Today, it is natively spoken in Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Anguilla, Montserrat, and some villages in Dominica.

Due to increased contact between settlements in the Leeward Islands, the creole has many extinct village-specific varieties that have since merged into each other.

There are no institutions dedicated to the study of Antiguan and Barbudan Creole, and few formal attempts have been made to standardise it.

The majority of the Antiguan and Barbudan Creole vocabulary is English in origin, and the language has a unique vowel system as well as distinct grammar.

[6] In 1674, the Antigua's first sugar plantation was established, which resulted in a significant increase in the slave population and the island eventually becoming majority African by the 1680s.

[7] Antiguan and Barbudan Creole emerged when speakers of ABE made contact with African slaves.

These village-specific creoles existed until the 1960s, when people began to commute into cities and island-wide dialects emerged.

In Dominica, Kokoy Creole is spoken by a majority of the population in certain northeastern villages, a dialect that emerged in the late nineteenth century from Antiguan and Barbudan and Montserratian immigrants.

This part of Antigua is dominated by the Shekerley Mountains, significantly isolating it from the island's centre of population where North Antiguan Creole is primarily spoken.

Most media and mainstream communication is written and spoken in Standard English, although Antiguan Creole is sometimes used humorously or as a way of identifying with the local public.

In general, the higher and middle classes use it amongst friends and family but switch to Standard English in the public sphere.

Some varieties of Antiguan Creole do not have the gender or nominative/objective distinction, though most do; but usefully, it does distinguish between the second person singular and plural (you).