Jamaican Creole

Jamaican Creole, also known as Patois/(Patwa) or simply Jamaican, is an English/African-based language --not to be confused with Jamaican English nor with the Rastafarian use of English-- used primarily on the island of Jamaica. Jamaican Creole is the descendant of a 17th century creolization process which, simply put, consisted of West and Central Africans acquiring and nativizing the vernacular and dialectal British Englishes (including significant exposure to Irish and Scottish varieties) which their forced labor brought them in contact with.

Significant Jamaican Creole-speaking communities exist among Jamaican expatriates in Miami, New York City, Washington D.C, Nicaragua and London. Jamaican Creole exists mostly as a spoken language. Although standard British English is used for most writing in Jamaica, Jamaican Creole has been gaining ground as a literary language for almost a hundred years. Claude McKay published his book of patois poems Songs of Jamaica in 1912.

Jamaican pronunciation and vocabulary are significantly different from most other English dialects despite heavy usage of English words or derivatives. It is to the point where a native speaker of a non-Caribbean English dialect can only understand a heavily accented Jamaican speaker if they talk slowly and forego the use of the numerous idioms that are common in Jamaican.

This is due to the fact that many Jamaican words have their origin in various African languages and the language syntax is mostly derived from the various African languages. Pluralisation of nouns is done by either prepending a cardinal --de five bird-- or by appending the plural indicator, "dem" --de bird dem. Similarly, verb tense is specified using prepended tense indicators --mi swim, mi a go swim, mi did swim, mi a fi swim, etc.

Pronounciation also varies among the Jamaican dialects with 'V' being pronounced as a 'B', 'C' being pronounced as 'CY', 'TH' as 'T'. In some jamaican dialects, all 'H' sounds are dropped.

Interest in Jamaican outside of Jamaica was heightened by the proliferation of the Rastafari movement and reggae and ska music throughout the world beginning in the 1960s.

Table of contents

1 The pronominal system 2 Vocabulary 3 Tense and Aspect Marking 4 Use of the copula (equivalent to "to be") 5 Negation 6 Orthography 7 Examples 8 Other differences to Standard English 9 External links

The pronominal system

The pronominal system of Standard English has a four-way distinction of person, singular/plural, gender and nominative/objective. Some varieties of Jamaican Creole do not have the gender or nominative/objective distinction, though most do; but usefully, it does distinguish between the second person singular and plural (you).

• I, me = mi
• you, you (thou, thee) = yu
• he, him = im
• she, her = shi
• we, us = wi
• you, you = unu
• they, them = dem

To form the possesive adjectives and the possesive pronouns, simply add "fi-" to the pronouns above. Note, though, that most varieties of Jamaican Creole use merely the nominative/objective pronouns in place of these possesive varients, which are used for emphasis.

• my, mine = fi-mi
• your, yours (thy, thine) = fi-yu
• his, his = fi-im
• her, hers = fi-shi
• our, ours = fi-wi
• your, yours = fi-unu
• their, theirs = fi-dem

Often, fi- is used in front of nouns, to indicate possesion (replacing 's).

eg. a fi-Anne daag dat = that is Anne's dog

Vocabulary

Naturally, Jamaican Creole contains many words borrowed from English as well as from Spanish, Portuguese, Hindustani, and African lanuguages. Examples of such words include "duppy" meaning 'ghost'; "pickney" meaning 'child' (taken from an earlier form "piccaninny" and ultimatly borrowed from portuguese "pequeno"); "obeah" refering to a type of spell-casting, voodoo or witchcraft native to Africa (and also used as a popular scapegoat for common woes); and even "seh" meaning 'that' (in the sense of "he told me that" = "im tel mi seh") and taken from a west African dialect. Words from Hindustani include "nuh", "ganja" (marijuana), and "janga" (crayfish).

Of course there are lots of words referring to popular produce and food items - "ackee", "callaloo", "guinep", "bammy", "roti", "dal", "kamranga".

See also batty boy.

Tense and Aspect Marking

The tense/aspect system of Jamaican Creole is fundamentally unlike that of English. There are no morphological marked past tense forms corresponding to English -ed -t. There are 2 preverbial particles: 'en' and 'a'. These are not verbs, they are simply invariant particles which cannot stand alone like the English ‘to be’. Their functions differs also from the English

       *'en' is called a ‘tense indicator’
       *'a' is called the ‘aspect marker’
       *'go' is used to indicate the future

There are no morphological marked past tense forms corresponding to English -ed -t.

• Mi ron
  • I run (habitually); I ran

• Mi a ron
  • I am running

• Mi ena (en+a) ron
  • I was running

• Mi en ron
  • I have run; I had run

• Mi a go ron
  • I am going to run; I will run

Use of the copula (equivalent to "to be")

• the Jamaican Creole particle 'a' is required
  • e.g. Mi a rait (I am writing)

• the Jamaican Creole equative verb is also 'a'
  • e.g. Mi a di tiicha (I am the teacher)

• Jamaican Creole has a separate locative verb 'de'
  • e.g. Wi de a London (We are in London)

• with true adjectives in Jamaican Creole, no copula is needed; adjectives are a special class of verbs
  • e.g. Mi taiad nou (I am tired now)

Negation

• negator ‘no’ used in present
  • Wi no de a London (We are not in London)
  • Mi naa (no +a) ron (I’m not running)

• 'neba’ or ‘neva’ used only in past
  • Mi neba nuo dat (I didn’t know that)
  • Nobadi neva sii im (Nobody saw him)

Orthography

Because of its status as a non-standard, officially non-recognised dialect, there is no standard or official way of writing Jamaican Creole; (for example the word 'there' can be written 'de', 'deh' or dere'; and the word for 'three' is most commonly spelt 'tree', but it can be spelt 'tri' or 'trii' to distinguish it from the tree with branches and leaves). Often, Standard English spellings are used even when words are pronounced differently. At other times though, 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).

Examples

• That man was swimming
  • Da man de did a swim.
• Three men swam.
  • Tree man did a swim.
• I do not like what you are saying about your girlfriend.
  • Mi nuh like wah yu a seh bout yu gyal.
• I did not say anything about you.
  • Mi neva seh nuttn bout yu.

(Note that double negatives in Jamaican Creole are used as intensifiers)

Other differences to Standard English

Plural Marking

Prepositions

External links

• Sound clips of Jamaican English
• A few short stories in Jamaican English, with translations
• Jamaican English phrase list
• Jamaican English glossary
• Another Jamaican English glossary
• http://www.geocities.com/slybabykim/
• Basic comparison of Jamaican grammar with standard English grammar
• Reggae Dictionary

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