Limonese Creole is an English-based creole language spoken in Limón Province

Limón Province

Limón is one of seven provinces in Costa Rica. The majority of its territory is situated in the country's Caribbean lowlands, though the southwestern portion houses part of an extensive mountain range known as the Cordillera de Talamanca...

 on the Caribbean Sea

Caribbean Sea

The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean located in the tropics of the Western hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico and Central America to the west and southwest, to the north by the Greater Antilles, and to the east by the Lesser Antilles....

 coast of Costa Rica

Costa Rica

Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

. Limón Coastal Creole is similar to varieties such as Colón Creole

Colón Creole

Colón Creole is a language spoken in Panama. Colón Creole is similar to varieties such as Limón Coastal Creole, Mískito Coastal Creole, and Belizean Creole . The number of speakers of Colón Creole is below 300,000 . Colón Creole does not have the status of an official language.-See also:*Bajan...

, Mískito Coastal Creole

Miskito Coastal Creole

Mískito Coast Creole or Nicaragua Creole English is a language spoken in Nicaragua based on English. Its approximately 30,000 speakers are found along the Mosquito Coast of the Caribbean Sea. The language is nearly identical to Belizean Creole , and similar to all Central American Creoles...

, Belizean Kriol language

Belizean Kriol language

Belizean Creole English, known as Kriol by its speakers, is an English-based creole language most closely related to Miskito Coastal Creole, Limón Coastal Creole, Colón Creole, San Andrés and Providencia Creole, Guyanese Creole, Jamaican Patois and English creoles of the Caribbean show similarity...

, and San Andrés and Providencia Creole. The number of speakers of Limón Coastal Creole is below 100,000 http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=CR. Limón Coastal Creole does not have the status of an official language. It is very similar to Jamaican Creole

Jamaican Creole

Jamaican Patois, known locally as Patois or Jamaican, and called Jamaican Creole by linguists, is an English-lexified creole language with West African influences spoken primarily in Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora. It is not to be confused with Jamaican English nor with the Rastafarian use of...

 and has borrowed many words from English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

.

Jamaican Creole was introduced to Limón by Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

n migrant workers who arrived to work on the banana plantations and on the Pacific railway.

The name Mekatelyu is a transliteration of the phrase "make I tell you", or in standard English "let me tell you".

See also

• Bahamian Creole
  Bahamian Creole
  Bahamian is an English-based creole language spoken by approximately 400,000 people in the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.Bahamian is spoken by both white and black Bahamians, although in slightly different forms. Bahamian also tends to be more prevalent in certain areas of the Bahamas...
  
  
• Bajan
• Bermudian English
  Bermudian English
  Bermudian English is a regional accent of English found in Bermuda, a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic. "Standard English is used in professional settings and in writing, while vernacular Bermudian English is spoken on more casual occasions"...
  
  
• Jamaican English
  Jamaican English
  Jamaican English or Jamaican Standard English is a dialect of English spoken in Jamaica. It melds parts of both American English and British English dialects, along with many aspects of Irish intonation...
  
  

External links

• "¿Qué es el mek-a-tel-yu?" by Dora H. de Vargas (in Spanish
  Spanish language
  Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
  
  )