Introduction

The islands of the Caribbean stretch over a thousand-mile arc from the top of the Florida archipelago to the mainland of South America. They are usually classified according to their (latest) affiliation to the European powers that colonised them from the fifteenth century onwards, and also in terms of the official languages they recognise. For the most part, these two criteria coincide. The major groupings include the Spanish-speaking nations, the French-official (francophone) Caribbean, the Dutch-official territories, and the English-official (anglophone) Caribbean. The largest group of islands belongs to the last of these categories.

The English-official Caribbean countries together have a total population of about five and a half million speakers. They include the vast majority of the islands outside of the Greater Antilles group (see figure 37.1), as well as two mainland nations – Belize in Central America, and Guyana in South America. These communities differ substantially in their sociolinguistic structures and particularly in terms of the relationship that English bears to the other varieties of language in use.

The vast majority of these countries are communities in which English as the official language coexists side by side with a lexically related creole language as the vernacular, with other varieties either non-existent or severely restricted in use. Such communities make up the so-called creole continua of the Caribbean. A list of the countries, their area, population and languages is provided in table 37.1.