Vincentian Creole

Vincentian Creole is an English-lexified creole language spoken in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The number of speakers of Vincentian Creole is about 100 000. Vincentian Creole does not have the status of an official language. It contains elements of French and Antillean Creole, Spanish and even Portuguese. It has also been influenced by the indigenous Kalinago/Garifuna elements and by African language brought over the Atlantic Ocean by way of the slave trade. Over the years the creole has changed to be more English-based.

One must also always bear in mind that creole was developed as a spoken language by very intelligent (but "uneducated") slaves who needed to be able to communicate with other slaves from other tribes. Most of the words were overheard and therefore mispronounced by the standard of the original languages (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese). This particular creole has no grammatical rules as such but some observations can be made as to how speakers structure their sentences when speaking and as to how ideas are expressed.