Belize Culture & Language

Belize is one of the few countries where a visitor can hear four languages before lunch. English is official and universal in print; Kriol, an English-based creole that developed during slavery, is the everyday tongue of the coast; Spanish is the language of the Mestizo majority in the north and west; and the Maya languages hold in the southern villages. The German-speaking Mennonites, almost four per cent of the population, farm much of the country's food and keep to their own communities.

The calendar is national in September and communal the rest of the year. The September Celebrations run the whole month around St George's Caye Day on the 10th and Independence Day on the 21st; Garifuna Settlement Day in November marks the arrival of the Garifuna on the southern coast and is a public holiday; Easter and Christmas are kept by a population that is 40.1 per cent Catholic and 31.5 per cent Protestant, with 15.5 per cent professing no religion.

Music runs from the Garifuna drumming of punta and the Kriol brukdown to the reggaeton and banda that have spread through the north and west. The Maya inheritance is in the place names, the food and the sites; the British one in the parliament, the law courts and the cricket pitch; the Caribbean one in the pace, which is slower than anywhere else on the isthmus.

English is the official language -- Belize is the only Central American country where it is -- so signs, forms and the law are in English and every visitor can be understood. What people speak to each other is Kriol, an English-based creole born in the timber camps, which an English speaker half-follows and then loses; Spanish in the north and west, where the Mestizo majority lives and the border with Mexico and Guatemala is close; Maya languages in the southern villages; and German among the Mennonites. Over half the population is multilingual, and a visitor who tries a Kriol greeting is answered in kind.