Patois Fe Real
Kai Imani Gandy and Allan P. Evering
Introduction
According to the 1990 Census of
Population and Housing, only three out of five New Yorkers claim to use
English at home. This statistic is due to the fact that there is a large
number of ethnic communities in New York. New York is home to 439,4000
Jamaican immigrants, making New York the state with the largest population
of Jamaican immigrants. One of the largest communities of
Jamaican-Americans in New York is situated in Queens and has 93,153
Jamaican-Americans. In this paper, we will give you an account of what we
have learned about the history of Jamaicans in America, the history of
Jamaican Patois, the accent of Jamaican Patois, conflicting views of
Jamaican Patois, Jamaican Patois in early childhood education, effects of
Jamaican Patois on education, intercultural communication, stores and
restaurants, Jamaican publications, and the Haitian presence in the Queens
Village community.
History of Jamaicans in America
When Columbus "discovered"
Jamaica in 1494, there were indigenous people residing in Jamaica known as
the Arawaks. The Arawaks were a peaceful people who migrated from
Venezuela at two separate points in history. The first migration was in
650AD and the second was in 900AD. Columbus heard the natives call the
land "Xaymaca", so he decided to call the land "Jamaica". There was an
influx of Spanish-Europeans in 1510. They settled in present-day
Spanishtown in Jamaica. In 1655, Jamaica was captured by the British who
turned to large-scale importation of Africans to be used on sugar
plantations. In 1838, slaves were emancipated and plantation owners began
to pay wages to its workers.
In the years following World War
II, United States and United Kingdom were in need of reconstruction and
expansion of their economy. Many Jamaicans saw this as an opportunity to
come to the U.S.A. and the U.K. for a more prosperous living.
Consequently, the years following 1944 saw a tremendous migration of
Jamaican immigrants who came to aide reconstruction. These immigrants
settled in areas such as New York and London. Today, there are large and
well-established Jamaican communities in these areas.
History of Patois
When the British began the large
scale importation of Africans to be used as slaves in 1655, plantation
owners and slaves used a Lingua Franca to communicate with each other. A
Lingua Franca is a language used to facilitate communication between two
people that do not have a common language. As the contact between the
plantation owners, who spoke English, and the slaves, who used various
African dialects, was sustained, the Lingua Franca developed into a pidgin
language. The pidgin was based on the languages of the plantation owners
and the slaves, but had a much smaller vocabulary than any one of the
languages. The children of the plantation owners maintained the English
language. The children of the slaves, however, considered the pidgin to
be their native language. As the pidgin became more advanced with respect
to grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, it developed into a Creole,
which we now refer to as Jamaican Patois. Not all Jamaicans use Patois.
It is the dominant dialect among the poor in Jamaica, but it is not
exclusive to them. Many middle-class and upper-class Jamaicans use Patois
in social settings as opposed to the standard English they use in the
workplace.
A Lesson on the Accent of Jamaican Patois
Jamaicans often drop the
h's (thus 'ouse' instead of house) and add them in unexpected
places (e.g., 'hemphasize'). Many don't pronounce 'th' and also drop the
'h'; so you hear t'ree for three and t'anks for
thanks. The is usually pronounced as de and
them as dem. They also sometimes drop the w, as in
ooman (woman).
Conflicting Views of Jamaican Patois
There is an ongoing debate in
Jamaica over the use of the Jamaican dialect. There are people who
strongly support the formalization of its use in Jamaican society and
there are those who strongly oppose it. However, in the Jamaican
community in New York, it is only acceptable to speak Jamaican Patois
among others who also speak the language. The general feeling about
Patois is that it is a "poor man's language". It is considered to be so
because Standard English grammar rules are not followed, giving the
speaker the appearance of being uneducated. It does, however, serve as a
good way for Jamaicans to relate to each other in informal settings.
A boundary is something used to
express one's membership in a specific ethnic group. Jamaican Patois
serves as a boundary for the Jamaican-American community. Those that use
a deep Jamaican Patois, the Patois that most strongly deviates from
Standard English, are obviously thought to be Jamaican immigrants. Those
who are born in the United States, but are of Jamaican heritage usually do
not acquire the ability to master Jamaican Patois. Jamaican Patois is
lost in first generation Americans because immigrant parents usually do
not encourage its use and it is not taught, or even allowed, in American
schools.
Jamaican Patois in Early Childhood Education
Many first-generation
Jamaican-Americans are born into a household in which one or both of the
parents speak Jamaican Patois. So, in the early stage of childhood
development, the child will develop an ear for listening to Jamaican
Patois and may emulate his/her parents in an attempt to speak Jamaican
Patois as well. In the primary schools in Queens Village,
Jamaican-American students would never be taught how to speak Jamaican
Patois, and would thus never be taught in a bilingual (Standard
English/Jamaican Patois) environment. In fact, by the time the child
enters elementary school, teachers begin to "correct" any traces of
Jamaican Patois in the child's speech pattern.
We sat in on one of the
Kindergarten classes at St. Joachim and Anne Elementary School to observe
the speech patterns of children of Jamaican descent. There were four
children in the class whose speech patterns suggested that they were
Jamaican. Three of them spoke an English dialect that was much closer to
Standard English than Jamaican Patois. Ethan, the fourth child, was an
immigrant, himself, who spoke in a dialect that was much closer to
Jamaican Patois than Standard English. It was clear that Jamaican Patois
was his native tongue, but because he had attended St. Joachim and Anne
Elementary for pre-Kindergarten as well, there had already been steps
taken to "fix" his speech. He did not have a problem interacting with his
classmates, so his teacher did not seem to be concerned with his accent;
but from time to time, he would use words that did not belong to the
English language and his teacher would correct him. For instance, the
class was talking about fears when Ethan said that he was afraid of
duppies. The class giggled a little because they did not
understand what he was saying. When he described his fear more in-depth,
the teacher realized that he was talking about ghosts. She corrected him
and he began to replace the Jamaican word duppy with the English
word ghost.
Effects of Jamaican Patois on Education
Many of the young
Jamaican-Americans in this community are appreciative of the sense of
culture they received growing up, but we spoke to two college-aged
Jamaican-American students who felt that growing up in a Jamaican
Patois-speaking household hindered their success on the verbal section of
the Scholastic Aptitude Test. One of them claimed that growing up in a
house where his parents would say things like, "Unu mus stop di rompin!!"
instead of "Settle down!!" hurt his vocabulary because many of the words
he was expected to know for the test were never used in his house.
Intercultural Communication
Jamaican Patois is a language
that is heavily based on English. So, anyone who has the ability to speak
Jamaican Patois should also be able to understand Standard English with
ease. Thus, it is not necessary to have a translator for translation from
Standard English to Jamaican Patois. On the contrary, Jamaican Patois can
be anywhere from mildly to completely incomprehensible to speakers of
Standard English for two reasons: 1.) The accent used when speaking
Jamaican Patois is very different from the accent used when speaking
Standard English; and 2.) There are words used when speaking Jamaican
Patois that are not taken from the English language. Still, there is not
a need for a translator to facilitate the speaker of Standard English in
understanding the speaker of Jamaican Patois because the majority of
Jamaican-Americans (born in the United States and Jamaica) are taught to
speak Standard English from an early age. If the situation arises in
which a speaker of Jamaican Patois and a speaker of Standard English are
communicating, the speaker of Jamaican Patois will "turn on" his/her
Standard English-speaking ability in order to have a successful
conversation.
Because it is believed that
speakers of Jamaican Patois can carry on successful conversations in
English, the government does not feel that it is necessary to make special
provisions for Jamaican Patois-speaking people. Likewise, people
providing any type of service (such as a nurse) would never need to hire
anyone to interpret for them. If the Jamaican Patois-speaking party is
the patient, it is assumed that he/she could turn down his/her Jamaican
accent to accommodate the nurse. We interviewed a Jamaican-American
nurse, Nurse Valdie Steers, who spoke with a very thick Jamaican accent.
She said that she attempts to make each patient as comfortable as
possible. So, if the patient is Jamaican-American, then she speaks her
natural Jamaican Patois; but if the patient is a speaker of Standard
English, she changes her accent so that the patient can easily understand
her.
Stores and Restaurants
If you ever want West Indian
food, Queens Village is the place to go. There are many Jamaican
restaurants and bakeries all over the area. They are owned an run by
Jamaican Patois-speaking people and the food is authentic Jamaican
cuisine. We visited Hue's Bakery, where we ordered one order of Oxtail
and one order of Curried Goat. We noticed that the employees were
speaking to each other in their native tongue; but when a non-Jamaican
Patois-speaking person entered the establishment, the cashier altered her
speech to make it sound more like standard English. There are also a few
clothing shops that sell the latest trends in Jamaica. We went into a
store called One Love Clothing and observed a similar phenomenon. Taking
notice of the fact that we were not Jamaican Patois-speaking people, the
salesperson made his adjustment and spoke very slowly to us in an attempt
to speak in a manner that was closer to Standard English than his own.
Jamaican Publications
In Queens Village and the
surrounding areas, there are so many people of Jamaican heritage that
there are newspapers from Jamaica that can be purchased at the local
supermarkets. Although the newspapers are written in English they
sometimes contain reference to Jamaican Patois. For example, the November
3 publication of The Gleaner contains an article titled, Patois has its
Place, but Lets Teach English. This article was written by Brenda Smith,
an elementary school English teacher. It focuses on her frustration with
children who use Patois. She says, "My experiences while trying to teach
English as a second language to learners whose mother tongue is Patois is
challenging. Boys, books, and beds, would be 'bwoy dem, book dem, and bed
dem.'" Smith believes that Patois should not be used in an English
speaking classroom because it hinders the learning process. Like the
teacher, newspaper journalists generally believe that Patios is acceptable
in informal language, but not in a English speaking forum such as the
newspaper. The three most popular Jamaican newspapers that are
distributed in this area are The Gleaner, The Observer, and
tabloid called X News. These newspapers afford the Jamaican
community in Queens the opportunity to remain aware of all of the current
events in Jamaica.
The Haitian Presence
There is a large population of
Jamaican-Americans in Queens Village; however, Jamaican Patois is not the
only non-Standard English language that can be heard in this area.
Haitian Creole is another very prevalent language that flourishes in this
community. This language is a French-based Creole, influenced by West
African languages that were spoken by the slaves in Haiti. Not only can
the language be heard, but there are many stores in Queens Village that
have signs in front that allow the language to be seen. For instance,
there is an electronics store called "Caribbean Vision Audio and Video"
which has all of its signs written in Creole -- except for the name of the
store itself. Creole is so widely spoken in this area that some churches
even hold their services in Creole. The Parish of St. Joachim & Anne, for
example, offers one service in English at 11:15 a.m. and a second service
in Creole at 12:45p.m. given by the trilingual priest, Father Malegreca.
There are not any large churches
in Queens that offer services in Jamaican Patois, but there are some
smaller Seventh Day Adventist churches that do. These smaller churches
expose the non-Patois-speaking congregation to the Jamaican dialect, but
they do not preserve the dialect because it does not teach the
Jamaican-Americans speak it. In exposing them to Patois, however, these
churches help its members develop a deeper understanding of the dialect
and introduce or reinforce the words used in Patois that are not a part of
the English language. Most children are with their parents seven days a
week and with their teachers five days a week. The church, which meets
once a week cannot successfully teach Patois, because parents and
teachers who have much more influence over the children convey that
Standard English is the proper form of English. These smaller churches,
however, do preserve the culture of Jamaican-Americans because they bring
together groups of people of Jamaican descent who end up forming
close-knit groups within their communities.
Conclusion
Because there is no national
language of the United States of America, citizens are free to speak
whatever languages they choose. The preservation of a language is
important in preserving its corresponding culture. The older Jamaican
immigrants are doing a good job of preserving many aspects of their
culture. Food is one way they preserve their culture. Many Jamaican
immigrants still serve traditional Jamaican meals in their homes. There
are many Jamaican grocery stores throughout Queens Village that make
Jamaican cooking possible. Without the grocery stores, some of the
Jamaican meals would be impossible to prepare because products such as
Jamaican Spiced Bun, Breadfruit, Ackee, Water Coconut, and Sugar Cane are
not sold in American grocery stores. The large Jamaican population in
Queens Village also serves to preserve the culture of the community.
There are not too many Jamaican community organizations, but because of
the amount of people in the area, there is a lot of interaction among the
Jamaican families in the area. As we have seen at St. Joachim and Anne
Elementary School, schools in Queens Village are not helpful in preserving
the Jamaican culture because by teaching the children that Standard
English is the proper way to speak, there is shame brought to those who
speak Patois. Our observation of the Jamaican-American population in
Queens suggests that whereas many aspects of Jamaican culture are being
passed down through the generations of Jamaican-Americans, Jamaican Patois
is one aspect of the culture that is not passed down to the first
generation Jamaican-Americans; however, because of the constant influx of
Jamaican immigrants to the country, Patois will always be heard throughout
the Jamaican-American communities in the United States.
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