Emigration has continued, albeit at a lower rate, even as the birth-rate sharply dropped to levels typical of industrialised countries.

More recently, there has been some return migration, chiefly from the United States after the recession of 2008, which caused a population jump in the last census in 2011.

[6][7][8] Source: UN World Population Prospects[10] Indo-Trinidadians make up the country's largest ethnic group (approximately 35.43%).

Numerous staples of Trinbagonian culture have Afro-Trinbagonian roots, such as Calypso, Carnival, and traditional dishes such as callaloo.

For over 140 years, from 1834 up to 1975, the ancestors of the modern Portuguese community in Trinidad and Tobago hailed mostly from the archipelago of Madeira, starting from 1846, with the earliest registers being from the Azores in 1834.

Important communities settled in Port of Spain, Arima, Arouca, Chaguanas, San Fernando and Scarborough.

The Syrian and Lebanese communities of Trinidad are predominantly Christian, migrating from the Middle East in the 19th century from the Ottoman Empire later landing in the Caribbean and Latin America.

Many people, motivated by the need to re-claim their African heritage can now openly support these religions because they see in them a source of understanding and a coming to terms with their enslavement and the colonial past.

[23] A majority of the early Indian indentured immigrants spoke the Bhojpuri and Awadhi dialects, which later formed into Trinidadian Hindustani.

[24] The British colonial government and estate owners had disdain and contempt for Hindustani and Indian languages in Trinidad.

[25] Around the mid to late 1960s the lingua franca of Indo-Trinidadian and Tobagonians switched from Trinidadian Hindustani to a sort of Hindinized version of English.

[26][27][28][29][23][30] World Hindi Day is celebrated each year on 10 January with events organized by the National Council of Indian Culture, Hindi Nidhi Foundation, Indian High Commission, Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Cultural Co-operation, and the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha.

[31] In 2014, Spanish was the native language of 4,000[32] (0.3% of the total population) people in Trinidad and Tobago, being mostly made up of Venezuelan immigrants.

Due to Trinidad and Tobago's proximity to Venezuela, current government regulations require that Spanish be taught in secondary education.

Spanish is estimated to be spoken by around 5% of the population[33] and has been promoted by recent governments as a "first foreign language" since March 2005 due to the country's proximity to Venezuela.

It is mostly spoken by the few remaining children of indentured Indian laborers from the present-day state of Tamil Nadu in India.

A majority of the people who immigrated in the 19th century were from southern China and spoke the Hakka and Yue dialects of Chinese.