Commonwealth of Dominica. 87,000 (1995). Self governing part of British West Indies. Literacy rate 80% to 94%. Christian. Data accuracy estimate: A1. The number of languages listed for Dominica is 3. Of those, 2 are living languages and 1 is extinct.
CARIB, ISLAND [CAI] Formerly also in Lesser Antilles, excluding Trinidad. Arawakan, Maipuran, Northern Maipuran, Caribbean. Was not intelligible with Black Carib (D. Taylor 1959). Became extinct in Dominica about 1920. Vincentian on St. Vincent may have been closer to Black Carib than to Island Carib. Used a special language of Cariban origin to address men (Berend Hoff).
ENGLISH [ENG] 322,000,000 in all countries (1995 WA). Indo-European, Germanic, West, North Sea, English. Dialect: DOMINICAN ENGLISH. National language. Bible 1535-1989. NT 1525-1985. Bible portions 1530-1987.
LESSER ANTILLEAN CREOLE FRENCH (PATWA, PATOIS) [DOM] 83,780 in Dominica (1987), 96.3% of the population; 1,024,980 in all countries. Also in St. Lucia, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Grenada, and France. Creole, French based. Mother tongue of nearly the entire population. Possibly 70% are monolingual in Creole. The dialect of Dominica is the same as St. Lucia. Standard French understood by no more than 10% of the population (M. Adler 1977). Christian. Bible portions 1894-1992. Work in progress.
Part of the Ethnologue, 13th Edition, Barbara F. Grimes, Editor.
Copyright © 1996, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc. All rights reserved.
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