Pidginised English was used in the slave trade in West Africa and brought to the Caribbean by African slaves and the British slavers and settlers who dealt with them. A Creole results when a pidgin is adopted as the first language of an entire speech community. During the second half of the seventeenth century a Creole with a structure quite distinct from English merged as the native language of a number of slave communities in the West Indies. The second half of the eighteenth century brought constant warfare to the Caribbean as Britain and France fought over the sugar islands, which were producing great wealth. Central America gained more English speakers during the second half of the nineteenth century even though British political influence waned there. This chapter discusses morphological changes, semantic changes, phonology, and syntax of the Creole English.

Khoisan and Black languages have from early times provided an important input to South African English. The Black press and Black literature are growth points for all English-speaking South Africans. The South African accent, though its phonology contains elements traceable to particular dialects of English and contact languages, is clearly distinguishable from that of other 'transplanted' Englishes and reflects a unique system. In 1820 the English-speaking population was roughly doubled when between four and five thousand 'settlers' were helped by the British government to establish themselves in the Eastern Cape. This chapter samples some key areas of the vocabularies of human relationships and human types. The syntax of formal South African English approximates to that of formal standard British English. The importance of British models for South African English may relate in the first place to the minority status of English-speaking South Africans and secondly to the rather conservative political outlook of most whites among these.