Belizean Creole | |
---|---|
Belizean Patwah | |
Native to | Belize |
Ethnicity | Belizean Creoles (traditionally) |
Native speakers | 150,000 (2013)[1] Second language: over 200,000 |
English Creole
| |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | bzj |
Glottolog | beli1260 |
Linguasphere | 52-ABB-ad |
Belizean Creole, or Kriol, also called Belizean Patwah, is an English-based creole language spoken by the Belizean Creole people; which is a dialect of Jamaican Patwah, similar to Miskito Coastal Creole, and San Andrés-Providencia Creole.[2][3]
Belizean Creole is a contact language that developed and grew between 1650 and 1930, as a result of the slave trade.[4][5] 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.[4]
Belizean Creoles are people of Afro-European origin.[5] 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.[6] 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.[5] When the National Kriol Council began standardizing 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.[7][8]
© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search