I've lived in the Caribbean for years and it took me forever to piece together what I think is right: it's the pronunciation with the emphasis on the "I".
In the Calypso (Trinidadian or West Indian) dialect, there's a whole other set of rules with accents in different places. If someone is frustrating you, you'd say, "Yuh froo-STRAY-tin me, mye boye." In this dialect, someone indigenous to the Caribbean would pronounce the word care-i-BE-ANNE.
If you flatten that into a neutral dialect, it comes out to how people pronounce it in "Pirates of the Caribbean." I assume it was due to English-speaking visitors asking locals how to pronounce the word and not understanding how the local dialect worked.
So, ridiculously, the word started one way, got assimilated into a different culture, and then looped back around and confused everyone.
Depends entirely on where in the sentence I use it. It's Caribbean when I say the Caribbean Isles but it's Caribbean when I say the Islands of the Caribbean.
Anyone else say Carib-be-an for the movie series and Carri-bean in any other context?
In the Calypso (Trinidadian or West Indian) dialect, there's a whole other set of rules with accents in different places. If someone is frustrating you, you'd say, "Yuh froo-STRAY-tin me, mye boye." In this dialect, someone indigenous to the Caribbean would pronounce the word care-i-BE-ANNE.
If you flatten that into a neutral dialect, it comes out to how people pronounce it in "Pirates of the Caribbean." I assume it was due to English-speaking visitors asking locals how to pronounce the word and not understanding how the local dialect worked.
So, ridiculously, the word started one way, got assimilated into a different culture, and then looped back around and confused everyone.