Bahamian English

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Bahamian English
RegionThe Bahamas
Early forms
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottologbaha1263
IETFen-BS
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Bahamian English is the set of varieties of the English language native to the Bahamas.

The spoken language of Bahamians forms a continuum ranging from standard English to what linguists have identified as a local creole language.[1] Bahamians themselves refer to the middle and creole end of the continuum as Bahamian dialect.[2][3][4] These language varieties differ based on factors like individual speaker distinctions, region, socioeconomic status, and race, with latter differences particularly documented in Black versus White Bahamian speech.[5]

Some Bahamians speak a more standard English, though with local flavour, which differs in its pronunciation from other varieties of English depending on the person and the context, and may include loanwords and phrases from the creole. Due to the country's British colonial past, the standard written English for official use and education remains largely British-based with regard to grammar, spelling, and vocabulary.[4] However, because of the Bahamas' proximity to the United States as well as US cable media, the 21st-century Bahamian media industry and younger speakers may be more influenced in their pronunciations by General American English or Black American English.[6]

Bahamian dialect continuum

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Main article: Bahamian Creole

Modern linguists and academics note significant variation in the native speech of Bahamians,[1] despite it being considered as simply a dialect of English even into most of the 20th century.[3] Linguists now typically characterise Bahamian language varieties as a continuum ranging from English to an English-based creole language (known by linguists as Bahamian English versus Bahamian Creole), with varieties closer to the creole end forming the first language of most Bahamians.[2][7] Regional and sociocultural markers and differentiations also play a role along this spectrum.[5]

Bahamian varieties differ from English spoken around the world in their grammar,[8] pronunciation, lexicon, and idiom.

The creolised varieties do not have any standardised written form;[9] rather, they are often written in a makeshift phonetic manner.

Local standard written English

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British English is the target written language of the Bahamas. It is the language taught and learned in schools, although usually by teachers and pupils speaking otherwise speaking a more Bahamian creole variety. It is also the primary written language in business, Parliament, media and courts.

There is no central authority that prescribes official usage of English, for example, with respect to spelling, grammar, punctuation or style. However, local written English tends to favour British English spellings, eg. colour, defence, realise, programme, licence, catalogue, centre.

The dd/mm/yyy date format is generally, although not religiously, used in the Bahamas, as is the 12-hour clock.

Generally, the imperial system of measurements is used in the country, eg, to measure distances, weight, and heights. However, the metric system is also used in schools, eg, in science.

High-register or standard spoken English

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A minority of Bahamians speak a high-register or standard English that differs little in its grammar, idiom, and lexicon from other standard English varieties worldwide.

Phonology and pronunciation can differ widely and is influenced by a number of factors, including class, formal education (private vs government), national background (eg. expats), time abroad, and use of affected or learned accents (eg. certain professions). Code switching is also common.[10][11]

Standard Bahamian English can be spoken with a Bahamian accent, and particularly among native Bahamians may incorporate words, phrases, or expressions from Bahamian dialect.

Pronunciation

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Not all Bahamians have the same accent, as the level of cultivation of every speaker's accent differs and is influenced by region and socioeconomic factors.

The phonology of Bahamian English is believed to be derived from those of Bermudian English, Canadian English, Cockney English, RP, Scottish English, Black American English,[12] and Gullah.[13] The English accent of both black and white Bahamians is traditionally non-rhotic,[14] due to being British-influenced, but often now rhotic among some younger speakers.[6]

Bahamian vowel phonetics are basically shared with both General American English and British Received Pronunciation, except the following may be distinct:[14][15]

Vowels
Wikipedia
diaphoneme 		Bahamian
English 		Example words
/æ/ [ä] bath, man, trap
/ɑː/ [ɑ] blah, father
/ɒ/ bother, lot, wasp
[ɑː] (lower class),
[ɔː] (higher class) 		dog, loss, cloth
/ɔː/ bought, taught, saw
/aɪ/ [äː] (Black),
[äi] or [ʌɪ] (White) 		ride, shine, try
[äi], [ʌɪ] (also White) bright, dice, pike
/aʊ/ [aː, ɑɔ] (Black),
[aɛ, aø] (White) 		now, ouch, scout
/eɪ/ [eɪ > eː] lake, paid, rein
/ɔɪ/ [əi, ɔi] boy, choice, moist
/oʊ/ [ou > oː] (Black),
[ɵu] (White) 		goat, oh, show
Vowels followed by /r/
/ɑːr/ [ɑ̈ː] barn, car, park
/ɪər/ [eᴈ] fear, peer, tier
/ɛər/ bare, bear, there
/ɜːr/ [ɜː], [əi] (also Black) burn, first, herd
/ɔːr/ [oᴈ] hoarse, horse, poor

Vocabulary

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In 1982, Holm and Shilling released a 228 page Dictionary of Bahamian English containing over 5,000 words, including words both familiar to other English speakers as well as purely Bahamian terms.[16] In addition to British and American English influences, due to the country's colonial past, some vocabulary is derived from West African languages and Spanish influences.[17] Amongst British sources, Holm found a wide variety of influences, with 43% of British dialect words in Bahamian English coming from Scotland and the North Country, 14% from Ireland and 11% from the West Country.[18]

Some distinctive Bahamianisms include:

  • Asue or asue draw - a kind of collective saving scheme, derived from Yoruba.[16]
  • Bey – supposed to mean "boy", but can also refer to any person.[19] It can also be used as an imperative command to make somebody pay attention to a point.[20]
  • Biggety (adjective) - bold or loud.[21] [dead link]
  • Big eye (adjective) - greedy[16]
  • Big-up (adjective) - pregnant.[22]
  • Boonggy (noun) - the hindquarters area.[22] As a verb, it refers to anal penetration.[23]
  • Broughtupcy (noun) – the way that someone is raised.[20] "No broughtupcy" can also be used as an adjective, meaning "bad-mannered".[21]
  • Conchy Joe (noun) - can refer to either a white native/longtime resident of the Bahamas or a cocktail.[19]
  • Cut eye (verb) - to give somebody a dirty look.[21]
  • Cut one's hip (verb) - to give somebody a beating. The noun "cut-hip" refers to a beating that is given in this act.[24]
  • Frowsy (adjective) - foul-smelling, often in an extreme sense.[17]
  • Grabalishous (adjective) - greedy.[21]
  • Jam up (adjective) - crowded.[19]
  • Jitney (noun) - a city bus.[19]
  • Jook (verb) - to poke or stab.[21]
  • Jungle-ess (noun) - a loud, uncouth and fiesty woman.[17]
  • Mash up (verb) - to break or destroy something.[19]
  • Muddo or muddasick[21] (interjection) – an expression used to represent excitement, surprise, or shock.[20]
  • Mussy[21] - a contraction of "must be", often used to mean only the former.
  • Potcake (noun) - a dog of multiple breeds.[19]
  • Reef barrier (noun) - the main reef of a coral reef system.[25]
  • Reef platform (noun) - the top of a coral reef, especially a flat one.[25]
  • Root title (noun) - title history (of an estate).[26]
  • Sip sip (noun) - gossip.[21]
  • Slam bam (noun) - a sausage and bread sandwich.
  • Sometimey (adjective) - moody.[24]
  • Stench (verb) - to be stubborn.[22]
  • Sweetheartin' (verb) - to cheat on one's spouse.[21]
  • Switcha (noun) - lemonade.[19]
  • Tennis - sneakers, trainers, runners; cf tennis shoes.[16]
  • Tief (verb) - thief.[20]
  • Tingum - used to refer to a person or thing with a name that cannot be easily recalled by the speaker.[20] Can also be represented with "t'ing".[22]
  • Totin' news (verb) - to spread gossip.[22]
  • Yinna (pronoun) - you (plural).[20]

British vs American English

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Bahamian English has also come under the influence of American English due to a boost in tourism after the country gained independence, along with the resulting diffusion of American media.[27] With its historical position as a former British colony but its proximity to the United States, Bahamian English tends to favour some British English terms, some American English terms, and also use a combination of both. For example:

Words shared with American English Words shared with British English
gasoline socket
cell phone maths
sweet pepper
sidewalk
candy
chips
ground beef
hood, trunk, windscreen bumper
parking lot car park
trash
sweater
stroller, baby carriage pram
cookie biscuit
pants
nursery kindergarten
liquid paper
aluminum
vacation

References

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  1. ^ a b Schreier, Daniel; Trudgill, Peter; Schneider, Edgar W.; Williams, Jeffrey P. (2010-03-04). The Lesser-Known Varieties of English: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-48741-2. The assumption that Afro-Bahamian English is monolithic is, in fact, false, but continues to this day despite the fact that Albury (1981), in a Master's thesis, found variation of simple past marking within Afro-Bahamian, differentiating four distinct groups of speakers: basilectal, mid-mesolectal, upper-mesolectal, and acrolectal. The assumption that Afro-Bahamian is monolithic is further complicated by the fact that there are few clear ethnic boundaries in the Bahamas
  2. ^ a b Schreier, Daniel; Trudgill, Peter; Schneider, Edgar W.; Williams, Jeffrey P. (2010-03-04). The Lesser-Known Varieties of English: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. pp. 160–161. ISBN 978-1-139-48741-2. the style-shifting abilities of residents make it difficult to estimate the numbers of speakers who speak any Bahamian dialect; however, drawing solely from demographic data, about five in six Bahamian residents... where much of the creole Bahamian basilect can be heard (Hackert 2004). The remaining approximately 50,000 residents are spread throughout the rest of the islands and vary considerably in their speech patterns.
  3. ^ a b McPhee, Helean (2006). "Is Bahamian Dialect a Creole?". www.cavehill.uwi.edu. Archived from the original on 2011-06-25. Retrieved 2025-08-31. In comparison to many of the English-based creoles of the Caribbean region, limited research has been conducted on what Bahamians commonly refer to as "Bahamian Dialect." This lack of research on "Bahamian Dialect" is perhaps due to the fact that for many years, Bahamians have assumed that this language is simply a variety of English.
  4. ^ a b Oenbring, Raymond (November 2015). "Tracing the Historical Development of Standard Bahamian English: A First Approach" (PDF). Journal of the Bahamas Historical Society: 18–27. Despite that fact most Bahamians refer to their mother tongue as Bahamian Dialect, linguists prefer to use the term Bahamian Creole English
  5. ^ a b Childs, Becky; Wolfram, Walt (2008). "Bahamian English Phonology". In Schneider, Edgar W. (ed.). Varieties of English: The Americas and the Caribbean. Vol. 2. De Gruyter Mouton. p. 428. ISBN 9783110208405. Although most Bahamians share some characteristic features, a number of structures are sensitive to ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic factors.
  6. ^ a b Ammon, Ulrich; Dittmar, Norbert; Mattheier, Klaus J. (2006). Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society. Walter de Gruyter. p. 2069. ISBN 978-3-11-018418-1. British-based standard Bahamian English is the official language [...] Although standard Bahamian is non-rhotic, many Bahamians view r-full American pronunciations as "correct" and try to imitate them, even to the extent of introducing a hypercorrect /r/ in [...] Baharmas.
  7. ^ Hackett, Stephanie (2013). "Bahamian Creole". In Michaelis, Susanne Maria; Maurer, Philippe; Haspelmath, Martin; Huber, Magnus (eds.). The Survey of Pidgin and Creole Languages: Volume 1. Oxford University Press. pp. 127–137. spoken by c. 250,000 in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas
  8. ^ Childs, Becky; Wolfram, Walt (2008). "Bahamian English Phonology". In Schneider, Edgar W. (ed.). Varieties of English: The Americas and the Caribbean. Vol. 2. De Gruyter Mouton. p. 428. ISBN 9783110208405. In addition, there is a basilectal-acrolectal continuum with respect to creole features that applies primarily to the Afro-Bahamian population; however, this dimension tends to be more relevant to the grammatical description of Bahamian English than to phonology.
  9. ^ Donnelly, Janet L. (1997). "Basilectal Features of Bahamian Creole English". International Journal of Bahamian Studies. 9: 17–34. doi:10.15362/ijbs.v9i0.28. ISSN 2220-5772. There is no official orthography for Bahamian and, thus, when it is in a written form, varying techniques of eye dialect are employed depending on the writer. These devices are far from uniform - even within the same piece of writing. It would therefore be useful to try to standardize the representation so as to reflect the differences in pronunciation without having to rely on a specialized knowledge of phonetics. However, this is a matter which will have to be addressed at a later date.
  10. ^ "Helean McPhee: Is Bahamian Dialect a Creole?". www.cavehill.uwi.edu. Archived from the original on 2011-06-25. Retrieved 2025-08-31. We should keep in mind that every speaker shows some variation in speech. In societies such as The Bahamas, people may easily code switch from one variety to another, without realizing that they are actually using two different language systems.
  11. ^ Schreier, Daniel; Trudgill, Peter; Schneider, Edgar W.; Williams, Jeffrey P. (2010-03-04). The Lesser-Known Varieties of English: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. p. 161. ISBN 978-1-139-48741-2. One further complication for such a description is that many Bahamians are skilled register-shifters and may have access to both creole and non-creole varieties. Thus, even defining speech norms for a single speaker is a complicated task
  12. ^ Coughlan, Margaret N. (1976). Folklore from Africa to the United States: An annotated bibliography. Library of Congress. p. 108. ISBN 0-8444-0175-7. Songs and stories in the Bahamian dialect illustrate the "genetic relation existing between the tales and music of the Parallels from accessible collections of American, and of native African, folklore are indicated.
  13. ^ Reaser, Jeffrey; Torbert, Benjamin (2008-12-19). Bahamian English: morphology and syntax. De Gruyter Mouton. doi:10.1515/9783110197181-101. ISBN 978-3-11-019718-1.
  14. ^ a b Wells, J. C. (1982). Accents of English. Vol. 3: Beyond the British Isles. Cambridge U. Press. pp. 565–570, 589–590. ISBN 978-0-521-28541-4.
  15. ^ Childs, Becky; Wolfram, Walt (2004). "Bahamian English: Phonology". In: A handbook of varieties of English, 1. pp. 438-441.
  16. ^ a b c d Holm, John A.; Watt Shilling, Alison (1982). Dictionary of Bahamian English. Cold Spring, New York: Lexik House.
  17. ^ a b c Smith, Rogan (19 July 2021). "16 Bahamian Words You Need to Know | This Bahamian Gyal".
  18. ^ Holm, John (1980). "Bahamians' British Roots Traced". College Forum. 1: 3–10.
  19. ^ a b c d e f g "15 Phrases to Know Before Visiting the Bahamas". 22 December 2017.
  20. ^ a b c d e f "Bahamian Slang | This Bahamian Gyal". 27 May 2018.
  21. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Bahamas Slang Bahamian Speak Talk". Archived from the original on July 6, 2012.
  22. ^ a b c d e "Bahamas words and phrases 2022 | 15 fun sayings and quotes". 30 June 2018.
  23. ^ "Talkin Sex Stuff". 21 March 2013.
  24. ^ a b "Ting's to Say". 7 June 2018.
  25. ^ a b Storr, John Frederick (1964). Ecology and Oceanography of the Coral-Reef Tract, Abaco Island, Bahamas. Geological Society of America. ISBN 978-0-8137-2079-1. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
  26. ^ How to Buy and Sell Real Estate in the Bahamas: Insider's Guide. Matthew Simon. 12 March 2012. ISBN 9781438250519.
  27. ^ "Linguistic Features".
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