The Caribbean Territories

The Caribbean Territories

They are Spanish, Dutch, English and French

1.Spanish Speaking Territories

The following countries Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico are all Spanish speaking countries. All these countries use Spanish as an official and universally spoken language. They also use a non-standard Spanish dialect.

2.French Speaking Territories

Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana all have French as the official or standard language. Other languages variously called Haitian Creole, Haitian, or French Creole, Creole or patois exist.

3.Dutch Speaking Territories

Suriname, the Netherlands Antilles (Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Marteen) are all Dutch speaking territories. In Curacao for example, in 1983 preparations were made for making Papiamentu the official national language with Spanish and English as the official second languages, while preserving Dutch as the language of post primary education for at least ten years.
In Suriname the mass vernacular, Sranan, exist alongside minority languages and ethnic vernaculars such as Javanese, Hindi, Ndjuka, Saramaccan and Amerindian.

4.English Speaking Territories

The countries that fall under the English speaking territories are Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua, St. Kitts, Montserrat, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Nevis and Antigua. They share English as the official language. This group is very diverse. There is monolingualism, bilingualism, multilingualism, diglossia, and post-Creole continuum.
Trinidad has several other languages other than English. There are French Creole, Spanish, Bhojpuri that serve as the media of everyday communication in most rural communities, and a post Creole English serves as the mass vernacular.
In St. Lucia and Dominica the English speaking rural and urban populations’ daily interaction is by way of a French-based Creole.
In Grenada the English is strongly influenced by a French Creole.
The U.S. and British Virgin Islands have a Post Creole English and all the other territories, an English Creole.
Jamaica falls in the latter group, having English as its official and standard language and English Creole as its mass vernacular.

The Linguistic Diversity gives rise to language situations ranging from monolingual, bi-dialectal, bilingual, diglossic to monolingual and continuum.

The U.S. and British Virgin Islands reflect a bi-dialectal situation in which the official language is English and the mass vernacular is post-Creole English.

Multilingual situations are evident in Belize, Trinidad and Suriname.
A diglossic situation exists in Haiti and the French West Indies. However a bilingual situation exists in St. Lucia and the Netherlands Antilles while a continuum exits in other English speaking territories where the official language is English and the mass vernacular is English Creole.