I was listening to BBC World in my car the other night and they were interviewing someone who after listening for a while I realised was from the Caribbean. The accent was somewhat generic (in that I couldn’t place where the person was from) but what struck me was how lovely and lilting our speech is. I had a few moments to hear it before it registered in my mind “West Indian” and my first thought was, “No wonder everyone always envisions people from the Caribbean as being happy all the time. Our speech sounds so musical that you couldn’t imagine someone speaking like that and being depressed or angry.” It made me feel really happy for a moment there. Too bad it’s far from the truth.