Characteristics of Creole

 

Consonants

ü    In Creole English the th in the words thief and teeth would be pronounced like a t;

ü    Loss of s at the beginning of words like strong, string, and split.

 

Morphology (word-endings)

ü    Creole English shows much less dependence on morphology. Many of the grammatical inflections which characterize standard English are either not part of Creole English or are inconsistently used.                      

Double marking for comparative and superlative are both natural in Creole English.

    Big (more) bigger       (most) biggest             /           tall    (more) taller     (most) tallest

Plural

ü    Unlike standard English, the Creole does not mark the plural in the noun phrase unless the context of the utterance is not clear, in which case it uses the third person before or after the noun 

e.g. di dog dem/dem dog

 

Juxtaposition

ü    Creole, like standard English uses juxtaposition, but unlike standard English uses it generally. Creole English does not depend on morphology for indicating possession, but solely on juxtaposition of nouns. The Creole also hardly (if at all) makes use the apostrophe to show possession 

e.g. trunk of tree/tree’s trunk/ tree trunk

ü    Juxtaposition is also used to indicate gender and possession e.g. man book, girls school, girl child, bull cow, woman doctor, man tree.

Absence of Verbs/Shorter Sentences

ü    The Creole uses shorter sentences and tends to omit verbs e.g. The cat is fat =Di cat fat

Smaller Vocabulary

ü    Creole English has a much smaller vocabulary than the standard because it is characteristic of fewer societies.

Excessive Use of Object Pronoun Me

ü    The Creole makes great use of pronoun me instead of subject pronoun I e.g Me (instead of I) feel sleepy.

ü    Some Rastafarians, on the other hand, make excessive use of I e.g. Give I (instead of me) di bread.

 Negation

ü    The Creole allows double and triple negation e.g Me nah no noting (instead of anything)