Who seh wi chat patwa (patois)?

It is said that Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Guyanese, St.words influenced today’s Jamaican words,
Vincentians, Antiguans, all speak patois, which is thesuch as dugu-dugu, quashie, buju, and countless
dialectal offspring of the language of the colonialothers. Yes, a lot of the words we use are African,
powers of these islands. What do we really speak,but very few people know about this. Why? The
and does our language have a distinct name? Let usword patois does not take these things into
first find out what is patois. It is an illiterate orconsideration, and it undermines our unique and
provincial form of speech; broken English; jargon.creative spirit as a people. The name of our language
Jargon is confused speech, gibberish, or technicalmust reflect that out of many, we have one
phraseology.language. Thus the ideal name is Jamic. Jamic must be
SCHOLARS OF LINGUISTIC GEOGRAPHYgiven credency because it represents the legacy of
Ever since the late 17th century, English scholars ofthe Africans who formed the mode of
linguistic geography have been fascinated by thecommunication, this vernacular. In this vein, Jamic is
"broken English" spoken by Jamaicans. Broken English?not just our spoken and written language, it is our
What about the West African languages, namelylanguage as a nation and people. Jam is short for
Akan, Igbo, Wolof, Twi and others that are rooted inJamaica, and the suffix –ic, means of or
the linguistic protest of enslaved Africans in Jamaica:relating to; therefore, Jamic simply means of or
These so-called slaves, forbidden to speak in theirrelating to Jamaica. In this case, it refers to the
native tongues, eventually developed an alternativelanguage. It must be noted, also, that the Rastas
to the King’s English by incorporating wordsduring the 1950s to 1980s took the language and
from their various West African languages. Thoseformed their own argot: Iyaric.