||2,670,000 in Jamaica (2001). Population total all countries: 3,202,600.
||Also in Canada, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Panama, United Kingdom, United States.
Creole Languages of the Northern Caribbean
||Bongo Talk, Limon Creole English, Panamanian Creole English, Patois, Patwa, Quashie Talk, Southwestern Caribbean Creole English
||The basilect and Standard English mutually inherently unintelligible (Voegelin and Voegelin 1977, LePage 1960, Adler 1977). May be partly intelligible to speakers of Cameroon Pidgin [wes] and Krio [kri] of Sierra Leone, spoken by descendants of Jamaicans repatriated between 1787 and 1860. Inherently intelligible to creole speakers in Panama and Costa Rica. Reportedly very similar to Belize Creole [bzj], similar to Grenada, Saint Vincent, different from Tobago, very different from Guyana, Barbados, Leeward and Windward islands. Lexical similarity: 25% with Guyanese Creole English [gyn], 13% with Belize Kriol English [bzj], 9% with Trinidadian Creole English [trf], 8% with Bajan [bjs], 5% with Nicaragua Creole English [bzk].
||Creole, English based, Atlantic, Western
||Vigorous. Creole is the dominant language and gaining in prestige. Post-Creole continuum from the distinct Creole to provincial Standard English of town dwellers. Most believe they speak Standard English. Also use Standard English.
||Literacy rate in L2: High in English. Dictionary. Grammar.
||Linguistic influences from Akan [aka] languages in Ghana and Bantu languages (Hancock 1988).