Some of them are vulgar and is outside the scope of this book. He had collected and recorded hundreds each of original words, phrases and short stories. Through interviews and casual conversations, he collected the major parts of this work the way it was handed down from generation to generation. Over the last half a century, occupation and leisure travels enabled this author to meet people, especially seniors from all over the island. In parts two and three of this book, entire sentences or paragraphs of patwa will be written in bold italics followed by the same sentence or paragraph written in regular English script. History shows that the majority of them were either indentured slaves, and or prisoners, who on a whole were the uneducated, undesirables of their societies. That is because most of the slave-drivers were British and Irish, and they themselves did not speak proper English. Most patwa words are really broken English. This accent sometimes allows less sound emphasis on some syllables of multi-syllabic words - photographer is photo-gra-pher instead of pho-tog-rapher. English is the official and only language of most Caribbean countries and is sometimes spoken with a slight accent. The dialect is normally spoken with an accent which is different even within a particular country.Ĭonversing in patwa is a fun exercise. No thought should be entertained that all the people of the Caribbean speak patwa fluently. For example, him or her, he or she is spoken as im. Another specificity of the dialect is that it ignores gender, plurality and tense. One of the main characteristics of patois of any version is that the pronunciations are exactly the way the words are spelt. One salesman joked that he went to Boston and lost the ` r’ in car but he found it in the warsh in Texas. It might be interesting to know that the early generations who spoke the dialect spelt it the way it is pronounced, Patwa. They are usually mispronounced words of a language. Slang words can be found in almost every language. Patois, patwa, patwah or patwahz should not be mistaken for slang words. Seen = understand, and water = sky-juice. It also uses established English words to carry additional meanings, e.g. It is mostly a Jamaican Rasta version that involves the original patwa and newly formed words like Irie = cool, or agree, and doney = money. Patwah, spelt with an ‘ h’ is an evolving dialect.
This book is concentrated on what is widely believed to be the original patwa, which means that all the words are the same as those used by the slaves. Today there exist many types of patwa dialects. A particular word may be used many times for different purposes sometimes as a preposition and sometimes as an adverb, albeit in different sentences. Like most other tools, some words are more versatile than others. Words are tools by which, outside of sign languages, we communicate.
Those revolting slaves were called the Maroons, and that name stayed with their descendants. Those refugees bonded and successfully defended themselves against the authorities. This was very beneficial to them when factions from several plantations revolted and took refuge in the mountains. Over a period of years those slaves knew enough of the various languages used by the slave-drivers that they were able to alter most of the words to form a dialect that only they understood. The different slave-drivers taught the slaves only enough of their own languages to enable the necessary communication. It was common to move slaves from plantation to plantation to facilitate crop stages. The tropical weather allowed year-round agriculture. However, even before the Africans were brought to the islands, there were English, Irish, Spanish and Dutch slaves who became slave-drivers of the Africans and taught them enough of their respective languages to enable some form of communication. This communication was very essential as the islands had many small plantations, and the slaves were from different parts of Africa with multiple tribal languages. Patwa originated in the early days of slavery in the region and served as the principal way of communication between the slaves. Most of the words are not pure from any of these languages, but they are easily understood particularly by people and/or their descendants of Caribbean islands. It is the ( de facto) national language of Jamaica, sometimes referred to as Jamaican English.
Patois, patwah, patwa or whichever other way it is spelt, is a dialect, a mixture of at least four different languages, mainly English, French, Spanish and Dutch.
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