Falkland Islands English

Abstract

In addition to the major English varieties spoken in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, the dialect of the Falkland Islands is one of the few native-speaker Englishes in the southern hemisphere. The Falkland variety is relatively unknown in the rest of the English-speaking world and when heard it is often wrongly identified as one of the other southern hemisphere varieties. This article considers whether the Falkland variety is linguistically typical of southern hemisphere Englishes. A description of Falkland Islands English is given, based on a large corpus of conversational data, and direct comparisons are drawn between the Falkland dialect and the three main southern hemisphere varieties. Although many similarities between these Englishes do exist, the Falkland dialect is shown to diverge for several of the diagnostic southern hemisphere variables. Explanations for this are suggested, using the notions of identity and default.