Bajan: The Creole Language of Barbados

Barbados is a small Caribbean island that was, as of 1995, home to 259,000 residents - a population that increases significantly during the tourist season ("Bajan: A Language of Barbados" 1). English has been the official language of Barbados since its early settlement days by English colonists, but most people also speak a dialect of Bajan, the Creole language that has developed over time and which is unique to this setting. This report will examine Bajan in terms of its linguistic components and will also describe the development of Barbadian culture which has given rise to this language.

Bajan must be recognized as a Creole tongue - defined by O'Grady, Dobrovolsky and Aronoff (533) as a language that, having originated as a pidgin, has become established as a first language in some speech communities. In many instances, Creoles that have become established as first languages continue to exist alongside the standard or higher status language that was originally pidginized. The standard language (in this case English) usually serves as the language of education and administration and business. O'Grady, et al (533) note that: "The Creole, not having the stabilizing base of a written tradition and likely subject to the influence of the standard, tends to change more rapidly over time."

Generally, Bajan is a rhotic language. Wikipedia (1, 1) described such languages as follows:

English pronunciation is divided into two main ac

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Like other Creoles, the Bajan dialect is constantly evolving as new words and expressions are added. A key characteristic of Bajan is that it uses grammatical "short cuts." Auxiliary verbs are often dropped from some expressions. Instead of saying "I am going," a Barbadian may instead say "I gone." The subjective pronoun is often used in place of the objective or possessive such as "tell we," or "it is we culture." Further, the end of the past participle may be dropped as in "it finish" for "it is finished" ("Communicating with Bajans" 1). Bajan has other unique characteristics, to wit: When forming a question, Bajans often do not invert the subject and verb. Questions are expressed as statements, but speakers will raise their voices at the end of the sentence to indicate that they are asking a question. Instead of using the word "very" to emphasize an idea, Bajans may repeat a word. For example, to indicate that a car went very fast, a Bajan would say, "the car went fast, fast, fast." Certain words and expressions also have specific local meanings. For example, "ignorant" in Bajan dialect means very aggressive or mean ("Communicating With Bajans" 1). Presented below is a brief figure depicting differences between E
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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