Cultural syncretisation and racial miscegenation have given birth to the Caribbean as a Creole space. The Creole dialect, a source of contention, has, for decades, remained basilectal while English preponderates in the classrooms. With this reality, several obstacles continue to surface, giving rise to the question of which language should be officialized in classrooms. Dennis Craig, Caribbean linguist, with decades of experience, pioneered work to institutionalize the vernacular in schools.

Jamaica Creole has been more thoroughly analysed than any other Caribbean vernacular with the possible exception of Haitian Creole. The book under review is a worthy successor to Beryl Bailey's Jamaican Creole Syntax (1966) in that, at the very least, it may be considered to have accomplished for the sound structure of the Creole what that earlier book did for its sentence structure. Indeed, it might justifiably be said to have done far more.

A recent report of a workshop on educational curriculum and remediation held by the Eastern Caribbean Education Reform Project (ECERP), provides an interesting backdrop to language education in the Caribbean and incidentally supports the rationale for this book.