Bahamian Creole

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Bahamian Creole" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Bahamian Creole, also described as the Bahamian dialect, is an English-based creole language spoken by both white and black Bahamians, sometimes in slightly different forms. The Bahamian dialect also 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.^[2] 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]

In comparison to many of the English-based dialects of the region, limited research has been conducted on what is known as Bahamian. This lack of research on the Bahamian dialect is perhaps because for many years, it was assumed that this language is simply a variety of English. However, academic research shows that this is not the case. In fact, there is much socio-historical and linguistic evidence to support the proposal that it is a creole language.^[4]