Book excerpt: This collection represents an important contribution not only to creole linguistics but also to Caribbean studies and English dialectology. It contains eleven essays on the special development and present-day functions of English and Creole in the Caribbean, ranging from Central America to Guyana. Topics include the spread of English and Creole, Spanish-English contact, the reconstruction of early phonology, the semantics of syntactic markers, the impact of colonial language policies, language and class, and the speech of Rastafarians. Half of the contributors are from the Caribbean region; the others are from Europe, Africa and the United States.