Jamaican Patois
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 and overseers: British English, Hiberno-English and Scots.
[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.
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.
[15] Examples of palatalization include:[21] 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].
[28] 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 whose use carried socio-economic benefits.
[31] For the present tense, an uninflected verb combining with an iterative adverb marks habitual meaning as in /tam aawez nua wen kieti tel pan im/ ('Tom always knows when Katy tells/has told about him').
[42] Many loanwords come from English, but some are also borrowed from Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Arawak and African languages, as well as Scottish and Irish dialects.
[46] 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').
[47] There are many words referring to popular produce, food items, and Jamaican cuisine—ackee, callaloo, guinep, bammy, roti, dal, kamranga.
Subsequently, the life-work of Louise Bennett or Miss Lou (1919–2006) is particularly notable for her use of the rich colorful patois, despite being shunned by traditional literary groups.
Dat it spring from dialec!After the 1960s, the status of Jamaican Patois rose as a number of respected linguistic studies were published, by Frederic Cassidy (1961, 1967), Bailey (1966) and others.
Jean D'Costa penned a series of popular children's novels, including Sprat Morrison (1972; 1990), Escape to Last Man Peak (1976), and Voice in the Wind (1978), which draw liberally from Jamaican Patois for dialogue, while presenting narrative prose in Standard English.
In his science fiction novel Kaya Abaniah and the Father of the Forest (2015), British-Trinidadian author Wayne Gerard Trotman presents dialogue in Trinidadian Creole, Jamaican Patois, and French while employing Standard English for narrative prose.
Courtney Stewart, managing the translation as General Secretary of the West Indies Bible Society, believes this will help elevate the status of Jamaican Patois, others think that such a move would undermine efforts at promoting the use of English.
[citation needed] The Patois New Testament was launched in Britain (where the Jamaican diaspora is significant) in October 2012 as "Di Jamiekan Nyuu Testiment", and with print and audio versions in Jamaica in December 2012.
