Jamaican Creole
Encyclopedia
Jamaican Patois, known locally as Patois (Patwa) or Jamaican, and called Jamaican Creole by linguists, is an English-lexified creole language
with West Africa
n influences spoken primarily in Jamaica
and the Jamaican diaspora
. It is not to be confused with Jamaican English
nor with the Rastafarian use of English
. The language developed in the 17th century, when slaves from West and Central Africa were exposed to, learned and nativized the vernacular
and dialect
al forms of English spoken by their masters: British English
, Scots
and Hiberno English. Jamaican Patois features a creole continuum
(or a linguistic continuum)—meaning that the variety of the language closest to the lexifier
language (the acrolect) cannot be distinguished systematically from intermediate varieties (collectively referred to as the mesolect) nor even from the most divergent rural varieties (collectively referred to as the basilect). Jamaicans themselves usually refer to their dialect
as patois
, a French
term without a precise linguistic definition.
Significant Jamaican-speaking communities exist among Jamaican expatriates in Miami; New York City
; Toronto
; Hartford; Washington, DC; Nicaragua
; Costa Rica
; Puerto Rico; Panama
(in the Caribbean
coast); and London
. A mutually intelligible variety is found in San Andrés y Providencia Islands, Colombia, brought to the island by descendants of Jamaican Maroons
(escaped slaves) in the 18th century. Mesolectal forms are similar to very Basilectal Belizean Kriol
.
Jamaican Patois exists mostly as a spoken language
. Although standard British English is used for most writing in Jamaica, Jamaican Patois has been gaining ground as a literary language
for almost a hundred years. Claude McKay
published his book of Jamaican poems Songs of Jamaica in 1912. Patois and English are frequently used for stylistic contrast (codeswitching
) in new forms of internet writing.
Jamaican pronunciation
and vocabulary
are significantly different from English, despite heavy use of English words or derivatives. Jamaican Patois displays similarities to the pidgin
and creole languages of West Africa, due to their common descent from the blending of African substrate languages with European languages.
s and between 9 and 16 vowel
s.
Examples of palatalization include: → [ciuː] → [cuː] ('a quarter quart (of rum)') → [ɟiaːd] → [ɟaːd] ('guard') → [pʲiãːpʲiãː] → [pʲãːpʲãː] ('weak')
Voiced stops are implosive
whenever in the onset of prominent syllables (especially word-initially) so that /biit/ ('beat') is pronounced [ɓiːt] and /ɡuud/ ('good') as [ɠuːd].
Before a syllabic /l/, the contrast between alveolar and velar consonants has been historically neutralized with alveolar consonants becoming velar so that the word for 'bottle' is /bakl̩/ and the word for 'idle' is /aiɡl̩/.
Jamaican Patois exhibits two types of vowel harmony
; peripheral vowel harmony, wherein only sequences of peripheral vowels (that is, /i/, /u/, and /a/) can occur within a syllable; and back harmony, wherein /i/ and /u/ cannot occur within a syllable together (that is, /uu/ and /ii/ are allowed but * /ui/ and * /iu/ are not). These two phenomena account for three long vowels and four diphthong
s:
that exhibits a gradation between more conservative creole forms and forms virtually identical to Standard English
(i.e. metropolitan Standard English). This situation came about with contact between speakers of a number of Niger–Congo languages
and various dialects of English, the latter of which were all perceived as prestigious and the use of which carried socio-economic rewards. The span of a speaker's command of the continuum generally corresponds to the variety of social situations that he situates himself in.
According to Bailey (1966), the progressive category is marked by /a~da~de/. Alleyne (1980) claims that /a~da/ marks the progressive and that the habitual aspect is unmarked but by its accompaniment with verbs like 'always', 'usually’, etc (i.e. is absent as a grammatical category). Mufwene (1984) and Gibson and Levy (1984) propose a past-only habitual category marked by /juusta/ as in /weɹ wi juusta liv iz not az kuol az iiɹ/ ('where we used to live is not as cold as here')
For the present tense, an uninflected verb combining with an iterative adverb marks habitual meaning as in /tam aawez nuo kieti tel pan im/ ('Tom always knows when Katy tells/has told about him').
Like other Caribbean Creoles (that is, Guyanese Creole and San Andrés-Providencia Creole
; Sranan Tongo
is excluded) /fi/ has a number of functions, including:
(such as in E-mail
) in recent years, a user-driven process of partial standardization has been taking place.
Primarily these come from English, but are also borrowed from Spanish
, Portuguese
, Hindi
, Arawak
and African languages
as well as Irish
.
Examples from African languages include /se/ meaning that (in the sense of "he told me that...." = /im tel mi se/), taken from Ashanti Twi
, and /dopi/ meaning ghost, from the Twi word adope. The pronoun /unu/, used for the plural form of you, is taken from the Igbo language
. Red eboe describes a fair-skinned black person because of the reported account of fair skin among the Igbo
. Soso meaning only comes from both Igbo and Yoruba
. From Igbo comes Obeah
, a form of African shamanism (and also used as a popular scapegoat for common woes) originating from the Igbo dibia or obia ('doctoring') herbalists and spiritualists.
Words from Hindi include nuh, ganja
(marijuana), and janga (crawdad). Pickney or pickiney meaning child, taken from an earlier form (piccaninny
) was ultimately borrowed from the Portuguese pequenino (the diminutive of pequeno, small) or Spanish pequeño ('small').
There are many words referring to popular produce and food items—ackee
, callaloo
, guinep, bammy, roti
, dal
, kamranga. See Jamaican cuisine
.
Jamaican Patois has its own rich variety of swearwords, many of which refer to the menstrual cycle
. One of the strongest is blood claat (along with related forms raas claat, bomba claat, claat and others—compare with bloody
in Australian English
, which is not considered swearing).
Homosexual men are referred to as /biips/ or batty boy
s.
surprise. woman boy
}
's All Jamaica Library and Claude McKay
's Songs of Jamaica (1909), and, more recently, Linton Kwesi Johnson
and Mikey Smith
. Subsequently, the life-work of Louise Bennett or Miss Lou (1919–2006), is particularly notable in her use of the rich colourful patois, despite being shunned by traditional literary groups. "The Jamaican Poetry League excluded her from its meetings, and editors failed to include her in anthologies." She argued forcefully for the recognition of Jamaican as a full language, with the same pedigree as the dialect from which Standard English
had sprung:
After the 1960s, the status of Jamaican Patois rose as a number of respected linguistic studies were published, by Cassidy (1961,1967), Bailey (1966) and others. Subsequently, it has gradually become mainstream to codemix or write complete pieces in Jamaican Patois; proponents include Kamau Brathwaite, who also analyzes the position of Creole poetry in his History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry (1984). However, Standard English remains the more prestigious literary medium in Jamaican literature
. Canadian-Caribbean science-fiction
novelist Nalo Hopkinson
often writes in Jamaican or other Caribbean patois.
Jamaican Patois is also presented in some films and other media, for example, Tia Dalma
's speech from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
, and a few scenes in Meet Joe Black
in which Brad Pitt converses with a Jamaican woman. In addition, early Jamaican films like The Harder They Come
(1972), Rockers (1978), and many of the films produced by Palm Pictures
in the mid-1990s (e.g. Dancehall Queen
and Third World Cop
) have most of their dialogue in Jamaican Patois; some of these films have even been subtitled in English.
English-based creole languages
An English-based creole language is a creole language that was significantly influenced by the English language...
with West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
n influences spoken primarily in Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
and the Jamaican diaspora
Jamaican diaspora
“Diaspora” means the scattering of people from their ethnic roots, enforced or voluntary. Thus the Jamaican diaspora refers to Jamaicans who have left their traditional homelands, the dispersal of such Jamaicans, and the ensuing developments in their culture...
. It is not to be confused with Jamaican English
Jamaican English
Jamaican English or Jamaican Standard English is a dialect of English spoken in Jamaica. It melds parts of both American English and British English dialects, along with many aspects of Irish intonation...
nor with the Rastafarian use of English
Rastafarian vocabulary
Iyaric, Livalect or Dread-talk is a created dialect of English in use among members of the Rastafari movement. African languages were lost among Africans when they were taken into captivity as part of the slave trade, and adherents of Rastafari teachings believe that English is an imposed colonial...
. The language developed in the 17th century, when slaves from West and Central Africa were exposed to, learned and nativized the vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
and dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
al forms of English spoken by their masters: British English
British English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
, Scots
Scots language
Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...
and Hiberno English. Jamaican Patois features a creole continuum
Post-creole speech continuum
The Post-creole continuum or simply creole continuum refers to a situation wherein a creole language consists of a spectrum of varieties between those most and least similar to the superstrate language...
(or a linguistic continuum)—meaning that the variety of the language closest to the lexifier
Lexifier
A lexifier is the dominant language of a particular pidgin or creole language that provides the basis for the majority of vocabulary....
language (the acrolect) cannot be distinguished systematically from intermediate varieties (collectively referred to as the mesolect) nor even from the most divergent rural varieties (collectively referred to as the basilect). Jamaicans themselves usually refer to their dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
as patois
Patois
Patois is any language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. It can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, and other forms of native or local speech, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant...
, a French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
term without a precise linguistic definition.
Significant Jamaican-speaking communities exist among Jamaican expatriates in Miami; New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
; Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
; Hartford; Washington, DC; Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
; Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
; Puerto Rico; Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
(in the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
coast); and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. A mutually intelligible variety is found in San Andrés y Providencia Islands, Colombia, brought to the island by descendants of Jamaican Maroons
Jamaican Maroons
The 'Jamaican Maroons are descended from slaves who escaped from slavery and established free communities in the mountainous interior of Jamaica during the long era of slavery in the island. African slaves imported during the Spanish period may have provided the first runaways, apparently mixing...
(escaped slaves) in the 18th century. Mesolectal forms are similar to very Basilectal Belizean Kriol
Belizean Kriol language
Belizean Creole English, known as Kriol by its speakers, is an English-based creole language most closely related to Miskito Coastal Creole, Limón Coastal Creole, Colón Creole, San Andrés and Providencia Creole, Guyanese Creole, Jamaican Patois and English creoles of the Caribbean show similarity...
.
Jamaican Patois exists mostly as a spoken language
Spoken language
Spoken language is a form of human communication in which words derived from a large vocabulary together with a diverse variety of names are uttered through or with the mouth. All words are made up from a limited set of vowels and consonants. The spoken words they make are stringed into...
. Although standard British English is used for most writing in Jamaica, Jamaican Patois has been gaining ground as a literary language
Literary language
A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
for almost a hundred years. Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote three novels: Home to Harlem , a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo , and Banana Bottom...
published his book of Jamaican poems Songs of Jamaica in 1912. Patois and English are frequently used for stylistic contrast (codeswitching
Code-switching
In linguistics, code-switching is the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals—people who speak more than one language—sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other...
) in new forms of internet writing.
Jamaican pronunciation
Pronunciation
Pronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect....
and vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
are significantly different from English, despite heavy use of English words or derivatives. Jamaican Patois displays similarities to the pidgin
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
and creole languages of West Africa, due to their common descent from the blending of African substrate languages with European languages.
Phonology
Accounts of basilectal Jamaican Patwa postulate around 21 phonemic consonantConsonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
s and between 9 and 16 vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s.
| Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals... |
Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Post- alveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... 2 |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
p b | t d | tʃ dʒ | c ɟ | k ɡ | |
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
f v | s z | ʃ | (h)1 | ||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
ɹ | j | w | |||
| Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
l |
- The status of /h/ as a phoneme is dialectal: in Western varieties, it is a full phoneme and there are minimal pairs (/hiit/ 'hit' and /iit/ 'eat'); in Eastern varieties, the presence of [h] in a word is in free variationFree variationFree variation in linguistics is the phenomenon of two sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers...
with no consonant so that the words for 'hand' and 'and' (both underlyingly /an/) may be pronounced [han] or [an]. - The palatal stops [c], [ɟ] and [ɲ] are considered phonemic by some accounts and phonetic by others. For the latter interpretation, their appearance is included in the larger phenomenon of phonetic palatalizationPalatalizationIn linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
.
Examples of palatalization include: → [ciuː] → [cuː] ('a quarter quart (of rum)') → [ɟiaːd] → [ɟaːd] ('guard') → [pʲiãːpʲiãː] → [pʲãːpʲãː] ('weak')
Voiced stops are implosive
Implosive consonant
Implosive consonants are stops with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. Therefore, unlike the purely glottalic ejective consonants, implosives can...
whenever in the onset of prominent syllables (especially word-initially) so that /biit/ ('beat') is pronounced [ɓiːt] and /ɡuud/ ('good') as [ɠuːd].
Before a syllabic /l/, the contrast between alveolar and velar consonants has been historically neutralized with alveolar consonants becoming velar so that the word for 'bottle' is /bakl̩/ and the word for 'idle' is /aiɡl̩/.
Vowel harmony
Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
; peripheral vowel harmony, wherein only sequences of peripheral vowels (that is, /i/, /u/, and /a/) can occur within a syllable; and back harmony, wherein /i/ and /u/ cannot occur within a syllable together (that is, /uu/ and /ii/ are allowed but * /ui/ and * /iu/ are not). These two phenomena account for three long vowels and four diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s:
| Vowel | Example | Gloss |
|---|---|---|
| /ii/ | /biini/ | 'tiny' |
| /aa/ | /baaba/ | 'barber' |
| /uu/ | /buut/ | 'booth' |
| /ia/ | /biak/ | 'bake' |
| /ai/ | /baik/ | 'bike' |
| /ua/ | /buat/ | 'boat' |
| /au/ | /taun/ | 'town' |
Sociolinguistic variation
Jamaican Patois is a creole languageCreole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
that exhibits a gradation between more conservative creole forms and forms virtually identical to Standard English
Standard English
Standard English refers to whatever form of the English language is accepted as a national norm in an Anglophone country...
(i.e. metropolitan Standard English). This situation came about with contact between speakers of a number of Niger–Congo languages
Niger–Congo languages
The Niger–Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. They may constitute the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages, although this question...
and various dialects of English, the latter of which were all perceived as prestigious and the use of which carried socio-economic rewards. The span of a speaker's command of the continuum generally corresponds to the variety of social situations that he situates himself in.
Grammar
The tense/aspect system of Jamaican Patois is fundamentally unlike that of English. There are no morphological marked past tense forms corresponding to English -ed -t. There are two preverbial particles: en and a. These are not verbs, they are simply invariant particles that cannot stand alone like the English to be. Their function also differs from the English.According to Bailey (1966), the progressive category is marked by /a~da~de/. Alleyne (1980) claims that /a~da/ marks the progressive and that the habitual aspect is unmarked but by its accompaniment with verbs like 'always', 'usually’, etc (i.e. is absent as a grammatical category). Mufwene (1984) and Gibson and Levy (1984) propose a past-only habitual category marked by /juusta/ as in /weɹ wi juusta liv iz not az kuol az iiɹ/ ('where we used to live is not as cold as here')
For the present tense, an uninflected verb combining with an iterative adverb marks habitual meaning as in /tam aawez nuo kieti tel pan im/ ('Tom always knows when Katy tells/has told about him').
- en is a tense indicator
- a is an aspect marker
- (a) go is used to indicate the future
-
- I run (habitually); I ran or /mi de ɹon/
- I am running or /a ɹon mi ben(w)en a ɹon/
- I was running or /mi ben(w)en ɹon/
- I have run; I had run
- I am going to run; I will run
Like other Caribbean Creoles (that is, Guyanese Creole and San Andrés-Providencia Creole
San Andrés-Providencia Creole
San Andrés–Providencia Creole is a Creole language spoken in the San Andrés and Providencia Department of Colombia by the natives , very similar to the Miskito Coastal Creole spoken in Bluefields, the Corn Islands and the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua...
; Sranan Tongo
Sranan Tongo
Sranan is a creole language spoken as a lingua franca by approximately 300,000 people in Suriname...
is excluded) /fi/ has a number of functions, including:
- Directional, dative, or benefactive preposition
- /dem a fait fi wi/ ('They are fighting for us')
- Genitive preposition (that is, marker of possession)
- /dat a fi mi buk/ ('that's my book')
- Modal auxiliary expressing obligation or futurity
- /im fi kom op ja/ ('he ought to come up here')
- Pre-infinitive complementizer
- /unu hafi kiip samtiŋ faɹ de ɡini piipl-dem fi biit dem miuzik/ ('you have to contribute something to the GuineaGuineaGuinea , officially the Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea , it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbour Guinea-Bissau. Guinea is divided into eight administrative regions and subdivided into thirty-three prefectures...
n People for playing their music')
- /unu hafi kiip samtiŋ faɹ de ɡini piipl-dem fi biit dem miuzik/ ('you have to contribute something to the Guinea
Pronominal system
The pronominal system of Standard English has a four-way distinction of person, number, gender and case. Some varieties of Jamaican Patois do not have the gender or case distinction, but all varieties distinguish between the second person singular and plural (you).- I, me = /mi/
- you, you (singular) = /ju/
- he, him = /im/
- she, her = /ʃi/ or /im/ (no gender distinction in basilect varieties)
- we, us = /wi/
- you (plural) = /unu/
- they, them = /dem/
Copula
- the Jamaican Patois equative verb is also a
- e.g. /mi a di tiitʃa/ ('I am the teacher')
- Jamaican Patois has a separate locative verb deh
- e.g. /wi de a london/ or /wi de ina london/ ('we are in London')
- with true adjectives in Jamaican Patois, no copula is needed
- e.g. /mi haadbak nau/ ('I am old now')
Negation
is used as a present tense negator:-
- /if kau no did nuo au im tɹuotuol tan im udn tʃaans pieɹsiid/ ('If the cow knew that his throat wasn't capable of swallowing a pear seed, he wouldn't have swallowed it') is used in the same way as English can't
- /it a puoɹ tiŋ dat kiaan maʃ ant/ ('It is a poor thing that can't mash an ant') is a negative past participle.
- /dʒan neva tiif di moni/ ('John did not steal the money')
Orthography
Because Jamaican Patois is a non-standard language, there is no standard or official way of writing it. For example, the word "there" can be written de, deh, or dere, and the word "three" is most commonly spelled tree, but it can be spelled tri or trii to distinguish it from the noun tree. Often, Standard English spellings are used even when words are pronounced differently. Other times, a spelling has become widespread even though it is neither phonetic nor standard (eg. pickney = child. In this case the spelling pikni would be more phonetic). However, due to increased use on the InternetInternet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
(such as in E-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
) in recent years, a user-driven process of partial standardization has been taking place.
Vocabulary
Jamaican Patois contains many loanwords.Primarily these come from English, but are also borrowed from Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
, Arawak
Arawakan languages
Macro-Arawakan is a proposed language family of South America and the Caribbean based on the Arawakan languages. Sometimes the proposal is called Arawakan, in which case the central family is called Maipurean....
and African languages
African languages
There are over 2100 and by some counts over 3000 languages spoken natively in Africa in several major language families:*Afro-Asiatic spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel...
as well as Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
.
Examples from African languages include /se/ meaning that (in the sense of "he told me that...." = /im tel mi se/), taken from Ashanti Twi
Twi
Asante, or Ashanti, is one of three literary dialects of the Akan language of southern Ghana, and the prestige dialect of that language. It is spoken in and around Kumasi, the capital of the former Ashanti Empire and current subnational Asante Kingdom within Ghana.Along with the Akuapem dialect,...
, and /dopi/ meaning ghost, from the Twi word adope. The pronoun /unu/, used for the plural form of you, is taken from the Igbo language
Igbo language
Igbo , or Igbo proper, is a native language of the Igbo people, an ethnic group primarily located in southeastern Nigeria. There are approximately 20 million speakers that are mostly in Nigeria and are primarily of Igbo descent. Igbo is a national language of Nigeria. It is written in the Latin...
. Red eboe describes a fair-skinned black person because of the reported account of fair skin among the Igbo
Igbo people
Igbo people, also referred to as the Ibo, Ebo, Eboans or Heebo are an ethnic group living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria. They speak Igbo, which includes various Igboid languages and dialects; today, a majority of them speak English alongside Igbo as a result of British colonialism...
. Soso meaning only comes from both Igbo and Yoruba
Yoruba language
Yorùbá is a Niger–Congo language spoken in West Africa by approximately 20 million speakers. The native tongue of the Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and in communities in other parts of Africa, Europe and the Americas...
. From Igbo comes Obeah
Obeah
Obeah is a term used in the West Indies to refer to folk magic, sorcery, and religious practices derived from West African, and specifically Igbo origin. Obeah is similar to other African derived religions including Palo, Voodoo, Santería, rootwork, and most of all hoodoo...
, a form of African shamanism (and also used as a popular scapegoat for common woes) originating from the Igbo dibia or obia ('doctoring') herbalists and spiritualists.
Words from Hindi include nuh, ganja
Cannabis (drug)
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among many other names, refers to any number of preparations of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug or for medicinal purposes. The English term marijuana comes from the Mexican Spanish word marihuana...
(marijuana), and janga (crawdad). Pickney or pickiney meaning child, taken from an earlier form (piccaninny
Piccaninny
Piccaninny, with variant spellings Pickaninny, Piccaninnie, Picaninny and Pickaninnie, may refer to:* Pickaninny, term used for black children* Piccaninny crater, impact structure in Western Australia...
) was ultimately borrowed from the Portuguese pequenino (the diminutive of pequeno, small) or Spanish pequeño ('small').
There are many words referring to popular produce and food items—ackee
Ackee
The ackee, also known as the vegetable brain, achee, akee apple or akee is a member of the Sapindaceae , native to tropical West Africa in Cameroon, Gabon, São Tomé and Príncipe, Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.It is...
, callaloo
Callaloo
Callaloo is a popular Caribbean dish served in different variants in across the Caribbean. The main ingredient is a leaf vegetable, traditionally either amaranth , taro or Xanthosoma. Both are known by many names including callaloo, coco, tannia, bhaaji, or dasheen bush...
, guinep, bammy, roti
Roti
Roti is generally a South Asian bread made from stoneground wholemeal flour, traditionally known as atta flour, that originated and is consumed in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. It is also consumed in parts of the Southern Caribbean, particularly in Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and...
, dal
Dal
Dal is a preparation of pulses which have been stripped of their outer hulls and split. It also refers to the thick stew prepared from these, an important part of Indian, Nepali, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, and Bangladeshi cuisine...
, kamranga. See Jamaican cuisine
Jamaican cuisine
Jamaican cuisine includes a mixture of cooking techniques, flavors, spices and influences from the indigenous people on the island, and the Spanish, British, Africans, and Chinese who have inhabited the island. It is also influenced by the crops introduced into the island from tropical Southeast...
.
Jamaican Patois has its own rich variety of swearwords, many of which refer to the menstrual cycle
Menstrual cycle
The menstrual cycle is the scientific term for the physiological changes that can occur in fertile women for the purpose of sexual reproduction. This article focuses on the human menstrual cycle....
. One of the strongest is blood claat (along with related forms raas claat, bomba claat, claat and others—compare with bloody
Bloody
Bloody is the adjectival form of blood but may also be used as an expletive attributive in Australia, Britain, Ireland, Canada, Singapore, South Africa , New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Anglophone Caribbean and Sri Lanka...
in Australian English
Australian English
Australian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language....
, which is not considered swearing).
Homosexual men are referred to as /biips/ or batty boy
Batty boy
Batty boy , batty man are pejorative sexual slurs used to describe gay, bisexual and effeminate men, or those presumed to be gay and bisexual. The term is a Jamaican Patois abbreviation of the word bottom into batty; "batty boy" is a cognate of the American English "butt boy"...
s.
Example phrases
- Three men swam.
- /tɹi man did a suim/
- I nearly hit him
- /a didn mek dʒuok fi lik im/
- He can't beat me, he simply got lucky and won.
- /im kiaan biit mi, a dʒos bokop im bokop an win/
- Those children are disobedient
- /dem pikni de aad iez/ - Affirmative particle - Foolish exhibition, a person who makes a foolish exhibition of themself, or an exclamation of , possibly taken from "puppet show"
surprise. woman boy
- That's my baby, and thats my mum.
}
Literature and film
A rich body of literature has developed in Jamaican Patois. Notable among early authors are Thomas MacDermotThomas MacDermot
Thomas MacDermot was a Jamaican poet, novelist, and editor, editing the Jamaica Times for over twenty years. Thomas MacDermot worked to promote Jamaican literature through all of his writing, starting a weekly short story contest in the Jamaica Times in 1899, and starting the All Jamaica Library...
's All Jamaica Library and Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote three novels: Home to Harlem , a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo , and Banana Bottom...
's Songs of Jamaica (1909), and, more recently, Linton Kwesi Johnson
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Linton Kwesi Johnson is a UK-based dub poet. He became the second living poet, and the only black poet, to be published in the Penguin Classics series. His poetry involves the recitation of his own verse in Jamaican Patois over dub-reggae, usually written in collaboration with renowned British...
and Mikey Smith
Mikey Smith
Michael Smith, usually referred to as Mikey Smith , was a Jamaican dub poet. Along with Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Mutabaruka, he was one of the most well-known dub poets. In 1978, Michael Smith represented Jamaica at the 11th World Festival of Youth and Students in Cuba. His album Mi Cyaan Believe...
. Subsequently, the life-work of Louise Bennett or Miss Lou (1919–2006), is particularly notable in her use of the rich colourful patois, despite being shunned by traditional literary groups. "The Jamaican Poetry League excluded her from its meetings, and editors failed to include her in anthologies." She argued forcefully for the recognition of Jamaican as a full language, with the same pedigree as the dialect from which Standard English
Standard English
Standard English refers to whatever form of the English language is accepted as a national norm in an Anglophone country...
had sprung:
After the 1960s, the status of Jamaican Patois rose as a number of respected linguistic studies were published, by Cassidy (1961,1967), Bailey (1966) and others. Subsequently, it has gradually become mainstream to codemix or write complete pieces in Jamaican Patois; proponents include Kamau Brathwaite, who also analyzes the position of Creole poetry in his History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry (1984). However, Standard English remains the more prestigious literary medium in Jamaican literature
Jamaican literature
Jamaican literature is internationally renowned. The island has been the home or birthplace of many important authors. One of the most important aspects of Jamaican literature is the local patois, a variation of English...
. Canadian-Caribbean science-fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novelist Nalo Hopkinson
Nalo Hopkinson
Nalo Hopkinson is a Jamaican science fiction and fantasy writer and editor who lives in Canada. Her novels and short stories such as those in her collection Skin Folk often draw on Caribbean history and language, and its traditions of oral and written storytelling.Hopkinson has...
often writes in Jamaican or other Caribbean patois.
Jamaican Patois is also presented in some films and other media, for example, Tia Dalma
Tia Dalma
Tia Dalma, played by Naomie Harris, is a fictional character from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and a primary character in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, in which a significant amount of the plot revolves around her and her powers...
's speech from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a 2006 adventure fantasy film and the second film of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, following Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl . It was directed by Gore Verbinski, written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, and produced by...
, and a few scenes in Meet Joe Black
Meet Joe Black
Meet Joe Black is a 1998 American fantasy romance film produced by Universal Studios, directed by Martin Brest and starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins and Claire Forlani, loosely based on the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday...
in which Brad Pitt converses with a Jamaican woman. In addition, early Jamaican films like The Harder They Come
The Harder They Come
The Harder They Come is a 1972 Jamaican crime film directed by Perry Henzell.The film stars reggae singer Jimmy Cliff, who plays Ivanhoe Martin, a character based on Rhyging, a real-life Jamaican criminal who achieved fame in the 1940s...
(1972), Rockers (1978), and many of the films produced by Palm Pictures
Palm Pictures
Palm Pictures is a US-based entertainment company owned and run by Chris Blackwell. Palm Pictures produces, acquires and distributes innovative music and film projects with a particular focus on the DVD format...
in the mid-1990s (e.g. Dancehall Queen
Dancehall Queen
Dancehall Queen is a 1997 independent Jamaican film starring Audrey Reid who plays Marcia, a street vendor struggling to raise two daughters.Detailed item informationDescriptionA street vendor discovers dancehalls and begins to live a double life....
and Third World Cop
Third World Cop
Third World Cop is a 1999 Jamaican action-crime film starring Paul Campbell, directed by Chris Browne and produced by Chris Blackwell of Island Jamaica Films.- Plot synopsis :...
) have most of their dialogue in Jamaican Patois; some of these films have even been subtitled in English.
See also
- African American Vernacular EnglishAfrican American Vernacular EnglishAfrican American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...
- English-based creole languagesEnglish-based creole languagesAn English-based creole language is a creole language that was significantly influenced by the English language...
- Haitian Creole
- Jamaican EnglishJamaican EnglishJamaican English or Jamaican Standard English is a dialect of English spoken in Jamaica. It melds parts of both American English and British English dialects, along with many aspects of Irish intonation...
- Rastafarian vocabularyRastafarian vocabularyIyaric, Livalect or Dread-talk is a created dialect of English in use among members of the Rastafari movement. African languages were lost among Africans when they were taken into captivity as part of the slave trade, and adherents of Rastafari teachings believe that English is an imposed colonial...
for example mi a go down a di maket yu wuh come down deh wit mi? or dem picini desoi a go kill mi befoe mi god tek mi life ar lik miu dung
External links
- Free Learn Jamaican Ebook
- Speak Jamaican
- The Jamaican Language Unit
- Wiwords.com A cross-referencing West Indian dictionary with substantial Jamaican content
- Langwij Jumieka Bilingual Jamaican/English website utilizing phonetic Cassidy-LePage orthography with history, grammar, idioms, dictionary, translations
- Jamaican Patois phrase list