Virgin Islands

The Virgin Islands are the western island group of the Leeward Islands, which are the northern part of the Lesser Antilles, and form the border between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Politically, the eastern islands form the British Virgin Islands and the western ones form the United States Virgin Islands. The British Virgin Islands is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom comprising approximately 60 islands and cays including Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Jost Van Dyke, and Anegada.

The U.S. Virgin Islands is one of five inhabited insular areas of the United States, along with American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and Puerto Rico. The territory comprises a number of islands including St. Croix, St. John, St. Thomas and Water Island.

The Virgin Passage separates the American Virgin Islands from the so-called Spanish Virgin Islands of Vieques and Culebra, which are part of Puerto Rico. The United States dollar is the official currency on both the British and American Virgin Islands as well as the Spanish/Puerto Rican Virgin Islands.

Netherlands Antilles

The Netherlands Antilles (Dutch: Nederlandse Antillen [ˈneːdərˌlɑntsə ɑnˈtɪlə(n)]; Papiamentu: Antia Hulandes) were a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands consisting of several island territories located in the Caribbean. They were also informally known as the Dutch Antilles. The country came into being in 1954 as the autonomous successor of the Dutch colony of Curaçao and Dependencies and was completely dissolved in 2010. The former Dutch colony of Surinam, although it was relatively close by on the continent of South America, did not become part of Netherlands Antilles but became a separate autonomous country at the same time. All of the islands territories that belonged to the Netherlands Antilles remain part of the Kingdom today, although the legal status of each differs, and as a group they are still referred to as the Dutch Caribbean regardless of their legal status.

Geographical grouping

The islands of the Netherlands Antilles are all part of the Lesser Antilles. Within this group, the country was spread over two smaller island groups: the northern part of the Leeward Islands and the western part of Leeward Antilles. No part of the country was in the southern Windward Islands.

SSS islands

The SSS islands is an acronym which refers to three island territories in the Lesser Antilles that are under Dutch sovereignty:

Sint Maarten is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and is the southern half of the island of Saint Martin (the northern half is the French Collectivity of Saint Martin). The islands of Saba and Sint Eustatius are public bodies of the Netherlands.

The acronym is analogous to the ABC islands, consisting of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, and the BES islands, consisting of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, both of which are also part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. All six island territories were formerly part of the Netherlands Antilles.

History

Saint Martin was split between the Netherlands and France in 1648. The Dutch part became a single Dutch colony in 1818 as Sint Eustatius and Dependencies when France returned its possessions after the Napoleonic Wars. This colony was merged with the colonies Curaçao and Dependencies (the ABC islands) and Suriname with a capital in Paramaribo. When this merge was partly reversed in 1845, the Dutch part of the SSS islands became part of Curaçao and Dependencies with Willemstad as capital. This colony became the Netherlands Antilles in 1952. The Dutch part of the SSS islands initially formed the single "island area" (Dutch: eilandgebied, the main administrative division of the Netherlands Antilles, governed by an Island council) the Leeward islands (Dutch: de Bovenwindse eilanden) until 1983.

Virgin Islands Creole

Virgin Islands Creole, or Virgin Islands Creole English, is an English-based creole spoken in the Virgin Islands and the nearby SSS islands of Saba, Saint Martin and Sint Eustatius, where it has been known as Netherlands Antilles Creole English.

The term "Virgin Islands Creole" is formal terminology used by scholars and academics, and is rarely used in everyday speech. Informally, the creole is known by the term dialect, as the creole is often perceived by locals as a dialect variety of English instead of an English creole language. However, academic sociohistorical and linguistic research suggests that it is in fact an English creole language.

Because there are various varieties of Virgin Islands Creole, it is also known by the specific island on which it is spoken: Crucian dialect, Thomian dialect, Tortolian dialect, Saint Martin dialect, Saba dialect, Statia dialect.

History

The creole was formed when enslaved Africans, unable to communicate with each other and their European owners due to being taken from different regions of West Africa with different languages, created an English-based pidgin with West African-derived words and grammatical structure. This was creolized as it was passed on to subsequent generations as their native tongue.