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January 7, 2005 2:40 PM

Are there any websites written entirely in Jamaican English?
posted by reklaw to computers & internet (18 comments total)

There's the website of Jamaica's foremost newspaper, is that what you mean?

Or are you looking for sites in patois?
posted by jtron at 3:25 PM on January 7, 2005

While it's pretty hard to answer a question like this "no" I'm going to go for "no." The jamaicans.com bulletin board has a lot of people using Jamaican English and these articles are written in the Patois with American English translations. This page seems to have the beginning of a tri-lingual thing going, but nothing else yet.
posted by jessamyn at 3:34 PM on January 7, 2005

Yeah, jtron, I mean Patois. I posted this question because I couldn't find anything myself -- the articles and BBS are quite interesting, jessamyn... but I just can't believe that there'd be so little out there.
posted by reklaw at 4:14 PM on January 7, 2005

Well, and I'm basically guessing here, isn't patois unpopular as a written language? It's basically a spoken dialect. I'd say it'd be like making a site in Spanglish, but A, that's more nebulous than Patois, and B, there probably are numerous pages in that, so I'll shut up ;)
posted by abcde at 5:32 PM on January 7, 2005

Well, I doubt there is anything 'just' in jamaican english for the same reason there is no paper just in 'british' english or 'english with that charming southern accent' or 'ebonics'.

All the different forms of english are so interchangeable that you can't really have one without some influence from the others.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 5:32 PM on January 7, 2005

In other words, any site by a native jamaican is probably entirely in 'jamaican english'
posted by furiousxgeorge at 5:34 PM on January 7, 2005

furiousxgeorge - would you feel better if he asked for writing samples in Southwestern Caribbean Creole English? It's quite different from BBC standard English. I've listened to people from Jamaica speaking casually and I can barely follow what the conversation is about, much less understand the details. It's fascinating to me.

The Bible has certainly been translated into Jamaican patois, but I can't find a copy of it online. There's some message board discussion about it.
posted by Nelson at 6:01 PM on January 7, 2005

Jamaicans (my family is all Jamaican) pride themselves on using the Queen's English in all but the most colloquial of conversation. You're not going to catch a newspaper, magazine, or broadcast news outlet using anything but tip-top language. I just came back from there on Christmas vacation, and it was so weird having the tv news constantly say "persons" instead of "people".

In Jamaica, people try to speak proper to sound richer or "stoosh". And this trickles up, to the leadership of the country, who couldn't get away with "tryin' to sound like a reglar guy".

Unlike in some other countries.
posted by owillis at 6:01 PM on January 7, 2005

STOOSH/STOSHUS: upper class, high tone, "hitey-titey"
-Rasta/Patois Jamaica Dictionary
posted by PY at 6:52 PM on January 7, 2005

There was also this story about some government agency in the U.S. translating some form or information leaflet into Jamaican English. It turned out that Jamaicans themselves use only the Queen's English (trying hard to avoid the term "proper English") in their publications, like owillis said, and the whole idea came across as vaguely insulting.

BTW, were the Jamaican dudes in Shark Tale authentic?
posted by sour cream at 8:00 PM on January 7, 2005

How do you pronounce 'Patois?'
posted by Jim Jones at 8:01 PM on January 7, 2005

Jim, Merriam-Webster suggests either 'pa-"twä or 'pä-"twä.
posted by RichardP at 8:17 PM on January 7, 2005

There was also this story about some government agency in the U.S. translating some form or information leaflet into Jamaican English

Do you mean this?
posted by dodgygeezer at 2:18 AM on January 8, 2005

dodgygeezer: Yes! That's the one.

BTW, I think the only person who really screwed up on this one was the translator who did the actual translation (and possibly the agency that farmed it out to him). He/she is the one with the linguistic know-how and should have known that this is offensive to Jamaicans.
I mean you can hardly blame Ms. Terzano for not knowing this. The translator, on the other hand, should have piped up or at least added a note that the text is offensive if published as is. Also the agencies shouldn't take any jobs in which they have no linguistic expertise at all (i.e. noone to make judgment calls like this.)
posted by sour cream at 3:43 AM on January 8, 2005

owillis, this is interesting info for me--thanks! I've been learning about various Caribbean traditions recently, and the only info I've learned on Jamaica is Rastafarianism and Marcus Garvey. Instructors have touched on language only in the context of reclaiming English rebelliously: for example, never saying "me" but "I" instead, and subverting "Queen Elizabeth" into "Elizabitch". My question for you is, how common is this Rastafarian way of speaking compared to the proper Jamaican way of speaking? Is it seen as outside the norm or looked down upon? Your input would be valuable, as my professors do not put things into context, looking only to back up their theses on Rastafarianism specifically.
posted by ibeji at 6:28 AM on January 8, 2005

You're not going to catch a newspaper, magazine, or broadcast news outlet using anything but tip-top language.

Of course not, but you would certainly expect at least a few proudly unofficial bloggers/ranters/Rastas to be putting their stuff out there just the way they talk. Why not? There are plenty of sites written in working-class Scots English, for example.

furiousxgeorge: Huh? Have you ever heard Jamaican patois? Trust me, it's not "interchangeable" with anything else. Here, try this on for size:

Wat a gwann mi frens, mi is on di war path, dis time arround han mi jus waan fi get som ting hawfa mi chess. Nung yu all know me is a bawn Jamaican, living in Jamaica and wurking in Jamaica. Dat mek mi...pure Jamaican. It like wen smaddy seh somting bad bout one memba af yu fambily, yu feel cut up bout di ole ting. Yu vex cause yu prefer if dem neva say it, it worse wen yu know seh is nat true. Yu jus waan club di person har mek dem know where fi com aaf. Many Jamaicans leave ere and gone tu live in a fareingn country, Som bawn ya han leave ya fram dem ina dem young age han adders leave ya ina dem prime. It bun mi fi ere dem a lick dem chess bout "mi, mi naa goh back deh, all a di new weh me ere and read bout ina di news paper mi naa even put fi mi fut bak pan dat deh soil deh", som elivate soh high dem nung above di Caribbean sea soh till tem caan si di lan from which dem originate. som a dem siddung pan dem you know where han tek news fram ill-infarmed people and nung know di true story fi dem self. Shame on yu all, we living ere han wid all weh a gwaan mi naa lef ya.

posted by languagehat at 7:10 AM on January 8, 2005

I spent a lot of time in Jamaica in the '80s, with a lot of Rastas (a couple of whom who are now employed in the Education Ministry) and basically, patwa is a spoken language. If you want to get ahead, or communicate with somebody in written mode, you use the same english that all Jamaicans learn in school.

Remember: Jamaica runs under the English education system. A fourteen year old Jamaican writes and reads standard English better, in all probability, than his counterpart in Oregon. He speaks patwa, but he is completely aware of standard English (although if he has never left the country to visit "foreign" he probably thinks everybody calls "H" the letter "haych"." If he is writing a blog or web page, he probably intends to speak to people who don't "check patwa" and uses standard english.

Seen?
posted by zaelic at 9:30 AM on January 8, 2005

I understand all that, but I would still think there would be a few stubborn anti-foreign types who would insist on bloggin' patwa. I guess there just aren't enough Jamaican bloggers yet.
posted by languagehat at 2:22 PM on January 8, 2005 [1 favorite]