Introduction

The volcanic island of St Helena lies in the mid-central South Atlantic Ocean, 1,930 kilometres west of Angola, south of the equator. Its nearest neighbour (geographically speaking) is Ascension Island, more than 1,000 kilometres to the northwest. St Helena covers an area of 122 square kilometres and its topography mostly consists of steep, relatively barren and rocky territory, mostly unsuitable for cultivation. Despite the island's locality within the tropics, the micro-climates of the main valley of the island, Jamestown Valley, and the central highlands as well as the island's southwest are mild, favoured by the southeast trade winds. The island's capital and only town is Jamestown, although there are other smaller settlements such as Half Tree Hollow, Blue Hill, Sandy Bay and Longwood (the latter serving as the residence of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was exiled on the island from 1815 to his death in 1821).

The origins of St Helenian English (StHE) can be dated to the mid seventeenth century (the East India Company (EIC) established the colony in 1658). It is thus the oldest variety of Southern Hemisphere English (SHemE), more than a century older than the major varieties of South African, Australian and New Zealand English and pre-dating other lesser-known SHemEs (TdCE, FIE; this volume) by more than 150 years. There has been a continuous native-speaker tradition on the island ever since a short Dutch interregnum in the early 1670s, when the Dutch fleet under Jacob de Gens took control of the island for a few months.