Language
The official language of both the U.S. and British Virgin Islands is English. However, Virgin Islands Creole is the main spoken dialect in informal, daily usage. Due to immigration from other Caribbean islands, usage of Spanish and various French creoles have increased in the last few decades. Although the U.S. Virgin Islands was a Danish possession during most of its colonial history, Danish never was a spoken language amongst the populace, black or white, as the majority of plantation and slave owners were of Dutch, English, Scottish or Irish descent.
Read more about this topic: Sports In The United States Virgin Islands
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Whether we regard the Women’s Liberation movement as a serious threat, a passing convulsion, or a fashionable idiocy, it is a movement that mounts an attack on practically everything that women value today and introduces the language and sentiments of political confrontation into the area of personal relationships.”
—Arianna Stassinopoulos (b. 1950)
“I suggested to them also the great desirability of a general knowledge on the Island of the English language. They are under an English speaking government and are a part of the territory of an English speaking nation.... While I appreciated the desirability of maintaining their grasp on the Spanish language, the beauty of that language and the richness of its literature, that as a practical matter for them it was quite necessary to have a good comprehension of English.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are “prefabricated” in the sense that we don’t coin new ones every time we speak.”
—David Lodge (b. 1935)