Belizean Creole (Belize Kriol, Kriol) is an English-based creole language spoken by the Belizean Creole people. It is closely related to Moskitian Creole, San Andrés-Providencia Creole, and Jamaican Patois.
Belizean Creole is a contact language that developed and grew between 1650 and 1930, initially as a result of the slave trade.
Belizean Creoles are people of Afro-European origin.
Belizean Creole is the first language of some Garifuna people, , Maya peoples, and other ethnic groups.
History
Origins
Belizean Creole was developed as a lingua franca for those who were forced to work within the logging industry, and the language itself is linked to many
substrate languages.
This is due to the fact that these slaves, more specifically identified as Belizean "Creoles", were taken from
Jamaica and brought to what was then known as
British Honduras, which was the name of Belize when it was a British
crown colony, before gaining independence in September 1981.
The European Baymen first began to settle in the area of Belize City in the 1650s. Ken Decker[Floyd, Troy S. (1967). The Anglo-Spanish Struggle for Mosquitia. University of New Mexico Press.] The local Kriol speech shifted to become something more like the Miskito Coast Creole.
Linguistic influences and development
Belize Kriol is derived mainly from English but is influenced by other languages brought into the country due to the slave trade. Its substrate languages are the Native American language
Miskito language,
Spanish language, and the various
West African and
Bantu languages that were brought into the country by slaves, which include
Akan language,
Efik language,
Ewe language,
Fula language,
Ga language,
Hausa language,
Igbo language,
Kikongo language, and
Wolof language.
There are numerous theories as to how creole languages form. The most common and linguistically supported hypothesis indicates that creoles start out as a pidgin languages when there exists a need for some type of verbal communication between members of communities who do not share the same language. In the case of Belize Kriol, the pidgin would have developed as a result of West Africans being captured and taken to the Americas as slaves to work in the logging industries, where they would be forced to communicate with slave owners of European descent. For the first generation of people speaking the pidgin language, the pidgin is not fully developed and the grammar of the language is not as systematic as fully fledged languages.
Contemporary usage
English language is still considered the main official language of Belize, as it carries much prestige, due to the fact it is a
Major language. Road signs, official documents, and such are all written in English and the people of Belize are taught in English throughout their educational careers.
Despite this, bilingualism and
multilingualism is common within Belize; and many people of all ethnic backgrounds in Belize have adopted the minority language Kriol as their
native language.
Kriol is the
lingua franca of
Belize and is the first language of some
Garifuna people,
,
Maya peoples, and other ethnic groups. It is a
second language for most others in the country.
Today, Belize Kriol is the first or second language of the majority of the country's inhabitants. Many of them speak standard English as well, and a rapid process of decreolization is taking place. As a result, a creole continuum exists and speakers are able to code-switching among various mesolect registers, between the most basilect to the acrolect varieties. The acrolect, much like the basilect, is rarely heard.
A 1987 travel guide in the Chicago Tribune newspaper reported that Belize Kriol is "a language that teases but just escapes the comprehension of a native speaker of English."
There are multiple regional vernacular varieties of Belizean Kriol; so, depending on where one is, the vernacular may be slightly different.
Education and literature
English taught in the schools of Belize is based on
British English, but it is often influenced by the teachers' Kriol speech. The 1999 Ministry of Education: School Effectiveness Report (p. 84) notes that "Creole is spoken as the first language in most homes." Belizean people speak English, Kriol, and often Spanish, while learning the English system of writing and reading in schools. It is a slightly different system of communication from the standard forms.
In recent years there has been a movement to have Kriol used more within the Belizean education system and in government documentation. The Belize Kriol Project and the National Kriol Council of Belize are at the forefront of this movement, striving to bring more prestige and recognition to the language.
Current literary works using Kriol include an English and Kriol dictionary, and a translation of the Bible's New Testament. The dictionary brought attention to grammar, as well as the definition of common Kriol words, and the dictionary influenced the creation of a few other books that were solely based on Kriol grammar. There has also been a rise in poetry, fiction, and newspapers written in Kriol.
Phonology
Kriol shares
phonology similarities with many
Caribbean English Creoles as well as with English, its superstrate language.
languages have a general tendency to simplify the phonology of a language in order to ensure successful communication. Many creoles keep this tendency after
creolization. Kriol is no exception to this.
Kriol uses a high number of nasalized vowels, palatalizes non-labial stops, and prenasalizes voiced stops. Consonant clusters are reduced at the end of words and many syllables are reduced to only a consonant and vowel.
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Like most creole languages, Kriol has a tendency to have an open syllabic structure, meaning there are many words ending in vowels. This feature is strengthened by its tendency to delete consonants at the end of words, especially when the preceding vowel is unstressed.
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Nasalization is phonemic in Kriol, caused by the deletion of final nasal consonants. The nasal feature is kept, even if the consonant has been dropped.
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Many Kriol speakers tend to palatalize the velar consonants and preceding . Sometimes they also palatalize alveolar consonants, such as , , and .
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Like all other creole languages, Kriol has a tendency to reduce consonant clusters no matter where they occur. Final consonant clusters are almost always reduced by dropping the second consonant. Initial and medial occurrences are reduced much less consistently.
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When occurs finally, it is always deleted. When it occurs in the middle of a word, it is often deleted leaving a residual vowel length.
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Although its superstrate language, English, makes extensive use of dental fricatives (), Belizean Kriol does not use them. It rather employs the alveolar stops and . However, due to the ongoing process of decreolization, some speakers include such dental fricatives in their speech.
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Unstressed initial vowels are often deleted in Kriol. Sometimes this can lead to a glottal stop instead.
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Vowels tend to be alternated for the ones used in English, for instance or ( boy) becomes , ( angry) becomes , and so on.
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Stress is evenly distributed across syllables, meaning that the prosody of Kriol is different than its lexifier. It is reserved mainly for content words and appears to only have High and Low tones.
Vowel chart
Consonant chart
Some of these sounds only appear as allophones of phonemes.
Consonants and vowels
Kriol uses three voiced plosives () and three voiceless plosives (). The voiceless stops can also be aspirated. However, aspiration is not a constant feature; therefore, the aspirated and non-aspirated forms are
allophone. The language employs three nasal consonants, (). It makes extensive use of fricatives, both unvoiced () and voiced (. Its two liquids, and , are articulated alveo-palatally. The tongue is more lax here than in American English; its position is more similar to that of British English. Kriol's glides , , and are used extensively. Glottal stops occur rarely and inconsistently. Kriol makes use of eleven vowels: nine
, three
, and
schwa . The most frequently occurring diphthong, , is used in all regional varieties. Both and can occur, but they are new additions and are viewed as a sign of decreolization. The same is perceived of four of the less productive monophthongs.
Orthography
Unlike most creoles, Kriol has a standardized
orthography.
Consonants: b, ch, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, sh, t, v, w, y, z, zh
|
|
| 'thief' |
| 'give' |
| 'bake' |
| 'take' |
| 'gone' |
| 'back of' |
| 'shoes' |
| 'shove' |
| 'bone' |
| 'done' |
| 'boy' |
| 'about' |
Morphology
Tense
The present tense verb is not marked overtly in Kriol. It also does not indicate number or person. As an unmarked verb, it can refer both to present and to
perfective. The English past tense marker || at the end of the verbs indicates
acrolectal speech. However, there is the possibility to mark the
imperfect by putting the tense marker || before the verb. Overt marking is rare, however, if the sentence includes a semantic temporal marker, such as "yestudeh" (yesterday) or "laas season" (last season).
The future tense is indicated by employing the preverbal marker or . Unlike the marking of past tense, this marking is not optional.
Aspect
The progressive aspect
The preverbal marker
expresses the progressive aspect in both past and present tense. However, if the past is not marked overtly (lexically or by using ), an unambiguous understanding is only possible in context.
is always mandatory. In the past progressive, it is possible to achieve an unambiguous meaning by combining +
+ verb.
Progressive action in the future can be expressed by using in conjunction with . The correct combination here would be + + verb.
The habitual aspect
Kriol does not have a habitual aspect in its own right. Other creoles have a general tendency to merge the habitual with the completive, the habitual with the progressive, or the habitual with the future. Kriol however, does not clearly merge it with anything. Thus, we can only assume that the habitual is expressed by context and not by morphological marking.
The completive aspect
The completive aspect is expressed either without marking — that is, by context only — or by the use of a completive preverbal marker, such as
or .
Mood and voice
Conditional
The conditional mood is expressed through the conditional verbs
, , and
. The short version, , is employed only in the present tense; the past tense requires the longer forms.
Passive voice
There is no overt lexical marking of active and passive in Kriol. It is only the emphasis of a sentence that can clarify the meaning, together with context. Emphasis can be strengthened by adding emphatic markers, or through repetition and redundancy.
Verb usage
Special verbs
There are four forms of "be" in Kriol:
, two uses of , and the absence of a marker. The
Equative case form
is used as a copula (when the complement of the verb is either a noun or a noun phrase). is the locative form that is used when the verb's complement is a prepositional phrase. No overt marking is used when the complement is an adjective.
, finally, is used in the progressive aspect.
The verb "to go" is irregular in Kriol, especially when set in the future progressive. It does not use the progressive marker , which is replaced by the morpheme and . The past tense is expressed similarly: instead of employing , the lexical item is used.
A verb that is used extensively in each conversation is . It can be used as a modal in casual requests, in threats and intentional statements, and, of course, like the standard verb "to make".
Noun usage
Plural formation
Plurals are usually formed in Kriol by inserting the obligatory postnomial marker
. Variations of this marker are and
. As decreolization progresses, the standard English plural ending occurs far more frequently. Sometimes, the
is added to this form: for instance, in "shoes de" – shoes.
The absence of an appropriate plural marker occurs rarely.
Loan words
Many Spanish, Maya, and Garifuna words refer to popular produce and food items:
- panades
- garnaches
- salbutes
- tamales
- hudut
- wangla
- goma
- reyeno
- bundiga
- comadre
- compadre
Syntax
Syntactic ordering
The construction of sentences in Kriol is very similar to that in English. It uses a Subject-Verb-Object order (SVO). All declarative and most interrogative sentences follow this pattern, the interrogatives with a changed emphasis. The construction of the phrases follows Standard English in many ways.
Locatives
Locatives are more frequently used in Kriol and much more productive than in Standard English. The general locative is expressed by the morpheme
("at" or "to"). It is possible to use or
("on") instead. This is an indication of either emphasis or decreolization. Another morpheme which is more specific than is
("into"). It is used in contexts where is not strong enough.
Together with the verb "look", however, is not used and considered as incorrect. To express "to look at", it is wrong to say "luk da". The correct version would be "luk pan".
Noun plus pronoun
In a noun phrase, Kriol can employ a structure of both noun and pronoun to create emphasis. The ordering then is noun + pronoun + verb (for instance, "mista filip hi noa di ansa" – Mr. Philip knows the answer).
Adjectives
Adjectives are employed predicatively and attributively. They can be intensified either by the postposed adverb modifier
, by iteration, or by the use of the adverb modifier . Iteration is here the usual way. Comparatives and superlatives are constructed according to morphosyntactic rules. A comparative is made by adding
to the stem ("taal" – "taala" – tall). The morpheme is employed to form comparative statements: for instance, "hî tɑlɑ dan shee" – He is taller than she. Superlatives are created by adding
to the stem. In all cases, the use of the definite article is obligatory. The copula is present if the superlative is used predicatively. An example could be: "She dah di taales" – She is the tallest.
Adverbs
Adverbs are used much as they are in Standard English. In almost all cases, they differ from adjectives not in form but in function. There are, however, a few exceptions, such as "properli" (properly), "errli" (early) or "po:li" (poorly). Adverbs can be intensified by reduplication.
Conjunctions
Most Kriol conjunctions are very similar to English and are employed in the same way. The main difference is that Kriol allows double negation, so that some conjunctions are used differently. Some examples of conjunctions in Kriol are: "an" (and), "but" (but), "if" (if), "o:" (or) etc.
Questions usually take the same form in Kriol as they do in Standard English: question word + subject + verb. The "do-support" does not occur here either. The rising intonation at the end of the sentence may increase even more if no question word is used. Thus, most declarative sentences can become interrogative with the right intonation. "Which" has various translations in Kriol. If the speaker means "which", he uses , but he can also use for "which one".
Grammar
The tense/aspect system of Kriol is fundamentally unlike that of English. There are no morphologically marked past tense forms corresponding to English -ed -t. There are three preverbal particles: "mi" and "did" for the past, "di" as an "aspect marker", and a host of articles to indicate the future ("(w)a(n)", "gwein", "gouɲ"). These are not verbs, they are simply invariant particles that cannot stand alone, unlike the English "to be". Their function differs somewhat from English.
The progressive is marked by . Past habitual is marked by or . The present habitual aspect is unmarked but can be indicated by "always", "usually", etc. (i.e. is absent as a grammatical category).
For the present tense, an uninflected verb combining with an iterative adverb expresses the habitual, as in ("Tom always knows when Katy tells/has told about him").[ cited in ]
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"mi" is a "tense indicator"
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"di" is an "aspect marker"
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"(w)a(n)", "gwein", "gouɲ") are used to indicate the future
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I run (habitually); I ran
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I am running
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I was running
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or
-
, or
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I am going to run; I will run
Like many other Caribbean Creoles, and have a number of functions, including:
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Directional, dative, or benefactive preposition
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("They are fighting for us")
[Bailey, Beryl, L (1966). Jamaican Creole Syntax. Cambridge University Press]
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Genitive preposition (that is, marker of possession)
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or /Dat da mi buk/ ("That's my book")
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Modal auxiliary expressing obligation or futurity
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("He should be coming here")
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Pre-infinitive complementizer
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("You (plural) have to contribute something to the Garifuna people for playing their music")
The pronominal system
The pronominal system of Standard English can distinguish person, number, gender and case. Some varieties of Kriol do not have a gender or case distinction, though most do; but Kriol does distinguish between the second person singular and plural (you).
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I = (occasionally mii in negations)
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me = (exception is Ai, as in, "Mek ai tel yu")
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my, my, mine (possessive) =
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you, you =
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your, yours =
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he, him = (pronounced in the basilect varieties)
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she, her = (pronounced ; no gender distinction in basilect varieties)
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him, her = (no gender distinction in basilect varieties)
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him =
-
her =
-
we, us =
-
us (3 or more)=
-
our, ours =
-
you (plural) =
-
they, them =
-
those =
Interrogatives
The question words found in Kriol are:
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What? =
-
Why? =
-
Where? = (What part?)
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Who? =
-
Whose? = (For whom?)
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The supporting That =
Copula
-
the Kriol equative verb is also "da"
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e.g. ("I am the teacher")
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Kriol has a separate locative verb "deh"
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e.g. or ("we are in London")
-
with true adjectives in Kriol, no copula is needed
- Contrasting copula forms
Copula = helping-verb forms of “be”
Kriol: Ai da di teecha
English: I am the teacher.
Kriol: Yu da di teecha.
English: You are the teacher
Kriol: Ih da di teecha.
English: He/She is the teacher.
Kriol: Ah da-mi di teecha
English: I was the teacher
Kriol: Yu da-mi di teecha
English: You were the teacher.
Kriol: She/Ih da-mi di teecha.
English: She/He was the teacher.
Kriol: Da huu dat?
English: who is that?
Negation
-
is used as a present tense negator:
-
("If the cow didn't know that he could swallow grass, he wouldn't have tried it")
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is used in the same way as English 'can't'
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("He is a sickly thing that can't even mash an ant")
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is a negative past participle.
-
("John did not steal the money")
See also
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English-based creole languages
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Miskito Coastal Creole
-
Jamaican Patois
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San Andrés-Providencia Creole
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Bocas del Toro Creole
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Colón Creole
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Rio Abajo Creole
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Limón Coastal Creole
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Languages of Belize
Sources
External links
