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Belize Kriol English (also Kriol or Belizean Creole) is an English-based creole language closely related to Miskito Coastal Creole, Jamaican Patois, San Andrés-Providencia Creole, Bocas del Toro Creole, Colón Creole, Rio Abajo Creole and Limón Coastal Creole. Population estimates are difficult; virtually all of the more than 70,000 Creoles in Belize speak Kriol. In the 2010 Belize Census, 25.9% claimed Creole ethnicity and 44.6% claimed to speak Kriol.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.sib.org.bz/Portals/0/docs/publications/census/2010_Census_Report.pdf )〕 Possibly as many as 85,000 Creoles have migrated to the United States and may or may not still speak the language. This puts the number at over 150,000. Kriol is the lingua franca of Belize and is the first language of some Garifunas, Mestizos, Maya, and other ethnic groups. It is a second language for most others in the country.〔Johnson, Melissa A. (''The Making of Race and Place in Nineteenth-Century British Honduras'' ). ''Environmental History'', Vol. 8, No. 4 (October 2003), pp. 598–617.〕 When the National Kriol Council began standardizing the orthography for Kriol they decided that they would only promote the spelling ''Kriol'' for the language, but they would continue to use the spelling ''Creole'' when referring to the people in English.〔Decker, Ken (2005), ''The Song of Kriol: A Grammar of the Kriol Language of Belize''. Belize City: Belize Kriol Project, pp. 2.〕〔Crosbie, Paul, ed. (2007), ''Kriol-Inglish Dikshineri: English-Kriol Dictionary''. Belize City: Belize Kriol Project, pp. 196.〕 == Linguistic biography == Belize Kriol is derived mainly from English. Its substrate languages are the Native American language Miskito, and the various West African and Bantu languages which were brought into the country by slaves. These include Akan, Efik, Ewe, Fula, Ga, Hausa, Igbo, Kikongo and Wolof.〔http://www.kriol.org.bz/〕 There are numerous theories as to how creole languages form. A language emerged from the contact of English landowners and their West African slaves to ensure basic communication. The Baymen first began to settle in the area of Belize City in the 1650s. Decker (2005:3)〔 proposes that the creole spoken in Belize previous to 1786 was probably more like Jamaican than the Belize Kriol of today. By the Convention of London in 1786 the British were supposed to cease all logwood cutting operations along the Caribbean coast of Central America, except for the Belize settlement. Many of the settlers from the Miskito Coast moved to Belize, bringing their Miskito Coast Creole with them. The immigrants outnumbered the Baymen five to one.〔Floyd, Troy S. (1967). ''The Anglo-Spanish Struggle for Mosquitia''. University of New Mexico Press.〕 The local Kriol speech shifted to become something more like the Miskito Coast Creole.〔 Today, Belize Kriol is the first or second language of the majority of the country's inhabitants. Many of them speak standard English as well, and a rapid process of decreolization is going on. As such, a creole continuum exists and speakers are able to code-switch among various mesolect registers between the most basilect to the acrolect ("Mid-Atlantic") varieties. It should be noted that the acrolect, much like the basilect, is rarely heard.〔Escure, Geneviève. (''The Pragmaticization of Past in Creoles'' ). ''American Speech'', Vol. 74, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 165–202.〕 A 1987 travel guide in the ''Chicago Tribune'' newspaper reported that Belize Kriol is “a language that teases but just escapes the comprehension of a native speaker of English.” 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Belizean Creole」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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