Bay Islands English is an English variety spoken on the
Bay Islands Department
The Bay Islands ( es, Islas de la Bahía; ) is a group of islands off the coast of Honduras. Collectively, the islands form one of the 18 departments of Honduras. The departmental capital is Coxen Hole, on the island of Roatán.
Geography
...
(
Guanaja
Guanaja is one of the Bay Islands of Honduras and is in the Caribbean. It is about off the north coast of Honduras, and from the island of Roatan. One of the cays off Guanaja, also called Guanaja or Bonacca or Low Cay (or just simply, The C ...
,
Roatán
Roatán () is an island in the Caribbean, about off the northern coast of Honduras. It is located between the islands of Utila and Guanaja, and is the largest of the Bay Islands of Honduras. The island was formerly known in English as Ruatan ...
,
Utila), Honduras. Ethnologue reported that there were 22,500 native speakers in 2001.
Mainlanders know this language as ''Caracol'', which literally means "
conch
Conch () is a common name of a number of different medium-to-large-sized sea snails. Conch shells typically have a high spire and a noticeable siphonal canal (in other words, the shell comes to a noticeable point at both ends).
In North Am ...
".
Genealogically this variety descends from
Cayman Islands English
Cayman Islands English is an English variety spoken in the Cayman Islands. While not much has been written on Cayman Islands English, according to one text, it "seems to have borrowed creole features similar to Jamaica and Central America withou ...
.
Phonology
Bay Islands English is generally
rhotic. Although is always pronounced in words containing the vowel, it is occasionally absent before a consonant among some speakers.
Bay Islands English has poor distinction between the sounds
and
The two sounds are often merged with each other (and sometimes,
resulting in a three-way merger) or substituted in opposing positions. Graham (1997) cites the influence of the
Twi language
Twi () is a dialect of the Akan language spoken in southern and central Ghana by several million people, mainly of the Akan people, the largest of the seventeen major ethnic groups in Ghana. Twi has about 17-18 million speakers in total, includ ...
, which lacks /v/ in its phoneme inventory, and other West African languages with the same feature as a likely cause for this.
A similar process also occurs in
Bermudian,
Bahamian,
Saban,
Vincentian, and other
Caribbean Englishes. However, it is also possible for these sounds (
and
β.html" ;"title="Voiced_bilabial_fricative.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Voiced bilabial fricative">β">Voiced_bilabial_fricative.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Voiced bilabial fricative">β to be realized as variants of a single phoneme. Warantz (1983) also claims that
occurs categorically before /a/, /ʌ/, and /ə/ and variably with
in all other environments. However, the phonemic contrast in Bay Island English is generally neutralized in all environments, with possible realizations including [w], [v], [β], [
Voiced labial–palatal approximant, ɥ],
ʋ.html" ;"title="nowiki/> ʋ">nowiki/>Voiced labiodental approximant, ʋ and
ɞ_Graham_(1997)_has_judged_[w◌̥.html" ;"title="Open-mid_central_rounded_vowel.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Open-mid central rounded vowel">ɞ Graham (1997) has judged [w◌̥">Open-mid_central_rounded_vowel.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Open-mid central rounded vowel">ɞ Graham (1997) has judged [w◌̥ref group="note" name=":0">In his document, Graham used a lowercase W with an underring to denote a labio-palatal/velar approximant, which has no IPA symbol. as the most common realization, and the usual realization of /v/ post-vocally. A word-final /v/ (as in ''have'', ''live'' or ''love'') is often raised through the influence of the following element, thus causing it to be realized as either [w◌̥]
or a vowel with a [ɞ]-like quality. This results in intervocal sequences such as [ɐw◌̥]
, [ɛw◌̥]
, and
w◌̥ref name=":0" group="note" />.
can occur before both front and non-front values, and it is only unlikely to occur before
and
can only occur before
and
occurs before
and
occurs in the same positions as in Standard English, but never where SE has
Whenever
occurs intervocally or as the first element of a consonant cluster, it may be dropped altogether. This results in pronounciations such as
ɒ:r(''never''),
ʌn(''having'') and
e:d(''paved'').
is found sporadically among creole-influenced speakers.
Notes
References
Bibliography and Further Reading
*
*
*
*
Bay Islands Department
Languages of Honduras
{{pidgincreole-lang-stub