What area is known as the Caribbean?
What area is known as the Caribbean? The Caribbean (also known as the West Indies) is a region of the Americas consisting of the Caribbean Sea, its islands, and the surrounding coasts. The region is located southeast of North America, east of Central America, and to the northwest of South America.
What language do people speak in the Caribbean?
There are six official languages spoken in the Caribbean and many more unofficial languages. Among the official languages are Dutch, English, French, Haitian Creole, Papiamentu, and Spanish. Two of these official languages, Haitian Creole and Papiamentu, are Creole languages.
What is the smallest Caribbean country?
St. Kitts and Nevis, the smallest country in the Americas in both land area and population, is one of the seven independent territories covered by the United Nations Multi-Country Office for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean. St. Kitts and Nevis is 101 square miles with a population of 53,104 persons.
What did the British call the Caribbean?
Along with a number of colonies in North America, the Caribbean formed the heart of England's first overseas empire. The region was also known as the 'West Indies' because when the explorer Christopher Columbus first arrived there in 1492, he believed that he had sailed to the 'Indies', as Asia was then known.
What is the Caribbean called now?
Nowadays, the term West Indies is often interchangeable with the term Caribbean, although the latter may also include some Central and South American mainland nations which have Caribbean coastlines or coastlines close to the Caribbean, such as Belize, French Guiana, Guyana, and Suriname, as well as the Atlantic island ...
Why is it called the Caribbean?
The name Caribbean derives from the Caribs, one of the region's dominant Native American groups at the time of European contact during the late 15th century.
What are the 4 main Caribbean islands?
The largest Caribbean islands are Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, known as the Greater Antilles. Trinidad, the larger island of Trinidad and Tobago, is situated just north of the Venezuelan coast.