 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Torres Strait English" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Torres Strait English (called by its speakersT.I. English) is adialect of theEnglish language spoken by the people of various backgrounds (indigenousTorres Strait Islanders, Malay, Filipino, European, Japanese, etc.) born and raised onThursday Island and neighbouring islands in Torres Strait, NorthQueensland,Australia. It is distinct fromTorres Strait Creole, though most locals speak both the creole and English. Quite a few locals are also speakers ofGeneral Australian English.
Its main phonological characteristic is the retention of English[iː] and[uː] where Australian English has[əi] and[əu] (for example, wheel[ˈwiːl] rather than[ˈwəil], fool[ˈfuːl] rather than[ˈfəul]), while where grammar and the like are concerned, Torres Strait English shows a certain amount of post-Creole characteristics, such as the phraseYou for [adjective] (e.g.You for style!) for the EnglishYou look/are really [adjective] (You are a real show-off!, alt.You are real cool!), and the almost mandatory use of second personal pronouns in the imperative. Other characteristics of T.I. English follow general non-standard dialects of English such as the use ofdone fordid,run forran,come forcame (i.e. a four-way verb system of present-past-infinitive—ing-form for all verbs), andoncet foronce. This is anon-rhotic accent, like Australian and New Zealand dialects.
T.I. English is not a post-creole form, but rather an independent development from the English of the early European settlers, most of whom were from various parts of the world. Relatively few were native-born White Australians. The input dialects were British of various types including Irish, Jamaican and others. Substratum languages include Malay, Japanese, Chinese, Jamaican Creole, Samoan,Brokan and so on.
List ofTorres Strait topics | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Torres Strait Islands, islets, andcays |
| ||||||||||||||||||
| People, culture, communities and languages |
| ||||||||||||||||||
| Governance and legal matters |
| ||||||||||||||||||
| Buildings and structures | |||||||||||||||||||
| Other | |||||||||||||||||||
 | This article about theEnglish language is astub. You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it. |
 | ThisNorth Queensland related article is astub. You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it. |
