section_path: Dialects, accents and varieties/Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia
section_name: Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia
paragraph_text: Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia
  
  English is spoken widely in southern Africa and is an official or co-official language in several of the region's countries. In South Africa, English has been spoken since 1820, co-existing with Afrikaans and various African languages such as the Khoe and Bantu languages. Today, about nine percent of the South African population speaks South African English (SAE) as a first language. SAE is a non-rhotic variety that tends to follow RP as a norm. It is one of the few non-rhotic English varieties that lack intrusive R. The second-language varieties of South Africa differ based on the native languages of their speakers. Most phonological differences from RP are in the vowels. Consonant differences include the tendency to pronounce /p, t, t͡ʃ, k/ without aspiration (e.g. pin pronounced rather than as as in most other varieties), while r is often pronounced as a flap instead of as the more common fricative.
  
  Nigerian English is a variety of English spoken in Nigeria. It has traditionally been based on British English, but in recent years, because of influence from the United States, some words of American English origin have made it into Nigerian English. Additionally, some new words and collocations have emerged from the variety out of a need to express concepts specific to the culture of the nation (e.g. senior wife). Over 150 million Nigerians speak English.
  
  Several varieties of English are also spoken in the Caribbean islands that were colonial possessions of Britain, including Jamaica, the Leeward and Windward Islands and Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, the Cayman Islands and Belize. Each of these areas is home both to a local variety of English and a local English-based creole, combining English and African languages. The most prominent varieties are Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole. In Central America, English-based creoles are spoken on the Caribbean coasts of Nicaragua and Panama. Locals are often fluent in both the local English variety and the local creole languages, and code-switching between them is frequent. Indeed, a way to conceptualise the relationship between such creole and standard varieties is to view them as a spectrum of language registers in which the most creole-like forms serve as the "basilect" and the most RP-like forms serve as the "acrolect", the most formal register.
  
  Most Caribbean varieties are based on British English and consequently, most are non-rhotic, except for formal styles of Jamaican English which are often rhotic. Jamaican English differs from RP in its vowel inventory, which has a distinction between long and short vowels rather than tense and lax vowels as in Standard English. The diphthongs /ei/ and /ou/ are monophthongs and or even the reverse diphthongs and (e.g. bay and boat pronounced and). Often word-final consonant clusters are simplified so that "child" is pronounced and "wind".
  
  As a historical legacy, Indian English tends to take RP as its ideal, and how well this ideal is realised in an individual's speech reflects class distinctions among Indian English speakers. Indian English accents are marked by the pronunciation of phonemes such as /t/ and /d/ (often pronounced with retroflex articulation as and) and the replacement of /θ/ and /ð/ with dentals and. Sometimes Indian English speakers may also use spelling-based pronunciations where the silent ⟨ h ⟩ found in words such as ghost is pronounced as an Indian voiced aspirated stop.