country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually a geographic area which has not been granted the powers of self-government, ...

in the

North Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the Age of Discovery, it was known for ...

Standard English In an English-speaking country, Standard English (SE) is the variety of English that has undergone codification to the point of being socially perceived as the standard language, associated with formal schooling, language assessment, and off ...

is used in professional settings and in writing, while

vernacular Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...

Bermudian English is spoken on more casual occasions. The Bermudian dialect began to develop following settlement in the early 17th century and retains traits of

Elizabethan English Early Modern English (sometimes abbreviated EModEFor example, or EMnE) or Early New English (ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum (England), Interregnum and Stuart Restor ...

. Bermudian Creole is also spoken in Bermuda, especially among younger Bermudians.Tom McArthur (ed.), ''Oxford Companion to the English Language''. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN. pp. 116, 352. Casual observers tend to have difficulty in placing the Bermudian dialect, as it differs from those that are clearly

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

, American, or

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

; they also note that the accent tends to vary between individuals. It is often said to sound American or West Indian to a British ear, and quaintly British to American listeners.

Categorisation

Often described as one of the least researched dialects of English, Bermudian English was never creolised and is technically a koiné — a dialect arising from contact between multiple varieties of the same language. It has been influenced by British and Irish Englishes, Caribbean Englishes (including early influence from

Bahamian English Bahamian English is English spoken in The Bahamas and by the Bahamian people. The standard for official use and education is largely British-based with regard to spelling, vocabulary, and pronunciation. However, Bahamian English also contains ...

and Turks and Caicos Creole, as well as later influence from Jamaican Patwah), North American Englishes, and Azorean Portuguese. While some scholars have argued for its inclusion as a dialect of

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...

, English writer and historian Rosemary Hall says it should be considered in a category of its own. Hall says, "While it's true that Bermudian English shares a range of words and sounds with British, American, and Caribbean Englishes, it also has many unique features, meaning it's probably most accurate to say that it's a dialect in a category of its own." Scholars have also noted that there are differences between the English used by white Bermudians, which may be closer to North American English; and that used by Black Bermudians, which may be closer to Caribbean English. The first detailed scholarly study of Bermudian English conducted by Harry Morgan Ayers in 1933, stated this type of speech "would create least remark, if indeed any, between, say,

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

, and

Charleston, South Carolina Charleston is the List of municipalities in South Carolina, most populous city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint of South Carolina's coastline on Charleston Harbor, an inlet of the Atla ...

". Bermuda was settled from England, as an extension of the

Colony of Virginia The Colony of Virginia was a British Empire, British colonial settlement in North America from 1606 to 1776. The first effort to create an English settlement in the area was chartered in 1584 and established in 1585; the resulting Roanoke Colo ...

, Charleston and the Carolina Province were settled from Bermuda, and Bermuda retained close links with both into the 19th century. The start of Bermuda's tourism industry in the latter 19th century would see transport connections move to the North East of the United States, from where most of its visitors continue to come.Harry Morgan Ayres, "Bermudian English", ''American Speech'' 8:1 (1933), p. 4
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In certain aspects of vocalization, some Bermudian English dialects are close to some versions of

Caribbean English Caribbean English (CE, CarE) is a set of dialects of the English language which are spoken in the Caribbean and most countries on the Caribbean coasts of Central America and South America. Caribbean English is influenced by, but is distinct to ...

, and some would bracket all these varieties to the broad region of the "English-speaking West Indies". West Indian workers arrived on the island from the 1900s, primarily working in construction, while Americans arrived due to a US airbase stationed on the island from 1941 to 1995. There is evidence to suggest that the St. David's dialect could actually be a decreolised English variety. Azorean Portuguese influenced Bermudian English to a lesser degree, as a result of immigration after slavery was made illegal on the island in 1834.

Phonology

The dialect's most evident characteristic is a variation in letter/sound assignment. The switching of and , characteristic of many dialects in Southern England during the 18th and 19th centuries, and of and (similarly to the dialects of English speakers of Gaelic heritage), when combined with a

front vowel A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned approximately as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction th ...

, can both be seen in the title of a humorous glossary, (Bermudian Words). Bermuda was administratively part of continental

British America British America collectively refers to various British colonization of the Americas, colonies of Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and its predecessors states in the Americas prior to the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War in 1 ...

until the 1783 independence of the colonies that became the United States of America, and thereafter was part of

British North America British North America comprised the colonial territories of the British Empire in North America from 1783 onwards. English colonisation of North America began in the 16th century in Newfoundland, then further south at Roanoke and Jamestown, ...

, within which it was grouped with the

Maritimes The Maritimes, also called the Maritime provinces, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The Maritimes had a population of 1,899,324 in 2021, which makes up 5.1% of ...

until 1867, at which point, as an

Imperial fortress Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, Lord Salisbury described Malta, Gibraltar, Bermuda, and Halifax as Imperial fortresses at the 1887 Colonial Conference, though by that point they had been so designated for decades. Later histor ...

, it was left out of the formation of the Canadian dominion and remained under the administration of the British Government, which increasingly grouped Bermuda for convenience with the British West Indian colonies (usually termed ''the West Indies and Bermuda'' or ''the Caribbean and Bermuda''). It is unclear whether any similarities between Bermudian English and Newfoundland English date from this period, or pre-date it. The use of and is interchangeable and vowels are often elongated. �and �turn into and respectively. Bermudian is also non-rhotic, like British English or the New York accent. There's a simplification of codas like 'best' and 'soft" become and . Coda �is semivocalized to

Bermudian Creole

Bermudian Creole is a creolized form of Bermudian English (similar and related to the English-based creoles: Caymanian English, Turks and Caicos Creole, and San Andrés–Providencia Creole). It is a dialect of Jamaican Patwah, which is also spoken in Bermuda, especially among Bermuda's younger generations. Bermudian Creole is significantly influenced by Jamaican Patwah and shares many of the same words such as ''Bredren'' (Friend), ''Di'' (The), ''Gwine'' (Going), and ''Wahm'' (What's happening). Which is due to a shared heritage, and the close familial ties that many Bermudians have to

Jamaica Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...

, such as Premier David Burt (politician), Wayne Caines (MP), and former Premier Ewart Brown. Similarly Bermuda has also produced a number of internationally renowned

Dancehall Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s. Initially, dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots reggae, roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s.Barrow, Steve & Dalton, Peter (2 ...

and

Reggae Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica during the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its Jamaican diaspora, diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay", was the first ...

artists such as Mishka (musician), and Collie Buddz, who are both native Creole speakers.

Common Bermudian Words

(Shared words: Bermudian / Jamaican) *

References

External links

OED Introducing Bermudian English
{{authority control Languages attested from the 17th century Dialects of English Languages of Bermuda English language in North America Languages of the United Kingdom