Learn about the advancements of Jamaican Creole

[julie*mango]

Re: Learn about the advancements of Jamaican Creole

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Twiny</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Forty does it look like broken English to you? I've heard my friends on FB tell me that while some of the words look like English I am talking another language with my other friends. I guess the fact that some Italian and Spanish words look similar its a problem. </div></div>funny u say that...alot of my friends pm me because they can't understand half of my statuses...lol..they know w few words here and there but the patois words and the sentence structure always confuse them.

[RcOmK]

Re: Learn about the advancements of Jamaican Creole

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: _______</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Twiny</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Forty does it look like broken English to you? I've heard my friends on FB tell me that while some of the words look like English I am talking another language with my other friends. I guess the fact that some Italian and Spanish words look similar its a problem. </div></div>funny u say that...alot of my friends pm me because they can't understand half of my statuses...lol..they know w few words here and there but the patois words and the sentence structure always confuse them. </div></div>

yes, i've had experiences like that too, but I've also seen the opposite occur.

Both situations occur, and that's one of the reasons I think that the standard writing system is a good thing.

[britisha]

Re: Learn about the advancements of Jamaican Creole

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Iron_Man</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The problem is that when Patwa is written using English spelling (without showing the Jamaican pronunciation) it puts Patwa down as being an improper, broken dialect of English, and IT'S NOT! It's a Creole Language separate from English, and the writing should respect the difference. </div></div>



Absolutely mek sense.

..an' wha does it really mattah if is a Jamaican Chinese whey spearheaded dis ting?


I thought it was &quot;out of many, one people..&quot;


..sorry IronMan, wi noh readdie yet, noh reddie at all at all.

..edited to add: where some of these comments are concerned, **chukkle** yuh shuddah really considah di source...dass all mi agguh seh...<span style="font-weight: bold">whooo di cap fit</span>..

[f0rTyLeGz]

Re: Learn about the advancements of Jamaican Creole

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Twiny</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Forty does it look like broken English to you? I've heard my friends on FB tell me that while some of the words look like English I am talking another language with my other friends. I guess the fact that some Italian and Spanish words look similar its a problem. </div></div>
Not at all... who cares if some people call it &quot;broken English&quot; Anyone who loves Jamaica loves patois. It's lively and expressive, and takes a while to even start hearing it at all. Once a spring breaker asked me, &quot;How come everyone is always saying, 'bumper crop?'&quot;

[mountaingal]

Re: Learn about the advancements of Jamaican Creole

if u want to see extensive use of patwa on cyberspace besides jamaicans.com, go to utube. when i was looking into the whole movado vs. vybz sting aftermath, peer patwa mi notice in the utube comments. also, when mi waina look into the death of ICE the dancer.

i think we underestimate the way cyberspace has vitalized patwa as a written language. yea man.

my problem with the writing system that we keep hearing is &quot;done&quot; is that it is based on a technical, linguistic approach to spelling. fine, i get the politics of taking a spelling approach that in the end distinguishes patwa from standard English.

but this, in my view, almost fatally compromises the broader political goal of getting the standardized patwa spelling adopted by the speakers of patwa. as i've noted before, i don't think speakers of patwa will want to bother with a writing system that deliberately seeks to obscure the spelling of a fairly recognizable word like &quot;guide&quot; all in the aim of avoiding the appearance of English.

patwa's strength as a language has to do with its sentence constructions, and less in its spelling. i'm quite fine with written patwa that uses common English spelling.

i think at this point smaddy could run some computer program that takes chunks of cyberpatwa and do a ranking of the most used spellings of common words - e.g., do most people spell it <span style="font-weight: bold">dung</span> or <span style="font-weight: bold">dong</span> when they mean down? then take it from there. the credentials of a spelling done through common usage would, imo, be stronger than a spelling developed in the university linguistics dept.

nonetheless, ironman, I appreciate ur stout defence of patwa as a language - i'm with u all the way on that.

[julie*mango]

Re: Learn about the advancements of Jamaican Creole

Well said MG I just cannot understand how they are seeking to distance patwa from English when patwa IS from English.

[f0rTyLeGz]

Re: Learn about the advancements of Jamaican Creole

Plenty of online patois writers are Americans I betcha (wink). But even so these few areas of liberal use of patois, I doubt are going to bring people to school to learn how to spell it properly?

One of the most interesting thing about writing is that the brain cn put othgrther th wurds prtty much no matter how well you spell. Look at blu's problem... and Dr Dudd! So getting a bunch of Jamaican linguists together to make rules about a language that seldom is written, and no one cares about the (unread) rules that these scholars come up with, is a waste of time. No one cares. Are the people flocking to this website? Are the people dem just aching to get their hands on the new language primer?

[RcOmK]

Re: Learn about the advancements of Jamaican Creole

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: MGee</div><div class="ubbcode-body">if u want to see extensive use of patwa on cyberspace besides jamaicans.com, go to utube. when i was looking into the whole movado vs. vybz sting aftermath, peer patwa mi notice in the utube comments. also, when mi waina look into the death of ICE the dancer.

i think we underestimate the way cyberspace has vitalized patwa as a written language. yea man.

my problem with the writing system that we keep hearing is &quot;done&quot; is that it is based on a technical, linguistic approach to spelling. fine, i get the politics of taking a spelling approach that in the end distinguishes patwa from standard English.

but this, in my view, almost fatally compromises the broader political goal of getting the standardized patwa spelling adopted by the speakers of patwa. as i've noted before, i don't think speakers of patwa will want to bother with a writing system that deliberately seeks to obscure the spelling of a fairly recognizable word like &quot;guide&quot; all in the aim of avoiding the appearance of English.

patwa's strength as a language has to do with its sentence constructions, and less in its spelling. i'm quite fine with written patwa that uses common English spelling.

i think at this point smaddy could run some computer program that takes chunks of cyberpatwa and do a ranking of the most used spellings of common words - e.g., do most people spell it <span style="font-weight: bold">dung</span> or <span style="font-weight: bold">dong</span> when they mean down? then take it from there. the credentials of a spelling done through common usage would, imo, be stronger than a spelling developed in the university linguistics dept.

nonetheless, ironman, I appreciate ur stout defence of patwa as a language - i'm with u all the way on that. </div></div>

Thanks! I agree with you to an extent, because the purpose of the writing system is not ONLY to show clear separation from English. A second purpose of using that writing system is to make it easy to learn, because you would just write based on phonetic sound, which is generally the easiest way to write a language.

For example, Let's take French and Spanish:

<span style="color: #006600">Spanish</span> is a <span style="font-weight: bold">VERY</span> phonetic language. Look at the name of the city in Nicaragua: &quot;Managua&quot; <span style="font-style: italic">(Man-ag-wa)</span>. That city's name is fairly easy for someone who has no prior knowledge of Spanish to pronounce correctly.

However, <span style="color: #000099">French</span> is <span style="font-weight: bold">NOT</span> a very Phonetic language. Look at the name of this city in France: &quot;Marseille&quot; <span style="font-style: italic">(Mar-sai)</span>. That is much harder for someone to pronounce, unless they have knowledge of the French language, or they heard of the city.

So my point is that picking and choosing the more English-looking versions of Patwa words would actually be much harder and unnecessary than just writing the words how they sound phonetically. The aim is to make it easy, and the phonetic way IS the easiest.

[RcOmK]

Re: Learn about the advancements of Jamaican Creole

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: _______</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Well said MG I just cannot understand how they are seeking to distance patwa from English when patwa IS from English. </div></div>

True, but another large chunk of Patwa <span style="font-weight: bold">ALSO</span> comes from <span style="font-weight: bold">West</span> <span style="font-weight: bold">African languages</span>, which are <span style="font-weight: bold">also</span> written using the <span style="font-weight: bold">PHONETIC</span> system.

[Magician]

Re: Learn about the advancements of Jamaican Creole

So when you changing your name to Aian Man?

huoti hiiti hapl

[julie*mango]

Re: Learn about the advancements of Jamaican Creole

is it Man or Mon or Maan or Mawn?

[julie*mango]

?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Iron_Man</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: _______</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Well said MG I just cannot understand how they are seeking to distance patwa from English when patwa IS from English. </div></div>

True, but another large chunk of Patwa <span style="font-weight: bold">ALSO</span> comes from <span style="font-weight: bold">West</span> <span style="font-weight: bold">African languages</span>, which are <span style="font-weight: bold">also</span> written using the <span style="font-weight: bold">PHONETIC</span> system. </div></div>

True. But what percentage? And also what percentage of our language has derrived from Spanish?

[CeaBee]

Re: ?

but the people that speak patwa, learn and speak english and not west african languages.

So for ease of use, wouldn't it be better for the written version to be more in line with english ?

[Gen]

Re: Learn about the advancements of Jamaican Creole

BOAL mi couldnt figure out is what it mean



<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: SueSumba</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: ceabee</div><div class="ubbcode-body">psst...what &quot;gaid&quot; mean? </div></div>

guide.

eenh mah? </div></div>

[Gen]

Re: Learn about the advancements of Jamaican Creole

yuh figat fi bold the &quot;amateur linguist&quot;

the industry usually dismisses amateur linguists

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Diabolical_Tanya</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> <div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">This site was conceived, designed and is maintained by Larry Chang, a native speaker of Jamaican, <span style="font-size: 17pt">amateur linguist </span>and philologist, writer, poet, artist and activist. Born in Alexandria, Saint Ann, he grew up in Brown's Town where he learnt patois in his father's shop where the country folk used to gather every market day. <span style="font-weight: bold">He was not allowed to speak patois at home and would be punished when his big sister caught him &quot;talking bad.&quot; It was worse when he went to school at the upper class Servite Convent where the British nuns frowned on anyone who spoke patois.</span> Later at York Castle High School he would win a debate proposing that the Jamaican language should be officially recognized. His speech, written in the Cassidy-LePage system, tore the place apart. This was about 1966 and though he tried to preserve a copy of the speech it was lost as he moved from place to place.

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