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Belizean Creole
Belize Kriol (also Kriol or Belizean Creole) is an English-based creole language closely related to Miskito Coastal Creole, Jamaican Patois, San Andrés-Providencia Creole, Bocas del Toro Creole, Colón Creole, Rio Abajo Creole, and Limón Coastal Creole. [breaking this into small paragraphs helps ease of reading - moving some of what was here to an Origins section, allows for the key points about the language to be highlighted here; I also re-arranged a few things, so orthography comes at the end (as it does in the original) as it developed later than the people]

It is a contact language that developed and grew throughout the 1650's and 1930's, as a result of slave trade. Belizean Kriol, like many Creole languages first started pidgin and was a way for people of other backgrounds and languages, in this case slaves and English colonizers to communicate together within the logging industry. Over generations the language developed into a creole, being a language used as some people’s mother tongue language.

Belizean Creoles are people of Afro-European origin. It is difficult to estimate the exact number of Kriol speakers, but is estimated more that there are more than 70,000 Creoles in Belize who speak Kriol. In the 2010 Belize Census recorded that 25.9% of people within the country claimed Creole ethnicity and 44.6% claimed to speak Kriol. It is estimated that there is as many as 85,000 Creoles that have migrated to the United States and may or may not still speak the language. This puts the number of people at over 150,000.

When the National Kriol Council began standardizing the orthography for the Kriol language, it decided to promote the spelling as Kriol, though they continue to use the spelling Creole to refer to the people themselves.

Origins
Belizean Creole was developed as a lingua franca for those who were forced to work within the logging industry, and the language itself is linked to many West African substrate languages. This is due to the fact that these slaves, more specifically identified as Belizean “Creoles”, were taken from Africa and Jamaica and brought to, what was then known as, British Honduras. This name was given to the country and area of Belize when it was occupied by British colonies, and before Belize gained full independence in September, 1981. English still considered the main official language of Belize, as it carries much prestige due to the fact it is a majority language. Meaning road signs, official documents and such are all written in English and the people of Belize are taught in English throughout their educational careers. Despite this bilingualism and multilingualism is very common within Belize, and people of all ethnic backgrounds who reside within Belize have adopted the minority language, Kriol, as their native language. Kriol is the lingua franca of Belize and is the first language of some Garifunas, Mestizos, Maya, and other ethnic groups. It is a second language for most others in the country.

History and Contemporary Usage [maybe add this second part?}
Belize Kriol is derived mainly from English but influenced by a bunch of other languages brought into the country due to slave trade. Its substrate languages are the Native American language Miskito, Spanish, the various West African and Bantu languages. These include Akan, Efik, Ewe, Fula, Ga, Hausa, Igbo, Kikongo and Wolof.

There are numerous theories as to how creole languages form. The most common and linguistically supported hypothesis indicates that creoles start out as a pidgin language when there exists a need for some type of verbal communication between members of communities who do not share the same language. In the case of Belize Kriol, the pidgin would have developed as a result of West Africans being captured and taken to the Americas as slaves to work in the logging industries, where they would be forced to communicate with slave owners of European descent. For the first generation of people speaking the pidgin language, the pidgin is not fully developed and the grammar of the language is not as systematic as fully-fledged languages. When the people speaking the pidgin language begin having children who grow up having no entirely developed language, they will take the partial grammar of the pidgin language their parents speak and use it as a sort of blueprint for which they are able to assign a systematic grammatical structure to the language It is at this point that the language becomes a fully-fledged language, as it becomes a mother tongue for some generations of speakers, and the result is a creole. Belize Kriol specifically developed as a result of many West African slaves being subjected to English speaking owners and as a result these people were forced to create a pidgin language using English as a substrate language which was then formed into a creole by their children.

The Baymen first began to settle in the area of Belize City in the 1650s. Ken Decker proposed that the creole spoken in Belize previous to 1786 was probably more like Jamaican than the Belize Kriol of today. By the Convention of London in 1786 the British were supposed to cease all logwood cutting operations along the Caribbean coast of Central America, except for the Belize settlement. Many of the settlers from the Miskito Coast moved to Belize, bringing their Miskito Coast Creole with them. The immigrants outnumbered the Baymen five to one. The local Kriol speech shifted to become something more like the Miskito Coast Creole.

Today, Belize Kriol is the first or second language of the majority of the country's inhabitants. Many of them speak standard English as well, and a rapid process of decreolization is going on. As a result, a creole continuum exists and speakers are able to code-switch among various mesolect registers between the most basilect to the acrolect ("Mid-Atlantic") varieties. The acrolect, much like the basilect, is rarely heard.

A 1987 travel guide in the Chicago Tribune newspaper reported that Belize Kriol is “a language that teases but just escapes the comprehension of a native speaker of English.”

There are multiple regional vernacular varieties of Belizean Kriol, so depending on where one is the vernacular may be slightly different. Somewhere more South of Belize such as Puta Gorda may have a slightly different Kriol vernacular than that of the more Northern areas such as Belize City. Belize City shows a vernacular closer to traditional Kriol, and because of this it has gained more prestige than other vernaculars that stray farther away from the traditional vernacular. [great addition]

Education and Literature
English taught in the schools of Belize is based on British English, but is often influenced by the teachers' Kriol speech. The 1999 Ministry of Education: School Effectiveness Report (p.84) notes “Creole is spoken as the first language in most homes.” Belizean people speak English, Kriol, and often Spanish, while learning the English system of writing and reading in schools. It is a slightly different system of communication from the standard forms. In recent years there has been a movement to have Kriol used more within the Belizean education system and within government documentation. The Belize Kriol Project and National Kriol Council of Belize are at the forefront of this movement, striving to bring more prestige and recognition to the language.

Current literary works using Kriol include an English and Kriol dictionary, and a translation of the Bible's New Testament. The dictionary brought attention to grammar as well as the definition of common Kriol words, which influenced the creation of a few other books that were solely based on Kriol grammar. There has also been a rise in poetry, fiction, and newspapers all written in Kriol. [great addition!}