How to pronounce Caribbean

Short answer: both are correct. Say ka-rih-BEE-un (/ˌkærɪˈbiːən/), stressing BEE, or kuh-RIB-ee-un (/kəˈrɪbiən/), stressing RIB. Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, Oxford Learner's Dictionaries, American Heritage and Dictionary.com list both, BEE first. Merriam-Webster's first pronunciation starts with "care": care-uh-BEE-un (/ˌkɛrəˈbiːən/).

Listen

The two Midwestern clips are the same speaker saying both versions.

Is it ka-rih-BEE-un or kuh-RIB-ee-un?

The only difference is the stressed syllable:

Is there a British way and an American way? Roughly. In 1998 the phonetician John Wells polled more than 1,900 British English speakers for the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary: 91% preferred BEE and 9% RIB. They were volunteers interested in pronunciation, not a random sample. A usage note in Oxford's online dictionary (American edition, 2016 copy) says both versions are widely used in the US, while British speakers more often stress BEE, though kuh-RIB-ee-un has been gaining ground in Britain.

And in the Caribbean? Sources disagree. The same Oxford note says the region prefers kuh-RIB-ee-un. But on the American Dialect Society's mailing list in 1998, Ron Butters said he generally heard the BEE version from islanders, and Donald Lance recalled Frederic Cassidy, a Jamaican-born linguist, saying that island residents used BEE, as he did, but that RIB was making inroads. With people from the Caribbean, follow their lead.

Our advice: both are correct, so keep the Caribbean pronunciation you already use. If you want the version Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, Oxford, American Heritage and Dictionary.com list first, and the clear favorite in Wells's poll, say ka-rih-BEE-un.

Why is Caribbean pronounced two ways?

Caribbean comes from the Caribs, or Kalinago, the Indigenous people the Spanish found in the Lesser Antilles. Spanish Caribe comes from a Taíno or Kalinago word, ultimately from a Cariban root meaning "person". The same name gave English cannibal, through caniba, a Taíno form that Christopher Columbus recorded.

English built Caribbean from New Latin Caribbaeus; Merriam-Webster dates the first known use to 1772. The Latin ending -aeus is also behind European (Latin Europaeus), and in both words the "ee" is a strong vowel that pulls the stress onto itself. In 1917, Frank Vizetelly's Desk-Book of Twenty-five Thousand Words Frequently Mispronounced gave only the BEE version, and noted that Carib is KA-rib, not ka-RIB.

When speakers treat that "ee" as weak, the stress moves back one syllable, onto RIB, as Donald Lance suggested in the 1998 discussion. Herculean has the same split: Cambridge's American dictionary lists hur-kyuh-LEE-un and hur-KYOO-lee-un.

How to say Caribbean step by step

Caribbean has four syllables: Car-ib-be-an.

1. Pick one stress: BEE or RIB, never both.
2. For ka-rih-BEE-un, start light: "ka" with the a of cat (or "care", if marry and merry sound the same to you), then a quick "rih".
3. Land on BEE: longer and louder, with the "ee" of see, then a soft "un", as in Korean.
4. For kuh-RIB-ee-un, hit RIB: a weak "kuh", a strong RIB that rhymes with crib, then a quick "ee-un".

Mistakes to avoid: a long "ee" in RIB, easy to borrow from Spanish Caribe (kah-REE-beh), and the spelling Carribean, an old form that Wiktionary marks obsolete. It's one R, two Bs. In Caribbean Sea, the main stress moves to Sea: Oxford Learner's Dictionaries give /ðə ˌkærɪbiːən ˈsiː/.

Practice in a sentence

• We're spending a week in the Caribbean.
• Jamaica and Barbados are Caribbean islands.
• Is it ka-rih-BEE-un or kuh-RIB-ee-un? Both are fine.

Then try other words with the same ending. American pronunciations, from the Cambridge Dictionary:

Place names start the same kind of argument: see how to pronounce Edinburgh, Oregon, Appalachian and Worcestershire.

What is the Caribbean?

The Caribbean Sea is the part of the Atlantic Ocean east of Central America and north of South America, about 2.75 million square kilometers (1.06 million square miles). The Caribbean also means the region: the islands of the West Indies, such as Cuba and Hispaniola, plus the coasts around the sea. The Bahamas count as Caribbean politically, but lie outside the sea. The Kalinago, who gave the region its name, still live in Dominica and in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, about 3,000 in each.

Sources

• Merriam-Webster — Caribbean, pronunciations, etymology and first known use
• Cambridge Dictionary — Caribbean, British and American entries; European, Korean, Herculean, Mediterranean, Bahamian
• Oxford Learner's Dictionaries — Caribbean (American English)
• Dictionary.com — Caribbean, European; American Heritage Dictionary — Caribbean; Longman — Caribbean
• Wiktionary — Caribbean, Caribbean Sea, Carib, Caribe, cannibal
• Oxford Dictionaries — Caribbean, American edition, usage note, September 2016 (archived copy)
• John Wells, UCL — LPD pronunciation preference poll 1998 and its concise findings, 1999 (archived copies)
• American Dialect Society — ADS-L, "Re: CaRIBbean", Donald M. Lance, May 1998; Wikipedia — Frederic G. Cassidy
• Frank H. Vizetelly — A Desk-Book of Twenty-five Thousand Words Frequently Mispronounced, Funk & Wagnalls, 1917 (Internet Archive)
• Wikipedia — Caribbean, Caribbean Sea, Kalinago