10 Jamaican Creole Proverbs from the Perspective of Contact Linguistics kept their culture far from outside influences and managed to sustain and preserve their language. Settlements of Maroons are to be found not only in Jamaica but also throughout the New World.3 1.4. THE ENGLISH INVASION – THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC SITUATION In 1655, the English attacked the fragile Spanish colony and “[…] settled the valleys and flatlands, cleared them of forests, established large sugar plantations, and by 1680s were importing thousands of African slaves each year to do the work” (Kopytoff 1978: 289). Before the English arrived, the languages spoken in Jamaica were Spanish and Portuguese (Lalla & D’Costa 1990: 14). The Spanish settlements shared their fate with the Arawak, as they were destroyed by the English. Hardly any Hispanic evidence was left after the English took over the island, except for some place, plant and animal names (Cassidy & LePage 1961: xi). The varieties spoken at that time on the island, especially by the townsfolk, were the speech of black and mixed creoles, whereas in the rural areas varieties of Spanish and Taino mixed with African dialects were more likely to be heard (Lalla & D’Costa 1990: 14). Other peoples settling Jamaica came from London and other parts of England, also from Barbados, Montserrat, St. Kitts, Surinam, Bermuda, New England and Virginia; there were also Sephardic Jews from Brazil and Surinam. Among the newcomers from England, Lalla and D’Costa also mention “[…] indentured servants shipping out from Bristol and bringing with them the dialects of Southwest England” (1990: 15). Apart from these, convicts from English prisons, Gypsies and a growing number of Africans landed on Jamaica. The statistics show that of the 12,000 newcomers, after six years only 3,451 remained alive (Lalla & D’Costa 1990: 16). Herbert Klein states that during the period of the English invasion and the end of slavery in 1809, Jamaica transformed from […] a primarily subsistence agrarian economy into one of the world’s largest plantation commercial crop regimes. In that period over 600,000 Africans were transported to the island and Jamaica had become the largest single importer of African slave labourers in all British America. (1978: 25) Moreover, by the year 1720 Jamaica had become the dominant West Indian sugar production center and “[b]y this period it was importing over 3 For details, see Kopytoff (1978: 287–307).
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