Nicaraguan English

Abstract

The goals of the present paper are modest:  we will first present some background of how English carne to be a language of Nicaragua. We then present some of the features of Nicaraguan English that distinguish it as a variety of English.  Finally, we will discuss the development of this variety of English in the context of the history of the English Language. Early in the seventeenth century when English-speaking people carne to North America from England, they carne to the islands of the Caribbean and to Central America as well.  Late in the eighteenth century, as a consequence of the 1783 Treaty of Versailles, the British eventually withdrew from their settlements along the Caribbean side of Central America to British Honduras (now Belize) and to the Caribbean islands.  Many Africans or descendants of Africans who had been enslaved by the British, escaped or otherwise won their freedom and remained to form their own communities. These Afro-Americans adopted. the English language as a common means of communication. Thus, along the Atlantic sire of the Central American isthmus, there are English-speaking com­ munities, from Panama to Belize, and on the nearby islands:  the Com Islands, San Andrés, and Providencia, remnants of the old British West Caribbean empire.