| Bahamian | |
| States: | The Bahamas |
| Speakers: | c. 250,000 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| Ref: | [1] |
| Familycolor: | Creole |
| Fam1: | English Creole |
| Fam2: | Atlantic |
| Fam3: | Eastern |
| Fam4: | Northern (Bahamian–Gullah) |
| Iso3: | bah |
| Glotto: | baha1260 |
| Glottorefname: | Bahamian |
| Lingua: | 52-ABB-an–ao |
| Notice: | IPA') is an English-based language spoken mainly in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands |
Bahamian Creole, also described as Bahamian dialect or simply Bahamian, is an English-based creole language spoken by both Black and White Bahamians, sometimes in slightly different forms. In comparison to many of the English-based dialects of the Caribbean, it suffers from limited research, possibly because it has long been assumed that this language is simply a variety of English. However, socio-historical and linguistic research shows that this is not the case and it is, in fact, a creole language,[2] related to but distinct from English as spoken in The Bahamas.
The Bahamian dialect tends to be more prevalent in certain areas of The Bahamas. Islands that were settled earlier or that have a historically large Black Bahamian population have a greater concentration of individuals exhibiting creolized speech; the dialect is most prevalent in urban areas. Individual speakers have command of lesser and greater dialect forms.
Bahamian dialect shares similar features with other English-based creoles, such as those of Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, Saint Lucia, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Guyana, and the Virgin Islands. There is also a very significant link between Bahamian and the Gullah language of South Carolina, as many Bahamians are descendants of enslaved African peoples brought to the islands from the Gullah region after the American Revolution.[3]
Though there is variation between Black and White speakers, there is a tendency for speakers to drop pronounced as //h// or, in a hypercorrection, to add it to words without it so harm and arm are pronounced the same. The merger occurs most often in the speech of Abaco and north Eleuthera.
Some speakers have merged pronounced as //v// and pronounced as //w// into a single phoneme and pronounce words with pronounced as /[v]/ or pronounced as /[w]/ depending on context (the latter appearing in word-initial position and the former appearing elsewhere).Outside of White acrolectal speech, speakers have no dental fricatives and English cognate words are usually pronounced with pronounced as /[d]/ or pronounced as /[t]/ as in dis ('this') and tink ('think'). Other characteristics of Bahamian Creole in comparison to English include:
Pronouns in Bahamian dialect are generally the same as in Standard English. However, the second person plural can take one of three forms:
Possessive pronouns in Bahamianese often differ from Standard English with:
and
For example, das ya book? means 'is that your book?'
In addition, the possessive pronouns differ from Standard English:
| English | Bahamian | |
|---|---|---|
| mine | mines | |
| yours | yawnz (s.) or yawz (s.) | |
| yinnas (pl.) | ||
| his | he own | |
| hers | har own | |
| ours | ah own | |
| theirs | dey own/ders |
Verb usage in the Bahamianese differs significantly from that of Standard English. There is also variation amongst speakers. For example, the word go:
1) I'm going to Freeport:
2) I am going to cook
Similarly, verb "to do" has numerous variations depending on tense and context:
In the present tense, the verb "to be" is usually conjugated "is" regardless of the grammatical person:
The negative form of "to be" usually takes the form "een" I een gern ('I am not goin')
While context is often used to indicate tense (e.g. I drink plenny rum las night = 'I drank a lot of rum last night'), the past tense can also be formed by combining "did", "done", "gone", or "been" with the verb:
features over 5,500 words and phrases not found in Standard English, with the authors attempting to link them to other English-based creoles, like Gullah. Words may derive from English, as well as some African languages.
a cooperative savings system traced to a Yoruba custom of éèsú or èsúsú; similar schemes are common in other Caribbean countries, e.g. the susu in Barbados.
sesame seed, grown locally and used in the popular treat benny cake found in various forms throughout the African Diaspora.
to stab or poke, possibly from the West African word of the same meaning. This word is found in many Caribbean creole languages.
Witchcraft.