Global InformationJamaican Patois information
| Jamaican Patois | |
|---|---|
| Patwa, Jamiekan / Jamiekan Kriyuol,[1] Jumiekan / Jumiekan Kryuol / Jumieka Taak / Jumieka taak / Jumiekan languij[2][3] | |
| Native to | Jamaica |
Native speakers | 3.2 million (2000–2001)[4] |
Language family | English creole
|
| Dialects |
|
| Official status | |
| Regulated by | not regulated |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | jam |
| Glottolog | jama1262 |
| Linguasphere | 52-ABB-am |
Jamaican Patois (/ˈpætwɑː/; locally rendered Patwah and called Jamaican Creole by linguists) is an English-based creole language with West African, Taíno, Irish, Spanish, Hindustani, Portuguese, Chinese, and German influences, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican diaspora. Words or slang from Jamaican Patois can be heard in other Caribbean countries, the United Kingdom and Toronto, Canada.[5] The majority of non-English words in Patois derive from the West African Akan language.[5] It is spoken by the majority of Jamaicans as a native language.
Patois developed in the 17th century when enslaved people from West and Central Africa were exposed to, learned, and nativized the vernacular and dialectal language spoken by the slaveholders: British English, Hiberno-English and Scots. Jamaican Creole exists in gradations between more conservative creole forms that are not significantly mutually intelligible with English,[6] and forms virtually identical to Standard English.[7]
Jamaicans refer to their language as Patois, a term also used as a lower-case noun as a catch-all description of pidgins, creoles, dialects, and vernaculars worldwide. Creoles, including Jamaican Patois, are often stigmatized as low-prestige languages even when spoken as the mother tongue by the majority of the local population.[8] Jamaican pronunciation and vocabulary are significantly different from English despite heavy use of English words or derivatives.[9]
Significant Jamaican Patois-speaking communities exist among Jamaican expatriates and non Jamaican[7] in South Florida, New York City, Toronto, Hartford, Washington, D.C., Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Cayman Islands,[10] and Panama, as well as London,[11] Birmingham, Manchester, and Nottingham. The Cayman Islands in particular have a very large Jamaican Patois-speaking community, with 16.4% of the population conversing in the language.[12] 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 mainly as a spoken language and is also heavily used for musical purposes, especially in reggae and dancehall as well as other genres. Although standard British English is used for most writing in Jamaica, Jamaican Patois has gained 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.[13]
- ^ Di Jamiekan Nyuu Testiment – The Jamaican New Testament, published by: The Bible Society of the West Indies, 2012
- ^ Chang, Larry. "Jumieka Languij: Aatagrafi / Jamaican Language: Orthography". LanguiJumieka.
Chang, Larry. "Jumieka Languij: Bout / Jamaican Language: About". LanguiJumieka. - ^ Larry Chang: Biesik Jumiekan. Introduction to Jamaican Language, published by: Gnosophia Publishers, 2014.
- ^ Jamaican Patois at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ a b Cassidy, F. G. "Multiple etymologies in Jamaican Creole". Am Speech, 1966, 41:211–215.
- ^ Brown-Blake 2008, p. 32.
- ^ a b DeCamp (1961:82)
- ^ Velupillai 2015, pp. 481.
- ^ Brown-Blake 2008, p. ?.
- ^ "What does it mean to be Jamaican in Cayman? | Loop Jamaica".
- ^ Sebba, Mark (1993), London Jamaican, London: Longman.
- ^ Labor force and employment eso.ky
- ^ Hinrichs, Lars (2006), Codeswitching on the Web: English and Jamaican Creole in E-Mail Communication. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.