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Jamaican Creole, also known locally as '''Patois (Patwa)''', or simply '''Jamaican''', is an 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 language as " Patois ", a term without a precise linguistic definition. Significant Jamaican-speaking communities exist among Jamaican expatriates in al forms are similar to Basilect al Belizean Creole , and a mutually intelligible variety is found in San Andres Islands, Colombia, brought to the island by descendants of Jamaican Maroons (escaped slaves) in the 18th century. Jamaican creole exists mostly as a Spoken Language . Although standard British English is used for most writing in Jamaica, Jamaican 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 . Creole and English are frequently used for stylistic contrast ( Codeswitching ) in new forms of internet writing.Lars Hinrichs (2006), ''Codeswitching on the Web: English and Jamaican Creole in E-Mail Communication''. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Jamaican pronunciation and vocabulary are significantly different from English, 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 he/she speaks slowly and foregoes the use of the numerous Idiom s that are common in Jamaican. Jamaican Creole 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 tongues. Behind the barrier of very different accents, there is actually mutual intelligibility between many of them, such as Sierra Leone's Krio and Nigerian Pidgin English , and Jamaican Creole. 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 bud=the five birds-- or by appending the plural indicator, "dem" --de bud dem=the birds. Similarly, verb tense is specified using prepended tense indicators --mi swim, mi a go swim, mi beh~ swim, mi a fi swim, etc. 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).
To form the possessive adjectives and the possessive 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 possessive variants, which are used for emphasis.
Often, fi- is used in front of nouns, to indicate possession (replacing 's). e.g. ''a fi-Anne daag dat'', that is Anne's dog. VOCABULARY Jamaican Creole contains many Loanwords . Primarily these come from English , but are also borrowed from Spanish , Portuguese , Hindi , Trinidadian , and African Languages . Examples from African languages include "duppy" meaning 'ghost', from the Twi word ''adope''; " Obeah ", also from Twi, meaning a type of African spell-casting or witchcraft (and also used as a popular scapegoat for common woes); "seh" meaning 'that' (in the sense of "he told me that" = "im tel mi seh"), taken from a west African language; the pronoun "unu", used for "you (plural)", from Igbo . 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 ''pequeno'' or Spanish ''pequeño, "small". There are lots of words referring to popular produce and food items - " Ackee ", " Callaloo ", "guinep", "bammy", " Roti ", " Dal ", "kamranga". See Jamaican Cuisine . Here are some commonly used words:
Jamaican creole has its own rich variety of Swearwords . One of the strongest is '' Bloodclat '' (along with related forms ''raasclat'', ''bambaclat'', ''pussiclat'' and others). (Compare with " Bloody " in Australian English , which is not considered swearing). Gay men are referred to as " Batty Boy s". 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
USE OF THE COPULA (EQUIVALENT TO "TO BE")
NEGATION
PHONOLOGY Characteristic features include the absence of (as in British English "got"), which fell together with , as in most US Englishes. Jamaican Creole developed two palatal plosives, namely and , they derive from English palatal allophones of and . Due to African influences, and are now phonemes in Jamaican Creole. Furthermore, Jamaican Creole has no (as in Standard English "thing") phoneme; fell together with . Other features of many Jamaican dialects include:
LOCALIZATION Some word usage varies in different areas of Jamaica. For example, the word "something" may be pronounced as "sint'n" or as "som'n". ORTHOGRAPHY Because of its status as non-standard, 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 noun ''tree''). 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). However, due to increased use on the internet and in e-mail in recent years, a user-driven process of partial standardization has been taking place. EXAMPLES
(Note that double negatives in Jamaican Creole are used as intensifiers)
SEE ALSO Examples of other Caribbean and African creoles
REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
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