Trinidadian English

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Trinidadian English or Trinidad and Tobago Standard English is a dialect of English used in Trinidad and Tobago. English co-exists with both non-standard varieties of English as well as Creole varieties, primarily Trinidadian Creole English in Trinidad and Tobagonian Creole English in Tobago. Most speakers use Trinidadian or Tobagonian Creole in informal discourse but switch to the standard dialect of English (to varying degrees) in formal settings. Speakers of the standard variety also switch to the Creole dialect either for humour or to connect with "the common people."

As for all other varieties of English, Trinidadian English was originally based on a standard of English English. TE now uses many Americanisms including apartment, trunk (of a car) and truck, although flat is also used, and bonnet continues to be more commonly used than hood (of a car) (but lorry is not used). In addition, many words from the vernacular have found their way into standard English, including such words as to lime (to 'hang out' or 'to party'), fête (French) meaning 'to party', lagniappe (of Spanish origin from la ñapa) meaning 'a little something extra', and dougla (of Hindi origin), now meaning 'a person of both African and Indian parentage'.

The sound of Trinidadian English is often compared with that of South Wales and India.

References

James, Winford, 2001, Trinidad and Tobago Standard English?
James, Winford, 2003, Doing our own thing with English I
James, Winford, 2003, Doing our own thing with English II
James, Winford, 2003, What kind of question is this?
James, Winford, 2003, What kind of question is this? Pt2

Trinidadian and Tobagonian Linguists

Mervyn C. Alleyne Tribute to Mervyn Alleyne and Mervyn Alleyne at UPR, Río Piedras
Rawwida Baksh-Soodeen
Beverly-Anne Carter
Lawrence D. Carrington Paper on the Vernacularization of Literacy
Franz Cozier Paper on Predicate Clefting and WH-questions
Keren Cumberbatch
Kathy-Ann Drayton
Keisha S. Evans
Jo-Anne S. Ferreira SIL Bibliography
Dwane Garcia
Merle Hodge A Short Biography of Merle Hodge
Winford James Winford James' Homepage
Kemlin M. Chin Laurence (†)
Glenda-Alicia Leung
Peggy Ramesar Mohan Article on Indian English
Sylvia Moodie-Kublalsingh
Joanna Morris Florack Joanna Morris Florack
Rachael A. Radhay
Gillian Ramchand Gillian Catriona Ramchand
Ishtla Singh English, Humanities, King's College London
Denis Solomon Denis Solomon's home page
Godfrey Steele
John Jacob Thomas (†) Biography
Maureen Warner-Lewis Profile of Maureen Warner-Lewis
Donald C. Winford Don Winford's Home Page

Linguists Who Have Worked on the Language(s) of T&T

Gertrud Aub-Buscher Article on Trinidadian French Creole
Helen Pyne-Timothy
Nicole Scott
Lise Winer Compiling Creole in the Caribbean
Valerie Youssef Linguist List's Personal Page

Papers

External links

Miguel Browne's Trini Talk
A Trinidadian accent
Discussion of a paper by Lise Winer
An Ethnolinguistic Study of the Trinidadian Creole community in Flatbush, Brooklyn by Keisha T. Lindsay and Justine Bolusi
50 Frequenty Asked Questions on Caribbean Language by the Society for Caribbean Linguistics
Wiwords A cross-referencing dictionary of West Indian words with a large number of Trinidadian terms