Jamaican Creole, also known as Patois or simply Jamaican, is an English/African-based language --not to be confused with Jamaican English-- used primarily on the island of Jamaica. Significant Jamaican-speaking communities also exist among Jamaican expatriates in Miami, New York City, Washington D.C., Nicaragua and London. Jamaican 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 patois poems Songs of Jamaica in 1912.

Jamaican pronunciation and vocabulary are significantly different from most other English dialects dispite 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 di swim, mi a fi swim, etc. In some dialects, particularly used among the Rastafarians, the first-person singular pronoun is altered so that "I an I" or "I man" is first person singular and "I" is second-person singular. The "I an I" is a reference to "God and I" while "I man" suggests "God's man," God being, of course, the Great I Am. I, being a reference to God, is often substituted at the start of certain words to show an item held in high esteem.

Pronounciation also varies among the Jamaican dialects with 'V' being pronounced as a 'B', 'C' being pronounced as 'CY', 'TH' as 'T' and any word begining with a vowel sound, being prepended with an 'H' sound. In some jamaican dialects, all 'H' sounds are dropped.

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

To illustrate

• That man was swimming
  • Dat man di a swim.
• Three men swam.
  • Tree man di swim.
• I an I nuh like wah di I a seh bout di I an I to di I daughter.
  • I do not like what you are saying about me to your girlfriend.
• I man nebba seh nuttn bout di I to I man daughter.
  • I did not say anything about you to my girl.
• 'Arry 'it mi 'ead wi di 'ammer!
  • Hemphasize hyuh hayches hyuh hignorant hidiot!.

External links

• Sound clips of Jamaican English (http://www.jamaicans.com/speakja/sound.htm)
• A few short stories in Jamaican English (http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp/JCtexts.html), with translations
• Jamaican English phrase list (http://www.blues.uab.es/~s_0132/jamai.html)
• Jamaican English glossary (http://www.speakjamaican.com/glossary.html)
• Another Jamaican English glossary (http://www.jamaicans.com/speakja/glossary.htm)
• http://www.geocities.com/slybabykim/
• Basic comparison of Jamaican grammar with standard English grammar (http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~wobo/jamaika/JC_SE.html)
• Reggae Dictionary (http://niceup.com/patois.txt)

de:Jamaika-Kreolisch