1 Introduction

Due to migration, at least 100,000 speakers of English with a Maltese background (including approximately 50,000 speakers of Maltese, a language historically derived from Arabic; see Fabri Reference Fabri, Delcourt and van Sterkenburg2010; Stolz Reference Stolz, Kortmann and van der Auwera2011) live outside the Maltese islands, notably in Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA. The designation Maltese English (or, for short, MaltE) in the linguistic literature, however, applies only to the varieties spoken in the Republic of Malta, i.e. on the archipelago located in the Mediterranean about 100 km south of Sicily and about 300 km north of Libya and east of Tunisia. Its two biggest inhabited islands are Malta (population of c. 380,000) and Gozo (population of c. 30,000); the third inhabited Maltese island, Comino, has a permanent population of less than ten (Census of Population and Housing 2005; preliminary report of Census of Population and Housing 2011). (See Maps 2.1 and 2.2.)

Map 2.1 Malta's three inhabited islands

Map 2.2 Malta in its wider geographical context

It should be noted at the outset that, depending on the nature and intensity of language contact, the English spoken by individual people in Malta may be indistinguishable from a variety spoken and written in, say, England or Australia. For obvious reasons, these are not the varieties I will describe in the present chapter. Instead, I will focus on acrolectal Maltese English,¹ which is, of course, a cover term conflating a number of language-internal and -external factors. The term is used here to refer to an idealized language variety spoken by university-educated speakers, who speak at least some English at home and at work, who have spent no more than short periods of their lives in English-speaking countries outside Malta and whose parents were both born in Malta.

Acrolectal MaltE thus correlates with higher socioeconomic strata, although this is more true of older than of younger speakers because Malta has in recent times encouraged tertiary-level education by grants and has a high proportion of young people from all social strata attending university. When I use MaltE in this chapter without qualifications such as acrolectal or basilectal, I will be referring to the English spoken by educated Maltese speakers, who have typically received or are still receiving a tertiary-level education, but with no assumptions regarding the languages spoken at home or at the workplace. It is also this larger group of speakers whose language forms the bulk of the material that is compiled for components of the International Corpus of English (ICE). In addition to the pertinent literature, this chapter is based on data from the Maltese component of ICE under compilation at the University of Bamberg (hereafter ICE-Malta; see Hilbert and Krug Reference Hilbert and Krug2010 for details) and data from a questionnaire for lexical and morphosyntactic variation in English (see Krug, Hilbert and Fabri, in press, for detail).

As is often the case in places with a colonial history involving British rule, the varieties of English that are spoken in Malta represent in actual fact a continuum between an acrolectal variety (a near-RP pronunciation with a grammar and lexicon that is very similar to standard BrE) on the one hand, and basilectal varieties on the other. The latter are characterized by typical EFL learner features and more structural parallels with Maltese, i.e. contact features, plus extensive code-switching (cf. the continuum described in Vella Reference Vella1994, Bonnici Reference Bonnici2010 and such notions as mixed Maltese English).

As will be seen, MaltE exhibits not only interspeaker but also intraspeaker, including stylistic, variation. I will concentrate here on the more formal English spoken and written at the workplace rather than that used at home or in private, informal emails (or other digitally transmitted informal messages), but point to important stylistic differences where necessary. In essence, acrolectal MaltE is thus taken to be a standardizing edulectal variety that is oriented towards the traditional exonormative British standard, but – to trained linguists at least – noticeably different from it.

2 Sociolinguistic history and current status of Maltese English as a lesser-known variety

Maltese English shares many of the typical characteristics of a lesser-known variety listed by Schreier, Trudgill, Schneider and Williams (Reference Schreier, Trudgill, Schneider, Williams, Schreier, Trudgill, Schneider and Williams2010: 4): it is far from exhaustively described (although there has occurred a surge in scientific interest recently); it is lesser known outside the country; it is associated with a stable region and was (in fact, still is being) formed by language and dialect contact. And while the notion of a specific, independent variety of Maltese English, replacing – or developing in addition to – the exonormative British standard would have seemed almost inconceivable to the majority of the Maltese population until quite recently, MaltE is increasingly conceived as a distinct variety by its own speakers. Like many other lesser-known varieties of English, MaltE is thus an identity carrier for the speech community, sometimes consciously used, but often below the level of awareness.² MaltE is also felt to be distinct by speakers who come into contact with the variety, including speakers from other varieties of English. That this perception is justified on linguistic grounds will be seen in Sections 4 to 7 below.

There are other features of typical lesser-known varieties that MaltE shares not at all or only very arguably (figures from Census of Population and Housing 2005):

• Being spoken by over 300,000 people (88 per cent of the population aged 10 and older speak at least some English), MaltE is not an endangered variety of English.

• For the vast majority of the Maltese population, MaltE is a second language. It is Maltese that is the – or a – first language for around 93 per cent of the population.

• Unlike in many regions with lesser-known varieties of English, bilingualism is therefore the norm rather than the exception in Malta.

• Unless the term MaltE is understood in a narrow sense (i.e. restricted to just those c. 9 per cent of the population who use English as the – or a – main language in the home), then MaltE is not a minority language within the relevant regional confines.

• British colonial rule and substantial British inputs are clearly in evidence, but MaltE was not transmitted by a settler community nor did it develop early in the colonial era in a newly formed community.

The next section will offer more figures and explanations for the claims laid out above.

3 History, language policies, education system

Malta and Gozo were first settled as early as about 5000 bc, probably by farmers from Sicily. The modern Republic of Malta's population density is the highest of all countries in the European Union and one of the highest on the planet. The island of Malta has an area of 246 square kilometres. Gozo (known as Għawdex in Maltese) is less densely populated with approximately a quarter of the bigger island's area (67 square kilometres) but less than 10 per cent of the Maltese population.

Due to its strategic importance in the Mediterranean, Malta has a long history of varying ruling powers, including Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans and Byzantines. The islands were under Arab control from 870 to 1090/91, when the Normans conquered Malta. The monastic order of the Knights of St John (also known as the Knights of Malta) ruled on the archipelago from the sixteenth century until 1798, when Napoleon conquered Malta, but the French were evicted only two years later by the Maltese, with British and Italian support. In 1814 Malta officially became part of the British Empire, i.e. a British colony. While remaining part of the Commonwealth, Malta became independent in 1964 and a republic in 1974. In 1979, the last British troops left the country. Since 2004, Malta has been a member of the European Union (EU); it adopted the euro in 2008.

Even though a small number of British citizens have stayed in Malta and a greater number have retired there, most British people who formerly worked for the administration and armed forces left the country after independence. The current administration is almost exclusively of Maltese descent. And the vast majority of the current educated elite learned English as a second language, often initially by reading rather than speaking the language, and only rarely through intense language contact with native speakers of British dialects (though this will often have occurred at later stages of their professional careers during stays abroad). Such facts explain why a number of especially non-acrolectal MaltE features are triggered by English spelling (e.g. the vowel pronunciations in words like secondary, the /l/ in palm, /nɡ/ clusters in ringing; for qualifications see below). There is, then, no unbroken line from British colonial settlers to the current elites or other linguistically significant social groups in Malta. Maltese English is therefore a rather young variety of English and not a settler variety.

Italian gained prominence during the rule of the Knights (1530–1798) and used to be a prestige language in the middle and upper classes until well into the twentieth century. Italian was the official language in Malta until 1934, i.e. for over a hundred years under British rule, when it was replaced by two co-official languages: English and Maltese. Both languages still enjoy official status, but Maltese – Malti (see Fabri Reference Fabri, Delcourt and van Sterkenburg2010 for a synopsis of the current situation and the history of the language) – is considered the ‘national language’. Maltese is the only Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet. While its grammar and core lexicon are solidly Arabic, Maltese has a high proportion of Italian and Sicilian as well as an increasing number of English loanwords.³ Until the 1930s English and Italian were the more prestigious languages, but Maltese has since steadily gained in status and recently seen a further boost: in 2002, i.e. two years before Malta's accession to the EU, Maltese became an official language of the European Union.

There is no grammar or dictionary of Maltese English, only a number of bilingual dictionaries of Maltese and standard (British) English. Maltese English is therefore not overtly codified. Given the relatively short period since English became one of the official languages, this may be no surprise. With the notable exception of Mazzon (Reference Mazzon1992), most early studies of MaltE focused on code-switching and the phonology of the variety. More recently, empirical studies of morphosyntax (Hilbert and Krug Reference Hilbert, Krug, Gut and Hundt2012; Krug et al. in press) and lexical items (Krug and Rosen Reference Krug, Rosen and Hickey2012) have followed. Effects of globalization as well as different or changing stylistic and intergenerational preferences have not been thoroughly studied for MaltE except for a few phenomena (notably quotatives and rhoticity; see Bonnici Reference Bonnici2010).

As indicated in Section 2, Maltese is the native language for about 93 per cent of the population. According to census data from 2005, nearly 90 per cent of the population aged 10 and older claim competence in English, although degrees of proficiency vary considerably: while 65 per cent of the over 10-year-olds claim to speak English well, 12 per cent do not speak it at all. Detailed statistics for the main languages in Malta are given in Table 2.1. While code-switching is common across the Maltese islands and across all social strata, only about 9 per cent use English as a main language at home and about 1 per cent of the population claim that English is their only L1 (census data from 2005; Sciriha and Vassallo Reference Sciriha and Vassallo2006: 26). L1-speakers of English are found primarily in the higher socioeconomic strata; in addition, higher usage rates of English vary regionally along the typical urban–rural cline. Particularly high rates have been reported for areas where tourism, administration or high education levels are concentrated. These include the capital of Valletta, the nearby conurbation of Tas-Sliema and San Ġiljan; and towns like Is-Swieqi, L-Ibraġġ, Ħ'Attard and Mellieħa.

Not only bilingualism, then, but also tri- and multilingualism are widespread in Malta, an aspect that is also well documented in the literature (e.g. Camilleri Reference Camilleri1991; Sciriha Reference Sciriha2001; Sciriha and Vassallo Reference Sciriha and Vassallo2006). As Table 2.1 shows, 57 per cent of the Maltese population claim (at least some) competence in Italian, 21 per cent in French, 6 per cent in German and 4 per cent in Arabic. Both in terms of speaker numbers and in terms of average competence, these languages trail well behind Maltese and English. This multilingual situation is partly due to historical language contact (see above), in particular as far as English and Italian are concerned. Other important factors are trade and tourism (which includes a significant English language teaching branch) in a country whose other official language has a small number of native speakers by international standards. Hence, Maltese has no privileged status in teaching syllabi outside Malta and the fact that English is sufficient for communicative purposes on the archipelago is a counterincentive for potential learners of Maltese as a foreign language.

Obviously, Maltese language and education policies play a role as well: Schooling in Malta is mandatory until the age of 16. There is no official policy on the classroom use of languages, but the National Minimum Curriculum from 1999 issued by the Ministry of Education emphasizes the importance of English and Maltese as official languages and states further that pupils in secondary schools are expected to learn a third or fourth language. Both Maltese and English are used from school entry, but Maltese is naturally more prominent in primary schools, while English is more prominent in secondary schools and dominant at tertiary level (in class). There is a tendency for state schools to use less English than Catholic (church) and private (‘independent’) schools (see Fabri Reference Fabri, Delcourt and van Sterkenburg2010 for detail). In particular, English is the dominant language of reading and writing. The language of instruction depends to a great extent on the language of the textbooks, most of which are in (British) English. For the same reasons, the subjects Maltese and History are largely taught in Maltese. In spoken interaction, code-switching is widespread among both pupils and teachers, although a change in teacher education has shifted the balance somewhat towards Maltese: until the 1970s, teachers were trained by British religious orders, but more recently teachers have been trained by bilingual Maltese native-speaker scholars at the University of Malta.

4 Phonology

Compared to other linguistic levels, it is the MaltE phonology that is probably most independent of exonormative standards. In this section I use standard Southern British English pronunciation (commonly known as Received Pronunciation or RP) as a reference point, which historically was – and for many Maltese speakers still is – the exonormative standard. This is in line with previous studies on MaltE phonetics and phonology, from which much of what follows is adopted, though often adapted (cf. in particular Vella Reference Vella1994: 57–86; Calleja Reference Calleja1987; Mazzon Reference Mazzon1992: 126–9; Camilleri Reference Camilleri1991: 108–9; Beer Reference Beer2011; Bonnici Reference Bonnici2010; Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander Reference Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander1997: 299–338).

5 Morphosyntax

Prominent morphosyntactic features of acrolectal MaltE include want constructions with a subjective pronoun in the dependent clause, sentence-final but, definite article omission and marked uses of the progressive.

6 Discourse markers

Discourse markers have not received the attention they deserve in the literature on MaltE, even though their use, certainly in combination, seems quite unique. What follows are findings based on the Bamberg questionnaire and corpus data.

7 Lexicon: British, American or globalizing?

The findings reported here stem from a lexicon questionnaire that was conducted among acrolectal as well as meso- and basilectal speakers. The informants gave judgements regarding their personal usage of lexical and orthographic alternatives that are preferred (or formerly were preferred) in British or American usage, e.g. centre vs center, autumn vs fall, lorry vs truck. For clarity of exposition, I will simplify in what follows and label the more (or traditionally more) British variants merely as ‘British’; the alternative merely as ‘American’ (see Krug and Sell Reference Krug, Sell, Krug and Schlüter2013 for methodological detail).

As can be expected given the country's history, MaltE is overall much closer to British than to American English as far as the lexicon is concerned. About half of the sixty-eight lexical items investigated in the questionnaire score close to categorically British usage. This is to say that the overwhelming majority of Maltese informants reported using only the British variants. It seems that, in particular, household and everyday vocabulary items tend to remain relatively stable and British due to their high entrenchment and predominant usage in domains that are not subjects of formal teaching. Examples include the British items nappies, pushchair, dummy, postman, dustbin, tap, fish fingers and football, which are strongly preferred over their American equivalents diapers, stroller, pacifier, mailman, trash can, faucet, fish sticks and soccer.

There is, however, an interesting tendency for younger speakers in Malta to opt less frequently for the British variants, a fact which points to Americanization or perhaps, if such tendencies should be found in more varieties, to globalization. On the basis of apparent-time data gleaned from the questionnaires (age bands: (i) ≤ 25; (ii) 26–50; (iii) ≥ 51), one can confidently confirm Americanization for a number of MaltE lexical items. They fall into three major groups: the first consists of items that already exhibit considerable Americanization across the entire Maltese population, but the tendency is nevertheless still in progress because younger speakers choose the American variants even more frequently than older speakers. To this group belong lorry, ill, forwards and sport, which in current Maltese English have already been marginalized by their more American alternatives truck, sick, forward and sports.

The second group of Americanizing items are close to neutral across the Maltese English speech community at large. This group contains the items parcel [package] and to let [for rent]. Overall these are almost free variants, but there is a clear trend for younger speakers to use the American variants given in brackets more frequently. For the last group of Americanizing items, it seems at this point more appropriate to speak merely of ‘weakening British exonormative influence’, rather than of ‘Americanization’ proper, because the items still have solidly British mean values overall. Relevant examples are the above-mentioned discourse marker Anyway…[Anyways…] as well as autumn [fall], biscuit [cookie], boot [trunk], dummy [pacifier], laund(e)rette [laundromat] and (potato) crisps [(potato) chips]. Interestingly, shopping trolley [shopping cart] as well as chemist's [drugstore] belong to the group of items that show a tendency towards a less regular British usage in MaltE, which in all probability is connected to the near-categorical use of shopping cart and drugstore in e-commerce. These two trends of MaltE are therefore not unlikely to be – or to become – globalizing developments.

In conclusion, in the MaltE lexicon, Americanizing tendencies are often in evidence and they are for the most part globalizing tendencies (see Krug and Rosen Reference Krug, Rosen and Hickey2012 for further discussion). There are some exceptions to this general trend, though: an ever strengthening preference for the more British variant in younger MaltE speakers is currently observable for aluminium [aluminum], anticlockwise [counterclockwise], backwards [backward],⁷centre [center], holiday [vacation], jacket potato [baked potato], globalisation, liberalisation, organisation [-ization], lift [elevator]. It is apparently the effect of formal teaching that encourages the use of traditional British variants for such salient and easily learnable items.

8 Some generalizations: MaltE as economical, crosslinguistically unmarked or globalized

Maltese speakers of English have regularly two distinct linguistic repertoires at their disposal. And over 50 per cent of the population – and an even higher share of acrolect speakers – command a third repertoire, Italian, which is not only spoken by many but also the source of about half of the Maltese lexicon. Since there is also extensive code-switching and code-mixing, Maltese speakers can combine these inventories and select from them – often below the level of linguistic awareness – individual features in the formation of their own idiolect of MaltE. Abstracting away from idiolectal variation (and idealizing somewhat, to be sure), the analyst will notice that MaltE is in various respects more economical than standard international English and standard inner-circle varieties of English, and also more in line with unmarked crosslinguistic preferences. This is especially obvious in the domain of phonology, where features tend to occur automatically, i.e. phonetically driven, and thus at a subconscious level, e.g.:

• final obstruent devoicing

• intervocalic voicing of /s/ to /z/, e.g. in basically (cf. /t/-flapping in other national standards)

• creating more optimal syllables by resyllabification of /ɡ/ in prevocalic /ŋɡ/ clusters, thus creating onset in sequences like something else

• creating onsets (speaker economy) and thus at the same time keeping neighbouring vowels more distinct (hearer economy) through intervocalic glottal stops (as in Malta is)

• creating stronger onsets and thus at the same time keeping neighbouring vowels more distinct by choosing intervocalic taps (as in there is), rather than approximant /r/, which dominates elsewhere in rhotic accents.

None of the above features occurs in 100 per cent of the relevant contexts in any native speaker of MaltE, but their frequency in all types of MaltE is clearly higher than in, e.g., RP or GenAm.

In the domains of morphology and syntax, stigmatization of nonstandard features is more prominent and thus phenomena driven by economy and markedness occur mainly in mesolectal and basilectal MaltE. Various examples of regularization (e.g. plural forms like sheeps) and paradigm smoothing are given in Section 5.5. In the acrolect, economy-driven patterns tend to occur only in contexts where there is variation in inner-circle standard Englishes in the form of genuinely free variation or a complex distribution. In such cases even acrolectal MaltE occasionally regularizes the distribution. This comes in different shapes:

1. (a) MaltE makes the pattern or structure more economical (i.e. shorter or less complex);

2. (b) MaltE makes the pattern more consistent internally;

3. (c) MaltE makes a new distribution accord with cross-linguistic, i.e. typological, tendencies and preferences.

Some aspects of the above points are reminiscent of koinéization and trends in AmE when compared to BrE, and may thus be characteristics of transplanted varieties more generally that have lost their close contacts with (or become independent of) their former colonizers and thus the stabilizing influence of BrE (see Rohdenburg and Schlüter Reference Rohdenburg, Schlüter, Rohdenburg and Schlüter2009). A straightforward case is the aforementioned omission of definite articles, which is not a contact feature from Maltese but frequently due to the redundancy of doubly marking definiteness or even uniqueness (e.g. omission of the article in Talk to rector since there is only one rector on the island). Another is the omission of the definite article with language adjectives (e.g. Italian language) and seasons (e.g. summer) when used in a generic sense.

It therefore seems that, when deviating qualitatively or quantitatively from standard reference grammars of English, the emerging variety of Maltese English employs rule simplification more liberally and cognitive and economical factors more consistently than the more rigidly codified inner-circle varieties (see Trudgill Reference Trudgill2004: chs. 9 and 11 on regularization and paradigm simplification). However, more consistently is not meant to imply ‘categorically’ as the exonormative standard and MaltE systems coexist. Needless to say, principles of pattern and rule economization often apply at the same time by way of universal L2-learning strategies, and thus most often for non-acrolectal speakers of MaltE.

A related case of pattern smoothing can be observed in the MaltE lexicon, where sports has supplanted the older BrE variant sport. Crucially, MaltE is not the only variety adopting this strategy: in Channel Island English, too, sports is the second-most Americanized item in the Bamberg questionnaire (see Krug and Rosen Reference Krug, Rosen and Hickey2012). Since also Gibraltar English and, to a lesser extent, even questionnaire data from Wales, England and Australia display a similar tendency, one may tentatively propose a globalizing trend towards sports, though at differential speeds in different varieties. And while in this case globalization is synonymous with ‘Americanization’, one should probably not call it that, because maths (the solidly stable British variant) shows few signs of giving way to American math (which is equally stable in the US) in any of the varieties mentioned. Instead, what we seem to be witnessing around the world in these two cases is a cognitively driven regularization process by a semantic-structural analogy, where sports fits in with other school and university subjects (like physics, maths, linguistics) and features a form with -s that governs a singular verb.

9 Conclusion

1 Introduction

Gibraltar is a British overseas territory situated on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula at the western entrance to the Mediterranean with the northern coast of Africa lying just 30km across the Strait of Gibraltar. It measures just 6.8 km² and is one of the most densely populated areas in Europe (4.9 people per km²). It has very few natural resources and its economy is based mainly on tourism, shipping and financial services. Most of the population lives in the small town area in the shadow of the famous Rock, or el Peñón as it is known in Spanish, which soars magnificently to a height of some 426 metres. This Rock together with Jebel Musa, the mountain on the Moroccan coast opposite, are said to have formed the mythological Pillars of Hercules which, legend has it, were forced apart to form the African and European continents.

The British have been in Gibraltar for more than three centuries although the question of sovereignty remains contentious, and Spain has sought its return ever since it was ceded to Britain by the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Gibraltar and its people, for their part, have always rejected any suggestion that they are Spanish and have resisted all attempts by Spain to reclaim the Rock, vehemently defending their right to self-determination. This has been shown in the two referendums which have been held on the matter. In 1967, 99.6 per cent voted against the proposal of Spanish sovereignty and thirty-five years later, in 2002, 98.5 per cent of Gibraltarians voted against the option of joint sovereignty. Gibraltarians have traditionally felt strongly British and manifestations of this sentiment are clearly visible on the Rock in the form of Union Jacks, pictures of the Queen and pro-British slogans. In recent years, however, particularly when the local population has felt let down or abandoned by the UK government, a stronger sense of Gibraltarian nationalism has emerged. Although Gibraltar remains under the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, which is still responsible for matters such as defence and foreign affairs, the new 2006 Constitution gave the local government increased autonomy in running its own affairs.

Of the 29,752 people who live in Gibraltar, 24,288 of these are ‘Gibraltarians’, 3,042 are ‘UK British’ and 2,422 are classified as ‘Others’.¹ The Gibraltarian population is predominantly Roman Catholic (88 per cent) with Church of England and other Christians accounting for 6.6 per cent and a further 2 per cent of the population are Jewish. Hindus, Muslims, Atheists/Agnostics and ‘Other’ make up the remaining 3.5 per cent.²

English is the only official language in Gibraltar, yet largely due to geographical proximity and historical as well as family ties, Spanish and/or the local variant Yanito (also spelled Llanito) still arguably remain the most common forms of expression in the home domain and in informal contexts. The situation, however, appears to be changing and English use is increasing, particularly amongst younger speakers (see Levey Reference Levey2008a: 95–8). While the Spanish spoken in Gibraltar has certain distinctive features unique to the Rock, its dialectal form and accent, in general terms, are not dissimilar to, and are sometimes indistinguishable from, those used in the neighbouring Andalusian towns.³

Yanito is tricky to define and classify since it often implies different things to different people. For some, it is simply Gibraltarian Spanish, a variant of Andalusian Spanish but with some locally specific lexical items incorporated. These are often words borrowed or adapted, not only from English, but also from the languages of the immigrant communities who have settled on the Rock. For others, however, Yanito refers fundamentally to the local tendency to code-switch between Spanish and English.⁴ Some would therefore argue that there are three distinct languages spoken in Gibraltar: English, Spanish and Yanito (Ballantine Reference Ballantine2000: 118–19), albeit with considerable overlap.

Most Gibraltarians can converse, to varying degrees, in two or more languages, sometimes independently and sometimes simultaneously. Although many would consider themselves multilingual, this does not mean that they speak each language with equal ease and proficiency. Language choice and preference often depend on the situation and domain and are conditioned by factors such as age, social class, education and ethnic background (Levey Reference Levey2008a: 95–8). Older speakers, for example, who have not gone on to further education, may prefer to speak in Spanish or Yanito, and may find difficulties maintaining an extended complex conversation in English. Younger generations, on the other hand, having been educated in English, tend to consider their vocabulary is more extensive in English, and may feel less comfortable speaking formal Spanish in non-colloquial environments.

It is not unusual to find different languages spoken within the same nuclear family. While parents may choose to speak to their children in English for the benefit of their education, they may speak to each other in Yanito and to their parents in Spanish. Although English is seen as the prestige language and encouraged, this does not mean that other languages are rejected. Gibraltar has always been a multicultural speech community and language is seen fundamentally as a means of communication. Although some may view language choice as an act of identity or a declaration of allegiance, for the most part, Gibraltarians do not consider it paradoxical or a contradiction to feel staunchly British yet choose to speak in Spanish.

2 Sociohistorical background and influences on the variety

Gibraltar and the surrounding area is one of the oldest inhabited areas in Europe with evidence of Phoenician settlements in the vicinity dating back to about 950 BC. Various tribes subsequently settled including the Carthaginians, Goths and Visigoths. The period of Visigothic rule ended in 711 when an Arab and Berber force under Tariq-ibn-Zeyad invaded the strategically important Rock. It became known as Jebel-al-Tarik (‘the Mountain of Tariq’) in honour of the conquering leader, and it is from this that the toponym Gibraltar is derived. Except for a 25-year period (1309–33), Gibraltar was to remain in Arab hands until 1462 when it was finally reconquered. But it was not until 1501 that Gibraltar finally came to form part of the Spanish Crown, thus putting an end to more than 750 years of Muslim rule. The Arabs and Jews who had once inhabited the Rock were expelled and, subsequently, the Rock was repopulated by Spanish Christians.

The period of Spanish rule was to last 200 years until the turn of the eighteenth century when, during the struggle for power that surrounded the War of Spanish Succession (1701–14), the Anglo-Dutch allied naval fleet opportunistically seized the Rock on 4 August 1704 in the name of Archduke Charles of Austria, one of the contenders to the Spanish throne. Hostilities were finally brought to an end in 1713 with the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht. As part of this agreement, Gibraltar was ceded to the British Crown by Philip V of Spain in perpetuum. This treaty remains the legal justification for British sovereignty in Gibraltar.⁵

After Utrecht, most of the Spanish left and the national and ethnic balance of Gibraltar was to change considerably as immigrants, particularly from Genoa, began to arrive, seeing the trading potential that Gibraltar's unique location and status offered. In 1721, according to one surviving account, there were 310 citizens ‘able to bear arms’ of whom 169 were Genoese, 96 were Spanish and 45 were British (Howes Reference Howes1991: 2). This, of course, was not the whole population but is, nevertheless, a useful indication of the ethnic distribution in Gibraltar at the time. There is, however, one conspicuous omission from this account: the Jews, who were undoubtedly an important and influential presence in the early years of the British period. The reason why they are not officially mentioned is that by the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, neither Jews nor Arabs were allowed to reside in Gibraltar.⁶ When the first full census appeared in 1753, however, their presence was reflected. Of the 1,816 persons officially living in Gibraltar, 597 were Genoese, 574 were Jews, 434 were British, 185 were Spanish and 25 were Portuguese. Thus, initially at least, the Genoese together with the Sephardic Jews formed the backbone of the new population, influencing its early cultural and linguistic development. The British, who were mostly military personnel, by and large, kept to themselves.

Italian and Spanish were the most spoken languages amongst the civilian population. Indeed, up to 1830, when Gibraltar became a British Crown Colony, important proclamations, decrees and announcements were given in Spanish and Italian as well as in English. Several languages and dialects, mostly of Romance origin, would have co-existed on the streets and docks of Gibraltar. Many of the Jews would have spoken Ladino (Judeo-Español), a language derived from Old Castilian, which was widely spoken by the exiled Sephardic Jews since their expulsion from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century. It has been suggested that a type of Mediterranean lingua franca or ‘Romance-based pidgin’ (Kramer Reference Kramer1986: 53) was also spoken during the eighteenth century. However, given the limited evidence, it is difficult to know for sure whether this did indeed exist as such and, if it did, how uniform or widespread it was. Speculation seems to partially stem from a brief and tantalizing allusion made by an eighteenth-century Spanish historian. In his Historía de Gibraltar published in 1782, Ignacio López de Ayala mentions the existence of an international vernacular spoken in Gibraltar which was apparently understood by all:

In the first half of the eighteenth century the population was to fluctuate considerably as deadly epidemics ravaged Europe. The demographics were also to change as people from different nations sought refuge from the wars and upheavals that marked the period. A new wave of Genoese immigrants, both Christian and Jewish, headed for the Iberian peninsula after the ‘Ligurian Republic’, as Napoleon Bonaparte renamed it, was annexed by France in 1805. There was also immigration from France, Portugal, Spain and also Minorca, which, like Gibraltar, had been ceded to Britain by the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht. Italian-speaking Maltese immigrants, who were to play an important role in Gibraltar's sociolinguistic and cultural development, began to arrive after the Mediterranean archipelago became part of the British Empire in 1814.

While other European ports and cities saw their commercial activities badly affected by events in Europe, Gibraltar was able to prosper and hang up a ‘business as usual’ sign. As the population increased, overcrowding became a major problem and it was not uncommon for six or seven family members to live in one room. In these cramped and usually unsanitary conditions, the contagious diseases such as influenza, cholera and typhoid which appeared in waves in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century spread particularly rapidly, devastating the local population. Yet there was no shortage of new immigrants prepared to take their place and by 1871 official census figures reveal the population had grown to 18,695. As a result, the local authorities felt it necessary to curb immigration by introducing the ‘Aliens Order in Council’ in 1873 which permitted free access to the Rock only to the British and required ‘Aliens’ to obtain special permits. During the twentieth century, immigration continued, mostly from other British colonies such as Malta and later from India. Economic migrants from Morocco also began arriving in the 1970s and 1980s to fill the labour vacuum left after the closing of the border with Spain, adding to the racial and cultural fusion.⁷

Tentative attempts by the authorities to encourage the use of English had limited success. English was the official language, the language of education and administration, yet Spanish and its variants were the everyday means of communication. This of course is not to say that nobody spoke English. The UK serviceman and their families naturally spoke English along with other UK residents in Gibraltar. The more affluent classes, who could afford to, sent their children to private English schools. Many Jews and Indians, whose home language was often not Spanish, placed considerable importance on multilingualism. However, taking the population as a whole, it seems fair to say that levels of English proficiency remained low until well into the second half of the twentieth century.

The Second World War was to be an important turning point in Gibraltar's social and linguistic development. The Rock was of vital strategic importance to Britain and largely for its own safety the whole civil population of Gibraltar was evacuated for the duration of the war. The majority eventually went to the UK. For many it was the first time they had left their homes and were put in a situation where they were obliged to speak English. When they were eventually repatriated, they returned to Gibraltar with a stronger sense of national pride and a better level of English. The first seeds had been sown but there was no revolutionary change in the language habits. Many, or perhaps most, had started to acquire English as a second language. On returning to their homes, despite the best of intentions in some cases, it inevitably proved more comfortable and comforting to return to familiar language forms.

Although English language competence increased gradually after the war, the policies adopted by Spain under General Franco's dictatorship arguably did more, directly and indirectly, to improve the levels of English in Gibraltar than any local or UK initiatives could. In 1969, in a misguided attempt to starve the local population out, the frontier or verja, as it is known, was closed overnight, thereby cutting Gibraltar off from Spain and the rest of Europe. The decision had drastic and sometimes tragic consequences for those living on both sides of the border. The blockade was to last thirteen years and Gibraltarians, particularly older ones, find it hard to forgive and forget this singular action which divided families and changed lives. Besides the political consequences, the closing of the frontier had considerable effects on Gibraltar's linguistic development.

Resentment and hostility towards Spain intensified and for some language choice became a declaration of allegiance and provided a motivation for learning and speaking English. At the same time, the need or excuse to speak Spanish diminished. With the frontier closed, regular social contact with Spanish friends and family ceased as did commercial relations with Spain. Spanish labourers, domestic workers and childminders, who had always provided an important language input in the home and the workplace, and have been cited as one of the chief reasons for language maintenance, could no longer cross the border. As contact with Spain and its language decreased, so language contact with the UK increased. Coinciding with the 1970s tourist boom, there were now more regular flight connections between Gibraltar and the UK. With trips and holidays to Spain no longer possible, those who could afford to, flew to Britain. During this period, young Gibraltarians, helped by government grants, began to further their studies at UK universities in greater numbers. Therefore, when the border finally reopened on 15 December 1982 after thirteen years of isolation from its Spanish neighbours, a new speech community emerged with a stronger national identity and with greater English language confidence.

Many years have passed since then and, on the surface at least, it would appear that things have returned to relative normality. Cross-border relations have resumed, but some would argue that the close relationships that once existed have been lost and time is still needed to rebuild bridges. English language competence has notably increased and Gibraltar English is more widely used than ever before, but this does not mean that Spanish has been displaced.

3 Features of Gibraltar English

Considerable variation exists within the community and although Gibraltar English is gaining a degree of stability, there are notable generational differences.

4 Lexicon

Gibraltarians are renowned for their code switching. On entering Gibraltar one is soon struck by they way that locals maintain conversations in more than one language. As an example of the way this works I cite a short exchange I overheard in a shop on my last visit to Gibraltar:

Codeswitching may occur intersententially, with one person speaking in Spanish, say, and the other responding in English, or intrasententially with English and Spanish being used concurrently within the same phrase. Moyer (Reference Moyer1993: 247) identifies four code-switching patterns in Gibraltar: (i) alternate use of two languages by different participants in verbal exchange; (ii) combination of different syntactic constituents within the sentence; (iii) insertion of individual lexical items; (iv) insertion of ritualized expressions with culture-specific content. Attempts to determine why one language or another should be used at a given moment proved unsuccessful, leading her to conclude, ‘the language of lexical (or constituent) insertion is truly random’ (1993: 251).

There is also a characteristic ‘Yanito’ vocabulary, which has given rise to two or three locally published dictionaries as well as various web pages, wikis and blogs that have compiled popular words, expressions and sayings from Gibraltar.¹⁰ While some of these may be widely used within the Gibraltarian speech community as a whole, others are anecdotal, invented or exaggerated for comic effect. Some may have existed once but now have largely or completely fallen into disuse. There are other entries which, although existing in Gibraltar, are not really exclusive to it and may be heard further afield.¹¹

It is not my place here to analyse or gauge if, when and to what extent these words are used today and by whom. We should, however, be aware of the dangers of falling into the trap of popular or false stereotyping. In the same way that some might be led to believe that Cockneys today speak in rhyming slang constantly and consistently, so many of the words often attributed to the speech of Gibraltarians are arguably not nearly as widespread as claimed, or at least not now.

Many of the entries in Yanito word lists are English borrowings which originated in past times when little English was spoken. Words such as beki sangui ‘bacon sandwich’, trafilai ‘traffic lights’ or siticonsi ‘City Council’ are really phonetic representations of Andalusian Spanish transfer.¹² If these realizations were heard over the border in La Linea (Spain) in an ESL class they would probably be treated as English pronunciation errors and corrected. This raises the hundred-dollar question whether these should be considered bona fide lexical items or not. To take the debate one stage further, in terms of their pronunciation, given that English is the only official language in Gibraltar and Gibraltar is British, should they be accepted as legitimate British regional variants?

The idea of the Gibraltarian speaking Spanish with a thick Andalusian accent throwing in a word of badly pronounced English has a quaint and sometimes comical appeal. While this stereotype might have been the case in previous generations and may still exist in some older speakers, times have changed and continue to change. As levels of education and contact with the English language increase, there is a new generation of Gibraltarians who are competent in English and speak with a less marked pronunciation. Spanish transfer is less evident and if, for example, they do say rolipó, it is not because they can't pronounce ‘lollypop’. If they choose to pronounce it in the ‘Yanito’ way it may be for comic effect (Gibraltarians have a keen sense of humour and are not adverse to self-parody!), or, in some cases, it may be a case of accommodating to the speech of their interlocutor.

Much of the food imported to cater for British tastes from the late nineteenth century to the second half of the twentieth century was new to Gibraltar. The autochthonous population pronounced these new products as heard or read. This gave rise to: arishu ‘Irish Stew’; combi or carne con bí ‘corned beef’; greivi ‘gravy’; Oso ‘Oxo stock cube’; Quekaro ‘porridge’ (from Quaker Oats); chinchibía ‘ginger beer’; saltipina ‘salted peanuts’; bequipagua ‘baking powder’; capotín ‘cup of tea’; liqueribar ‘liquorice bar’; chingá ‘chewing gum’.

As is to be expected, there are numerous words related to work, particularly in the docks and construction. The fact that Gibraltarians have always worked side by side with Spanish workers may also partially explain why the pronunciation of English words was not anglicised. Some of the most common words included: doquia ‘dockyard’; forme ‘foreman’; cren ‘crane’; cimen ‘cement’; esprin ‘spring’; guasha ‘(tap) washer’; gerda ‘girder’; winchi ‘winch’; manpagua ‘manpower’; iunio or working iunio ‘trade union’; penshi ‘pension’. At home, there was juva ‘vaccum cleaner’ (from Hoover), hacer londri ‘do the laundry’.

While Spanish remained the principal home language, English was the enforced language of education. Not only was this reflected in the language of the classroom (e.g. tishe/tisha ‘teacher’; chó ‘chalk’; sepli ‘say please’) but also extended into the playground. The game of meblis ‘marbles’, for example, was popular amongst past generations of Gibraltarian children and had its own language to convey the dos and don'ts of flicking or shooting (e.g. follinacle ‘fold in knuckle’; fondinga ‘fold in finger’). It is interesting to note that the game, along with its corresponding English lexicon, spread well outside the confines of Gibraltar, as attested to by numerous Spanish colleagues who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in the provinces of Cádiz and Málaga. Needless to say, in the modern computer age, the game and its vocabulary mean little to the younger generations.

English gerunds are commonly used after Spanish verb forms, giving rise to: tomamos un trinqui(ng) ‘Let's have a drink’, tomar a guashi(ng) ‘have a wash’, hacer nitin a champa ‘to knit a jumper’. Amongst younger speakers today, on both sides of the border, this tendency continues: voy shopping ‘I'm going shopping’, tengo training hoy ‘I've got training today’. It is also common to create Spanish-sounding words from English words: afordarse ‘to afford’; chitería ‘cheating’; dampista ‘dumptruck driver’; pipando ‘piping hot’; plomero ‘plumber’. Perhaps the most well-known example of what some would term Spanglish is the verb afolinarse which means to ‘line up’ and comes from the British military term ‘to fall in’. There is another slightly different variation of the hispanification process whereby, due to influence from English, existing Spanish words are given a different or second meaning, which they do not usually have. Examples of these ‘false friends’ include: aplicación ‘(job) application’ (Sp = solicitud); apología ‘apology’ (Sp = disculpa); soportar ‘support’ (Sp = apoyar); vacancia ‘vacancy’ (Sp = vacante); documentario ‘documentary’ (Sp = documental); orden ‘order’ (Sp = pedido). There are other Yanito words such as estación de policía ‘police station’ or teatro de operaciones, ‘operating theatre’ which are literal translations from English but make no sense in standard Spanish.

While most of Gibraltar's lexicon is English or Spanish in origin, there are several items, which have come about through contact with those immigrant communities who settled on the Rock. While the Maltese and Italian influence is notable in several local names and some of the typical Gibraltarian dishes such as rosto, panissa and calentita, the lexical legacy, which was undoubtedly once more evident, is now limited to a handful of words which are increasingly disappearing from use. In his Diccionario yanito, Cavilla includes the following examples: bucherío ‘a din or racket’ (It. = buscherio); tana ‘hiding place’ (It. = tana); chufo ‘tuft of hair’ (It. = ciuffo). The Jewish community has also contributed various words. Some unsubstantiated sources have put the figure as high as 500, but my own research seems to suggest that this figure is greatly exaggerated.¹³ Amongst those words of Hebrew or Haketia origins which are recognized by the wider Gibraltarian community are: bizim ‘balls, guts’; ha ham ’important person’; haiznear ‘observe carefully’; las nogas ‘synagogue’; haremos who ‘what can we do?’ (expression of resignation); echar el who ‘to curse someone’. Arabic has provided words such as jará ‘pigsty’; flus ‘money’; zup ‘penis’; bicef ‘enough’; and chuni ‘nice’ might come from German (schön). There are other items whose origins are less clear such as aliquindoi, meaning ‘keep a lookout’, which Vallejo (Reference Vallejo2001: 25) suggests might come from Caló, a Gypsy language spoken in Spain, or possibly from the French un clin d'oeil ‘a twinkling of the eye’.¹⁴

Although it might have once been considered a sign of lexical deficiency or semi-lingualism, Yanito is seen by many as a badge of identity which is worn with evident pride. Although not prestigious, it is not overtly stigmatized either and Gibraltarians generally look on it with a certain fondness and see it is a linguistic expression of their unique cultural heritage (Kellermann Reference Kellermann2001: 134–5; Fernández Martín Reference Fernández Martín2003: 190–1; Levey Reference Levey and Brown2006: 725). The new generation of Gibraltarians is increasingly competent in two languages and has a degree of language confidence that many of their parents and grandparents lacked. If they use ‘Spanglish’ it does not necessarily imply language weakness and ‘Yanitadas’, as they are known locally, are often expressions of multilingual word play. Thus, when Gibraltarians say es un cachofinger ‘it's a joke’, they are consciously playing with different languages and dialects.¹⁵ There is also a recent trend to add the English suffix -tion to Spanish words for deliberately absurd effect. This may take place when the speaker cannot call to mind the English word or when there is no easy equivalent (e.g. armondigations ‘meat balls’ [Sp = albondigas]; asergation de Spanish torti ‘chard pie’ [Sp = torta de acelgas]).

5 Conclusion

At present, it is difficult to talk about a homogeneous and uniform Gibraltarian speech community. Education, social class, ethnic background and particularly the age of the speaker condition language choice and proficiency (cf. Levey Reference Levey2008a). That children speak differently from parents and grandparents in any speech community is of course usual, but social and political events as well as educational policies have combined and contributed to widening the generation gap in the case of Gibraltar. The closing of the frontier from 1969 to 1982 was to leave its mark on the speech community and served as a catalyst for language change.

Although most Gibraltarians can communicate, to varying degrees, in two or more languages, it would be wrong to assume that everyone in Gibraltar is multilingual. There have always been an important number of monolingual UK residents in Gibraltar and monolingual Spanish day workers have been crossing over the border for centuries. English and Spanish have always cohabited in Gibraltar although the community's true bilingual potential has never been exploited. English is the only official language on the Rock and given the contentious question of sovereignty, it seems inconceivable that Spanish could ever be given any official status.

English has gained ground and today it is difficult to find young Gibraltarians who are not reasonably fluent. However the question is whether or not this has taken place at the expense of Spanish. Although colloquial Spanish variants are widely spoken in homes and on the streets, concerns have been voiced in certain sectors that the levels of formal and written Spanish have declined in recent years. Further research is necessary to gauge whether this is indeed the case. Spanish is not obligatory in schools but students can choose it as a second language or alternatively French, Russian, Portuguese or Italian. Perhaps not surprisingly, of all the GCSE and A level subjects available, Spanish is one of the most popular.¹⁶ English as a second language is of course not an option in Gibraltar, which follows the UK National Curriculum, but it is interesting to note that English Literature is the third most popular A level subject after Spanish and Psychology.

It is important to point out that at present, Gibraltar does not have its own university and so practically all nationals who want to further their studies and obtain a university degree have to do so in the UK.¹⁷ Despite proximity, there are no Gibraltarians currently studying in Spain, except those sent there on Erasmus exchange programmes from UK universities. The reason for this partially lies in the incompatibility of the respective education systems. Despite the Bologna Agreement, recognizing UK qualifications is not automatic in Spain and can be a lengthy and complicated process.¹⁸ This inevitably means that it is difficult for Gibraltarians to attain a high academic knowledge of Spanish. While their Spanish language and vocabulary are sufficient for dealing with everyday situations, they may be lacking in more formal or complex contexts.

In an interesting recent development, the Spanish government has now established an Instituto Cervantes in Gibraltar.¹⁹ This initiative was met with mistrust by certain sectors of the local population who see it as a Spanish Trojan Horse and have questioned why the Instituto Cervantes, ‘a public institution which promotes Spanish language and culture throughout the world’, would want to set up shop in a place where Spanish is apparently already widely spoken. The Instituto finally opened its doors in spring 2011 and according to the Spanish news agency Europa Press (5 May 2011) it had 150 enrolments divided into 20 groups before courses had even started.

Gibraltar enjoys a love–hate relationship with its Spanish neighbours. Periodically there is cross-border tension for one of a number of reasons: disputes over fishing rights, accusations of encroachment into territorial waters, protests over planned royal visits, fears over bilateral talks between UK and Spanish governments in which the future of Gibraltar may be discussed. Gibraltarians will complain about the exasperatingly long queues at the Spanish border posts, which they see as deliberate provocation, while the Spanish authorities will justify the need to control contraband and illegal immigration. The press on both sides of the border add fuel to the fire and the question of sovereignty will inevitably be raised once again. But then things die down and normality returns. Both neighbours have learnt to live with the situation and with each other. As long as the sensitive issues are avoided they get on fine and have much in common. National sentiment does not preclude Gibraltarians from chatting in Spanish and enjoying Andalusian food. Although some will follow the BBC on cable television, others will watch popular Spanish programmes and read Spanish magazines and newspapers. There is no contradiction or incongruence, as far as they are concerned, in feeling Gibraltarian and British while enjoying their neighbours’ language, customs and culture. This has always happened and there is no reason to suspect that it will change substantially in the near future. The Gibraltarian view is clearly summed up by Luis Montiel, the former Minister for Employment.

1 Introduction

Ireland is often considered to be a homogeneous bilingual country, and before the influx of foreigners in the boom years of the Celtic Tiger the Irish themselves may have regarded their country as a monocultural society. However, even though still widely disregarded in their cultural distinctiveness, the Irish Travellers have stood out as a separate community in Irish society for several centuries. The Irish Travellers are a native Irish community with a nomadic background, who naturally share a lot of history with settled Irish people, but culturally, religiously and linguistically they have preserved their own identity. According to researchers and the Irish Travellers themselves, there is no or very little genetic connection with other European nomadic or Gypsy groups, even though they may share with them many traditions and values, such as the preference of self-employment, birth, marriage and burial customs, and values concerning morality, taboos and purity (Freese Reference Freese1980: 53–63).

The Irish Travellers are recognized as an ethnic group in Northern Ireland and in the UK. In the Republic of Ireland their legal status has been widely discussed but remains insecure.¹ According to the Census of 2011, there are 29,573 Irish Travellers living and travelling in the Republic of Ireland, which accounts for 0.6 per cent of the overall population in Ireland.² There are also Irish Travellers living in Britain, Australia and the USA.

Linguistically, Irish Travellers differ from the settled community in a twofold way. Firstly, their in-group code ‘Shelta’ (also known as ‘Gammon’ or ‘Cant’), a distinctive communicative tool used in specific, Traveller-related contexts, provides the possibility to have private conversations in situations where settled people are present, such as trade and business situations, contexts where warnings need to be exchanged or when talking about taboo topics. Morphosyntactically, Shelta is a mixture of Irish English grammar and the Travellers’ own lexicon, a majority of which is derived from Irish Gaelic and disguised in various ways by means of transposition (deliberate switching around of consonants, insertion and deletion of syllables, etc.; see Hickey Reference Hickey2007b: 382 for an overview, Ó hAodha Reference Ó hAodha2002 for a detailed description of the Shelta lexicon), while a smaller amount is of unknown, though possibly very old origin. The combination of Shelta lexicon with Irish English grammar allows Travellers to speak privately without raising suspicion (for more information on Shelta: Binchy Reference Binchy1994, Reference Binchy1995, Reference Binchy2002; Browne Reference Browne2002; Cauley Reference Cauley2006; Grant Reference Grant1994; Hancock Reference Hancock1973, Reference Hancock1984, Reference Hancock1986; Macalister Reference Macalister1937; Ní Shuinéar Reference Ní Shuinéar2002; Ó hAodha Reference Ó hAodha2002).

Besides Shelta, also the Irish Travellers’ variety of English distinguishes Travellers from settled speakers and general Irish English. However, Traveller English has not yet been researched as a variety of its own and therefore the term ‘Traveller English’ is not yet commonly established. The linguistic analysis of the variety in this contribution will be based on a modest corpus of 40,000 words (Rieder, unpublished data). The corpus stems from a two-year ethnographic project carried out among the Irish Traveller community in the West of Ireland and consists of seven audio-recorded, semi-structured group interviews of about 40 minutes each. Both men and women were interviewed; the age group ranged from 18 to 65 and the participants came from varied socioeconomic backgrounds.

In what follows, the phonological, morphosyntactic and lexical characteristics of Traveller English will be analysed in depth, after a brief account of the Travellers’ sociolinguistic history.

2 Sociolinguistic history and current status of the variety

4 Conclusion

Phonological, morphosyntactic, lexical and pragmatic features of Traveller English have been shown to combine to create a variety of English that is rich in unique cultural characteristics, while at the same time it displays a great many Archaic Irish English features that are slowly being left behind by the settled Irish population. In its distinctiveness from and similarities to General Irish English, Traveller English reflects the positioning of Irish Travellers with regard to the settled Irish population. Despite their indigenously Irish origin, a secluded way of life separate from mainstream society as well as strong family ties and distinctive cultural aspects have characterized Irish Travellers for centuries, and perpetuated their variety of English.

It needs to be mentioned though that Traveller English is not a homogeneous variety, and the degree to which the vernacular is spoken depends very much on the level of education, accommodation and nature of networks of the individual speaker. Until recently, the women in the community used to be confined to their homes looking after a big family. This is now slowly changing with women starting to look beyond the community boundaries for work or free-time activities, which therefore opens up and loosens their network ties. This development may have an impact on the use of vernacular norms and may bring about language change. O'Sullivan's (Reference O'Sullivan2008: 55) study of communicative shifts in Travellers’ casual speech revealed a certain degree of accommodation towards General Irish English with regard to several pragmatic and morphosyntactic features, such as subject–verb concord, nonstandard negation, use of learn and teach, etc. However, Traveller English phonological characteristics seem to be among the most resistant to change. Pronunciation and intonation may also serve as a way to ‘differentiate themselves favorably from the out-group in order to maintain a positive social identity’ (O'Sullivan Reference O'Sullivan2008: 14). After all, the Irish Travellers are and perceive themselves as a separate cultural group. Years of denigration have led to a lot of opposition as well as the acquisition of a certain pride, which may be symbolically expressed by linguistic separation and the strong identification with their own variety of English.