Bahamian Creole

Bahamian Creole, also described as Bahamian dialect or simply Bahamian, is an English-based creole language spoken by both Black and White Bahamians, sometimes in slightly different forms. In comparison to many of the English-based dialects of the Caribbean, it suffers from limited research, possibly because it has long been assumed that this language is simply a variety of English. However, socio-historical and linguistic research shows that this is not the case and it is, in fact, a creole language,^[2] related to but distinct from English as spoken in The Bahamas.

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The Bahamian dialect 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.^[3] 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.^[4]

Though there is variation between Black and White speakers, there is a tendency for speakers to drop /h/ or, in a hypercorrection, to add it to words without it so harm and arm are pronounced the same. The merger occurs most often in the speech of Abaco and north Eleuthera.^[5]

Some speakers have merged /v/ and /w/ into a single phoneme and pronounce words with [v] or [w] depending on context (the latter appearing in word-initial position and the former appearing elsewhere).^[6] Outside of White acrolectal speech, speakers have no dental fricatives and English cognate words are usually pronounced with [d] or [t] as in dis ('this') and tink ('think').^[5] Other characteristics of Bahamian Creole in comparison to English include:^[5]

• Merger of the vowels of fair and fear into [ɛə]
• Free variation of the "happy" vowel between [ɪ] and [i].
• The vowel of first merges with that of fuss (into [ʌ]) among some and with the vowel of foist (into [ʌɪ]) in others.
• As the creole is non-rhotic; /r/ is not pronounced unless it is before a vowel. For example, "Hard" turns in to "Haad" with the "a" being lengthed in the absence of the rhotic.
• Final clusters are often simplified, especially when they share voicing (gold > gol, but not milk > *mil).
• The pin–pen merger occurs.

Pronouns in Bahamian dialect are generally the same as in Standard English. However, the second person plural can take one of three forms:

• yinna,
• y'all or
• all a ya

Possessive pronouns in Bahamianese often differ from Standard English with:

• your becoming ya
• his or hers becoming he or she

and

• their becoming dey.

For example, das ya book? means 'is that your book?'

In addition, the possessive pronouns differ from Standard English:^{[citation needed]}

When describing actions done alone or by a single group, only.. one is used, as in only me one sing ('I'm the only one who sang') and only Mary one gern Nassau ('Mary is the only one who is going to Nassau')

Holm & Shilling (1982) features over 5,500 words and phrases not found in Standard English, with the authors attempting to link them to other English-based creoles, like Gullah.^[3] Words may derive from English, as well as some African languages.

• Gullah language
• Turks and Caicos Creole
• Jamaican Creole
• Haitian Creole, a French-based Creole spoken in the Bahamas by Haitian immigrants