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Jamaican Patois & Irish English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 9 of 13 10 December 2010 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||
The thing is that those aren't exclusively Irish things. The "TH" thing occurs in Ireland because there's no equivalent sound in Irish. And it just so happens that the "TH" sound is quite rare worldwide, and most English-based creoles suffer loss of it due to the inability of the new speakers to pronounce it. I may be wrong, but I don't think there's a single West African language with either TH phoneme, so it was inevitable it would get lost. Eddjat... well many languages also reduce diphthongs to a glide, so the second I in idiot is a prime candidate for reduction to a y-glide (/j/). The lack of an "ih" sound in the Jamaican accent is again most likely down to the rarity of that particular vowel worldwide -- again, it's a phoneme that Irish doesn't have and isn't common in West Africa. Furthermore, the lack of the "ih" sound would support the move of the second I to a y-glide, so the initial move to "ee" and the internal y-glide are extremely likely to co-occur. The Irish influence is far more pronounced in Bagian (Barbadian) due to the presence of the "redlegs", but even then, it's open to many of the same questions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 10 of 13 10 December 2010 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
It's a creole, which makes it a language. As with any creole, there is a continuum. At one end it sounds like English in a particular accent with a few different words and phrases, but at the other, it's as different from English as Dutch. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 11 of 13 11 December 2010 at 3:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Here in the Virgin Islands, the Danes were the colonial masters. They outsourced the plantations to the British, who outsourced slave management to their Irish overseers- hence the Irish influence on Caribbean English, or so the story goes. Despite the fact that the USVI were a Danish colony for almost 300 years, the language of the people was and is English. Since the mid 20th century we have experienced a lot of immigration from "down-island"- other English speaking Caribbean islands. Virgin Islands patois is very similar to other Caribbean English speaking islands.
The influence of 150 channel US cable tv, US mainland rap and r&b music on the radio and out-migration to, and immigration from the US mainland are contributing to a decline in VI Caribbean English. A few interesting words and constructions: Cyahnn- can't - Ya cyahnn do dat mehson! mehson- my son ting- thing evryting safe? Is everything ok? tree- three two dem, tree dem- two of them, three of them gimme a next- give me another one plurals are formed by use of the word dem the people- de people dem mongoose(s)(mongeese?) mongoose dem good night- good evening You haven't lived until you've heard "Spanglish" here which is a mixture of Puerto Rican/Dominican Spanish and Caribbean English. The Caribbean is a callaloo (stew) of many cultures, mehson, dat for true. Edited by iguanamon on 11 December 2010 at 3:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| celticrover Diglot Newbie Ireland Joined 5207 days ago 10 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, French, Russian | Message 12 of 13 11 December 2010 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think they have much in common at all. I find the Jamaican patois quite difficult to understand.
By the way, many Irish people (especially Northerners) do not ignore the "th" sound. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| NYC_Trini_Span Diglot Groupie United States Joined 7224 days ago 60 posts - 66 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 13 of 13 25 December 2010 at 9:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Like iguanamon I have to say the Th to T phenomena happens in all the islands. My parents are from trinidad and tobago, my father has bajan (barbados) and India in his family and my mothers parents were originally from grenada.
All of those islands speak similar yet different for example Trinis when speaking the relaxed country form and not the school taught brit English will say 'she' in places you would place 'her' ie Tonight I feelin nice, so I gon take she out for fine wine an dinin. My granny from Grenada also grew up speaking creole, but its not exactly like :aitian or the other creoles. They say Garson a lot (I think that is man in creole or mister) and other islands like st lucia also use 0garcon a whole lot 1 person has voted this message useful |
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