Bermudian English
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bermudian English is the variety of English spoken in Bermuda, a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic. "Standard English is used in professional settings and in writing, while vernacular Bermudian English is spoken on more casual occasions."[1]
Bermudian English has been called "one of the most severely underresearched varieties of English".[2] It primarily shows a mixture of traits typical of British English and American English, and is generally classified as a form of American (rather than Caribbean) English.[3] The most detailed scholarly study of Bermudian English, in 1933, stated that this type of speech "would create least remark, if indeed any, between, say, Norfolk, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina".[4] In certain aspects of vocalization, however, Bermudian English is close to some versions of Caribbean English,[5] and some would bracket all these varieties to the broad region of the "English-speaking West Indies".[6]
An unusual characteristic of Bermudian English, in people with a strong Bermudian accent, is the interchange of /æ/ and /ɛ/ (so that 'letter' is pronounced 'latter'), and of /v/ and /w/ - hence the title of a humorous glossary: Bermewjan Vurds.[7] Other characteristcs of Bermudian English include long vowels, and the tendency to pronounce d as dj, or j, when combined with a slender vowels, as in Bermudjin (Bermudian). This is not a characteristic unique to Bermuda. Note "idiot" - pronounced in many American accents as "idjit", or "eedjit". The v and w confusion is also characteristic of many dialects of Southern England.
[edit] References
- ^ Ruth Thomas, "Notes on Bermudian Language", in "Bermuda connections", Smithsonian Folklife Festival. 2001. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2001.
- ^ Cecilia Cutler, Stephanie Hackert and Chanti Seymour, "Bermuda and Bahamas", in Ulrich Ammon (ed.), Sociolinguistics. An International Handbook. 2nd ed. Vol. 3. Walter de Gruyter, 2006. ISBN 3110184184. p. 2066.
- ^ Tom McArthur (ed.), Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-19-214183-X. pp. 116, 352.
- ^ Harry Morgan Ayres, "Bermudian English", American Speech 8:1 (1933), p. 4. Available online to JSTOR subscribers.
- ^ Cecilia Cutler, “English in the Turks and Caicos Islands: A look at Grand Turk” in Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean, ed. Michael Aceto and Jeffrey P. Williams. John Benjamins: 2003, pp. 51–80. ISBN 9027248907. p. 60.
- ^ John Wells, Accents of English 3: Beyond the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. ISBN 0521297192. p. 561.
- ^ Peter A. Smith and Fred M. Barritt, Bermewjan Vurds - a Dictionary of Conversational Bermudian. Hamilton, Bermuda: Lizard Press, 1988.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Bermudian English: History, Features, Social Role paper by Stanford University student Luke Swartz, from which some of above references were taken.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
