Belizean Creole

Belizean Creole
Native toBelize
EthnicityBelizean Creoles (traditionally)
Native speakers
150,000 (2013)[1]
Second language: over 200,000
English Creole
  • Atlantic
    • Western
      • Belizean Creole
Language codes
ISO 639-3bzj
Glottologbeli1260
Linguasphere52-ABB-ad
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(audio) A native speaker of Belizean Creole speaking about her ambition as a youth.
Sign in Belize Kriol, Caye Caulker

Belizean Creole (Belizean Creole: Belize Kriol, Kriol) is an English-based creole language spoken by the Belizean Creole people. It is closely related to Miskito Coastal Creole, San Andrés-Providencia Creole, and Vincentian Creole.

Belizean Creole is a contact language that developed and grew between 1650 and 1930, as a result of the slave trade.[2][3] Belizean Creole, like many Creole languages, first started as a pidgin. It was a way for people of other backgrounds and languages, in this case slaves and English colonisers within the logging industry, to communicate with each other. Over generations the language developed into a creole, being a language used as some people’s mother tongue language.[2]

Belizean Creoles are people of Afro-European origin.[3] While it is difficult to estimate the exact number of Belizean Creole speakers, it is estimated that there are more than 70,000 in Belize who speak the language. The 2010 Belize Census recorded that 25.9% of the people within Belize claimed Creole ethnicity and 44.6% claimed to speak Belizean Creole and put the number of speakers at over 130,000.[4] It is estimated that there are as many as 85,000 Creoles that have migrated to the United States and may or may not still speak the language.

Belizean Creole is the first language of some Garifunas, Mestizos, Maya, and other ethnic groups.[3] When the National Kriol Council began standardising the orthography of the language, it decided to promote the spelling Kriol, though they continue to use the spelling Creole to refer to the people themselves.[5][6]

  1. ^ Michaelis, Susanne (2013). The Survey of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Volume 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 92–100. ISBN 978-0199691401.
  2. ^ a b Salmon, William (2015). "Language Ideology, Gender, and Varieties of Belizean Kriol". Journal of Black Studies. 46 (6): 605–625. doi:10.1177/0021934715590407. ISSN 0021-9347. JSTOR 24572901. S2CID 143249596.
  3. ^ a b c Johnson, Melissa A. (October 2003). "The Making of Race and Place in Nineteenth-Century British Honduras". Environmental History. 8 (4): 598–617. doi:10.2307/3985885. ISSN 1084-5453. JSTOR 3985885. S2CID 144161630. ProQuest 216127036. Retrieved 18 February 2022.
  4. ^ "Belize Population and Housing Census 2010: Country Report" (PDF). Statistical Institute of Belize. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 January 2016. Retrieved 11 December 2014.
  5. ^ Decker, Ken (2005), The Song of Kriol: A Grammar of the Kriol Language of Belize. Belize City: Belize Kriol Project, pp. 2.
  6. ^ Crosbie, Paul, ed. (2007), Kriol-Inglish Dikshineri: English-Kriol Dictionary. Belize City: Belize Kriol Project, pp. 196.