Bahamian English: phonology

Introduction

The Commonwealth of The Bahamas (henceforth The Bahamas) represents a unique geographic, demographic, and linguistic situation among the islands of the Caribbean and North Atlantic. The Bahamas consist of more than 700 islands and over 5,000 square miles of land mass, ranging from Grand Bahama to the north, located 60 miles off of the Florida coast, to Inagua to the south, located approximately 50 miles from Cuba and Haiti. The 30 inhabited islands contain almost 300,000 permanent residents, two-thirds of whom now live in the urban area of Nassau. The map in Figure 1 outlines The Bahamas in relation to the United States, Cuba, and Haiti.

Although The Bahamas are often associated with the Caribbean Islands, in many respects they are more closely linked to North America than to the islands bounded by the Greater and Lesser Antilles. Furthermore, they have an important sociohistorical and sociolinguistic affinity with the US. Many of the Afro-Bahamians, who comprise 85 percent of the population, came from the Gullah-speaking areas of South Carolina and Georgia and many of the original Anglo-Bahamian settlers were British loyalists from North America who came to The Bahamas from the US after the Revolutionary War. Furthermore, there is regular off-island travel to the US by many Bahamians.

There are a number of linguistic and sociolinguistic issues relating to this archipelago. One question concerns the significance of different founder English varieties that range from British and American English dialects to Gullah and other creoles in the African diaspora. Few Caribbean varieties have such a full range of potential English input dialects. Another matter is the past and present relationship between Afro-Bahamian and Anglo-Bahamian varieties. Although the black population has outnumbered the white population for several centuries, they have been socially and politically subordinate for the vast majority of that time. At the same time, there are a number of long-term mono-ethnic enclaves of Anglo-Bahamians in some of the outlying cays (pronounced as “keys”), raising issues about ethnolinguistic boundaries and accommodation. The demographic, sociohistorical, and sociolinguistic circumstances of the islands thus raise important questions about language norms and language ideology along with matters of linguistic description.

In this account, we describe the phonological traits of Bahamian English, including the relationship between enclave Anglo-Bahamian speech communities in outlying regions and the dominant population of Afro-Bahamians. Although some of these issues are just beginning to be addressed, current research suggests that bilateral ethnolinguistic convergence and divergence are exhibited in both salient and subtle ways. To situate the linguistic description of some of the diagnostic features of Bahamian phonology, we first offer a brief historical overview of The Bahamas, followed by a description of some of the major vocalic, consonantal, and prosodic traits typical of black and white Bahamian speech.