Language
English is the country's official language (the local variety of standard English is Trinidadian English or more properly, Trinidad and Tobago Standard English (TTSE)), but the main spoken language is either of two English-based creole languages (Trinidadian Creole or Tobagonian Creole) which reflects the Amerindian, European (including Spanish), African and Indian heritage of the nation. Both creoles contain elements from a variety of African languages; Trinidadian English Creole, however, is also influenced by French and French Creole (Patois). Spanish is estimated to be spoken by around 5% of the population, and has been promoted by recent governments as a "first foreign language".
Most of the Indian arrivals spoke Bhojpuri and attempts are being made to preserve this, including the promotion of an Indo-Trinidadian musical form called Pichakaree, which is typically sung in a mixture of English, Hindi and Bhojpuri.
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Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?... We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If when a businessman speaks of minority employment, or air pollution, or poverty, he speaks in the language of a certified public accountant analyzing a corporate balance sheet, who is to know that he understands the human problems behind the statistical ones? If the businessman would stop talking like a computer printout or a page from the corporate annual report, other people would stop thinking he had a cash register for a heart. It is as simple as that—but that isn’t simple.”
—Louis B. Lundborg (1906–1981)