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I read on the website that English is the official language in the USVI. I also saw on this website that Spanish and Creole (haitian, I'm assuming) are spoken. How often are they spoken? I also noticed that the majority of the population is black. Does that mean that Creole is more prevalent than the other two?
Burk: English is the main language spoken in the VI, but there is a fairly large Spanish speaking contingent- folks from Vieques, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, especially. The creole form spoken here is a Creole English, not Creole French as in Haiti. Many local folks of all hues are bilingual in English and Creole English.
Well I wouldn't really consider myself "bilingual" because the "Creole English" isn't quite a language, it's more like a dialect. I guess it sounds like another language to outsiders' ears. I think the Creole they could have possibly been referring to is the French-Creole (also known as Patois) that is spoken by immigrants from Dominica and St. Lucia. We have a lot of people from there, espcially on St. Croix, and they speak the Creole among themselves.
Dominic: I am going to respectfully disagree with you. The local language does have specific syntactic, morphologic and semantic rules which are different from standard English. These rules are understood and agreed to by speakers of each language. For example, in standard English, we say, "Dominic's pen". In Creole English, we say, "Dominic own pen." The reason I even argue this point is because Caribbean children (not just in the USVI) are told that they don't speak "properly." Instead, they should be taught that they speak a perfectly good language and they are going to learn a second one- with different rules- for use at school and in certain other situations. One is not a bad imitation of another language, it is a separate language! Wha' say you, me son?
Post Edited (07-22-04 18:12)
