Jamaican Patois, also called Jamaican Creole, is an English-lexified creole language that developed in the 17th century when enslaved people from West and Central Africa learned and reshaped the English of their enslavers and overseers on Jamaican plantations. It is the first language of the great majority of Jamaicans, spoken by roughly 3.2 million people on the island as well as across a large overseas diaspora in South Florida, New York, London and Toronto, and it exists on a continuum ranging from forms not readily intelligible to outside English speakers to forms close to Standard English. Its grammar departs sharply from English, using invariant tense-aspect particles such as en and a rather than inflected verb forms and distinguishing an equative copula a from a locative copula deh, while its vocabulary blends an English base with substantial contributions from West African languages, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Hindi.
Facts
RegionJamaica, and the Jamaican diaspora in South Florida, New York City, London, Toronto and other Caribbean and overseas communities 1 Speaker Communityroughly 3.2 million native speakers as of the early 2000s, the first language of most Jamaicans, existing on a continuum from forms close to Standard English to forms not readily intelligible to outside English speakers 1 Distinguishing Featuresan English-derived vocabulary reshaped by West African, Twi and Akan influence together with borrowings from Spanish, Portuguese, French, Hindi and Irish and Scottish dialects; a tense-aspect system built on invariant particles such as en and a rather than English-style inflected verb forms; a copula system distinguishing an equative form a from a locative form deh 1 Classification
Variety Kind Connections
Descends From
Source Wikipedia: Jamaican Patois
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Jamaican Patois
Wikimedia FoundationHistory section
Patois developed in the 17th century when enslaved people from West and Central Africa were exposed to, learned, and nativised the vernacular and dialectal languages spoken by the slaveholders and overseers.
Variety kind, Jamaican Patois entity page
Jamaican Patois, also called Jamaican Creole, is an English-lexified creole language that developed in the 17th century when enslaved people from West and Central Africa learned and reshaped the English of their enslavers and overseers on Jamaican plantations.
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