I meet foreigners who have lived in Trinidad for a long time every so often. And one thing they all seem to have in common is that they insist they are speaking in a Trini accent when to everyone else they sound obviously foreign. I don’t know how that works. My English friend Marie swears she is speaking Trini and she doesn’t even have a hint of it. When I point that out she immediately lapses into her version of dialect for thirty seconds before reverting back to her north London accent. I don’t know how she can hear herself and think she sounds Trini, but it’s a common thing apparently. It’s perplexing. And funny.