Bajan is primarily a spoken language, meaning that in general, standard English is used in print, in the media, in the judicial system, in government, and in day-to-day business, while Bajan is reserved for less formal situations, in music, or in social commentary.
[3] In one historical model, Bajan arose when captive West Africans were forcibly transported to the island, enslaved and forced to speak English, though learned imperfectly.
[citation needed] Unlike Jamaica, Guyana or Trinidad, Barbados was the destination of few enslaved African-born captives after 1800.
This tended to make them less resistant to local culture, with its Anglicised language, religion and customs.
Barbadians practising Rastafari on the island also tend to speak more with a Jamaican accent than full Bajan.
New terminology, expressions, jargon, and idioms are regularly added to the dialect by social commentary sung during the annual Crop Over festival.
[10] As in most English-based Caribbean creoles, the interdentals /θ/ and /ð/ (as in "thing", and "the" respectively) have merged with other consonants (in this case, /t/ and /d/, respectively, resulting in "ting" and "de").
The structure of questions in Bajan Dialect varies from that of Standard English, as it is generally the same format as regular statements.
Questions seeking yes or no answers are usually pronounced as a statement with only a raised intonation to differentiate, usually on the last word.