Guyanese Creole (''Creolese'' by its speakers or simply ''Guyanese'') is an

English-based creole language An English-based creole language (often shortened to English creole) is a creole language for which 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 cr ...

spoken by the

Guyanese people The people of Guyana, or Guyanese, come from a wide array of backgrounds and cultures including aboriginal natives, African and Indian origins, as well as a minority of Chinese and European descendant peoples. Demographics as of 2012 are In ...

. Linguistically, it is similar to other English dialects of the Caribbean region, based on 19th-century English and has loan words from Indian-

South Asian South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia that is defined in both geographical and Ethnicity, ethnic-Culture, cultural terms. South Asia, with a population of 2.04 billion, contains a quarter (25%) of the world's populatio ...

, West African,

Arawakan Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient Indigenous peoples in South America. Branch ...

, and older

Dutch language Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language and is the List of languages by total number of speak ...

Varieties and influences

There are many sub-dialects of Guyanese Creole based on geographical location, urban – rural location, and race of the speakers. For example, along the

Rupununi River The Rupununi is a region in the south-west of Guyana, bordering the Brazilian Amazon. The Rupununi river, also known by the local indigenous peoples as ''Raponani'', flows through the Rupununi region. The name Rupununi originates from the word '' ...

, where the population is largely Amerindian, a distinct form of Guyanese Creole exists. The Georgetown (capital city) urban area has a distinct accent, while within a forty-five-minute drive away from this area the dialect/accent changes again, especially if following the coast where rural villages are located. As with other Caribbean languages, words and phrases are very elastic, and new ones can be made up, changed or evolve within a short period. They can also be used within a very small group, until picked up by a larger community. Ethnic groups are also known to alter or include words from their own backgrounds. A socially stratified creole speech continuum also exists between Guyanese English and Standard / British English. Speech by members of the upper classes is phonetically closest to British and American English, whereas speech by members of the lower classes most closely resembles other

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 ...

dialects. A phrase such as "I told him" may be pronounced in various parts of the continuum:

Grammar

Nouns

Definite nouns are pluralized with ''dem''.

Adjectives and adverbs

It is common in Guyanese Creole to repeat adjectives and adverbs for emphasis (the equivalent of adding "very" or "extremely" in standard British and American English). For example, "Dis wata de col col" translates into "This water is very cold". "Come now now" translates into "Come right now".

Phonology

There are several phonological markers that are present in Guyanese Creole: * Guyanese Creole is isomorphic with the Jamaican phoneme system * TH stopping *

Cluster reduction In phonology and historical linguistics, cluster reduction is the simplification of consonant clusters in certain environments or over time. Cluster reduction can happen in different languages, dialects of those languages, in world Englishes, and ...

* Avoidance of , , , phonemes *

H dropping ''H''-dropping or aitch-dropping is the deletion of the voiceless glottal fricative or "''H''-sound", . The phenomenon is common in many dialects of English, and is also found in certain other languages, either as a purely historical developme ...

Semivowels In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are ''y' ...

Non-rhoticity The distinction between rhoticity and non-rhoticity is one of the most prominent ways in which varieties of the English language are classified. In rhotic accents, the sound of the historical English rhotic consonant, , is preserved in all ph ...

among older speakers

Sample words and phrases

The following phrases are written as they are pronounced: * or meh guh do am Meaning: "I will do it" * – Literally: "they want to sting your one bill" – Meaning: "they usually want to take money from you" * - Literally: "Every day I run the ricefield" - Meaning: "Every day I take care of the ricefield" * - Literally: "He been get gun" – "he had the gun" * - Literally: "it would have taken us a little time but we would have come out safely" * - Meaning: "I'm working further inland" * - a form of courtship (from "", itself the result of adapting the noun "suitor" for use as a verb and then applying standard patterns to generate a gerund form)

References

External links

Phonology and speech examples

Guyana based detective stories written in East Bank Demerara Creole. Includes glossary of Creole Words and Guyanese Proverbs.
{{Anglophone Caribbean Creoles Analytic languages Caribbean English English-based pidgins and creoles Isolating languages Languages of Guyana Languages of the African diaspora Creoles of the Americas Articles containing video clips