Tristan da Cunha: Difference between revisions

The islands have a population of 297.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7126939.stm |title=UK &#124; The quiet life: Tristan da Cunha |publisher=BBC News |date=6 December 2007 |accessdate=18 April 2014}}</ref> The main settlement is [[Edinburgh of the Seven Seas]] (known locally as "The Settlement"). The only religion is [[Christianity]], with denominations of [[Anglican]] and [[Roman Catholic]]. The current population is thought to have descended from 15 ancestors, eight males and seven females, who arrived on the island at various times between 1816 and 1908. The male founders originated from Scotland, England, The Netherlands, the United States and Italy, belonging to 3 Y-haplogroups: [[I-M170|I (M170)]], [[Haplogroup R-M420|R-SRY10831.2]] and [[Haplogroup R-M207|R (M207)]] (xSRY10831.2)<ref>[http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v11/n9/full/5201022a.html Genealogy and genes: tracing the founding fathers of Tristan da Cunha], European Journal of Human Genetics</ref> and share just eight surnames: Glass, Green, Hagan, Lavarello, Patterson, Repetto, Rogers, and Swain.{{refn|As such the traditional forefathers before migration were Scottish; Dutch; Irish; Italian (prob. Ligurian); Scottish; Italian (prob. Ligurian); English; and English.|group= n}}<ref name="howstuffworks.com">{{cite web|url=http://www.howstuffworks.com/framed.htm?parent=most-remote-place.htm&url=http://ags.ou.edu/%7Ebweaver/Ascension/tdc.htm |title=Howstuffworks |publisher=Howstuffworks |accessdate=18 April 2010}}</ref><ref name="howstuffworks.com"/> There are 80 families on the island.<!--See http://www.btinternet.com/~sa_sa/tristan_da_cunha/tristan_history_2.html--><!--http://www.simon-jones.org.uk/articles/tristan_da_cunha.htm--> Tristan da Cunha's isolation has led to an unusual, [[patois]]-like dialect of English described by the writer [[Simon Winchester]] as "a sonorous amalgam of [[English in southern England#South East England and the Home Counties|Home Counties lockjaw]] and [[List of 19th-century English language idioms|nineteenth century idiom]], [[List of South African slang words#Afrikanerisms|Afrikaans slang]] and [[Italian language|Italian]]."<ref>Simon Winchester, ''[[Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire]]'', (1985, reprinted in 2003), p. 87</ref> [[Bill Bryson]] documents some examples of the island's dialect in his book, ''[[The Mother Tongue (book)|The Mother Tongue]]''.