Tag Archives: Jamaican

Paul Campbell: The Actor Who Taught Me How to Speak Jamaican

Posted on by
1

Have you ever heard of Paul Campbell?? Probably not, but you should. Not only is he a great Jamaican Actor and Jamaica’s most popular actor, his acting roles have helped many people learn to speak Jamaican Slang and Jamaican Patois. He has starred in several Jamaican classic films such as Dancehall Queen, Third World Cop and Shottas. Although he was a key actor in all of these films, Third World Cop is where he really is the star of the show and where you hear the best Jamaican Slang. One of his classic lines is :”Wi Run Ting, Ting Nah Run Wi”. I highly recommend following him if you want to learn more Jamaican Slang and Patois. Are the movies Hollywood Blockbusters? NO! But for our purposes, we need to learn more Jamaican, so Paul’s movies are excellent for that.

I would highly suggest checking out his films. He is also a Broadway Actor and painter. To learn more about Paul Campbell, click here.

Otherwise, GO WATCH HIS MOVIES…Yu dun know!

Bangarang: A New Word for Your Jamaican Slang Vocabulary

Posted on by
Reply

Here is a Jamaican slang word to add to your vocabulary. Write it down and use it…soon come.

Bangarang – hubbub, uproar, disorder, or disturbance (in Jamaican Slang).

Jamaican Hooked On Phonics Lesson One….One,Two,Tree

Posted on by
Reply

029nyahbingi81negril.jpg

If you want to speak Jamaican Patois and master the Jamaican language, you are going to have to know the grammar. Just like any language there are some rules, but the cool thing is, the rules in Jamaican Patois are not like many other languages…so let’s get into it.

In the Jamaican language, the singular and plural are the same word, so here is an example:

one cat, two cat = one cat, two cats

one bwoy, two bwoy = one boy, two boys

“Member Dat!” or Remember that even things in the plural are spoken in the singular form, so you do not need to add the plural prefix -S like in our boring Standard English.

Often times there is a clear need to indicate a plural, the third person plural pronoun written as dem, is placed after the noun. Here are some examples:

Di bwoy dem = The boys

Gwaan chat wit di gyal dem = Go chat with the girls

Call di pickney dem = Call the children/kids

Okay yardies, hopefully you get the point that “S” in Jamaican Patois is just not necesary so save it for a conversation with your grandma (unless she is Jamaican!). You might want to know why the language evolved this way. Basically, according to L. Emilie Adams, the practice of using the third person plural pronoun (Dem=Them) after the noun (ie. bwoy, gyal) to indicate the plural is an African linguistc characteristic brought to Jamaica by the Africa Slaves. Most Jamaicans are the descendants of peoples speaking languages of the Niger-Congo family. This language family is the largest in Africa and are mostly known for adding the third person plural pronoun to indicate the plural.

There are so many things from Africa that Jamaica has preserved and also reinvented. It’s just so cool to see things often oppressed survive. There are so many other Africanism in Jamaican Patois, that I have to break it up. So stay tuned and … visit www.jamaican-slang.com to learn about Jamaican Patois.

More Time!

Two New … Dirty…Words to Help You Speak Jamaican

Posted on by
Reply

Did you know?????

Sal and teli are Jamaican patois for female and male reproductive organs respectively.

Opps?!….Some of you might be turned off by this, some of you might be offended by this, but I feel that you have to know the lingo if you are going to speak Jamaican and speak “di real t’ing”. This is a quick entry, but valuable because we have two new words to add to our Jamaican Patois Vocabulary. This is definitely language you will hear in the dancehall scene. Okay, that’s it for now…soon come.

To read the source of this “knowledge”, visit: http://tak3action.livejournal.com/15610.html

Inna Di Dancehall, Yuh haffi speak Patwah an noh di term dem – WHAT?!!

Posted on by
Reply

Yea, so I decided to speak a” likkle” Jamaican Patois, but that is because I am so inspired by the fact that I came across this great article outlining some of the key terms you will hear “inna di dancehall” (in the dancehall). The dancehall has a culture of its own and is really the place where many of today’s top reggae artists get their initial buzz started. Artists like Spragga Benz, Bounty Killa, Sean Paul, Vybz Kartel, Barrington Levy, Beenie Man (the self-proclaimed King of the Dancehall) and many more are all artists/deejays who have done their thing in dancehalls in Jamaica and abroad. Anyway, I digress…there are some unique words and phrases that one will certainly hear at a dancehall and since the dancehall originated in Jamaica, it is certainly an element of speaking Jamaican Patois. Here is a taste of the language of the dancehall:

DONE DI PLACE “TEAR IT UP”–IF A GIRL’S DANCING REALLY WELL.

UP TO DI TIME UP ON WHAT’S GOING ON, KNOWS EVERYTHING.

SOUN BWOY  A DIS TO THE DJ.

BUST DI PLACE SAID TO THE DJ, TELLING HIM TO GET EVERYONE MOVING.

CRAZY HYPED A REALLY GOOD VIBE.

PASSA PASSA GOSSIP, MIX UP, LATEST DRAMA.

JIGGY DRESSED TO IMPRESS.

DANCEHALL VIBES USED TO DESCRIBE A SUCCESSFUL PARTY.

BOOM FLOP THE PARTY’S A BUST.

SELECTA  is the disc jockey.

DJ/DeeJay  is the artist or singer

I definitely want to provide more information on the dancehall culture and how it can help someone speak Jamaican Patois and get a better insight into Jamaican Culture. To learn more about Jamaican Culture, Reggae and Patois, visit :www.jamaican-slang.com and pick up a copy of the Rastaman Vibration.

Soon Come

15 Reasons Why Jamaican “Patois” is a Language!

Posted on by
Reply

More and more people are learning to speak Jamaican  Patois. People  in Portugal, Sweden, Norway,  England, USA and many more countries are  speaking  Jamaican or learning to speak Jamaican. So the question has to be asked why people are continuing to say that Jamaican Patois is not a langauge?  Well,  dey dun  noh! In the fifteen points below Karl Folkes has summarized the issues on why Jamaican Patois is a language. As a Jamaican educator and linguist Folkes worked diligently to have Jamaican Patois fully and officially recognized by the Jamaican Government. Check the reasons out and believe!!!

Fifteen points on “why Jamaican Patois is a language”:

1. Creole languages are in effect the modern languages of the world; and have evolved and developed with varying degrees of automaticity over the last 400 years.

2. There are more than 200 attested Creole languages in the world and represented in all continents of the globe.

3. Creole languages are popularly described as evolving from an earlier ‘Pidgin’, or putatively “less fully-developed form”. However, this is merely a linguistic theory framed within a Western European ideological worldview.

4. The majority of Creole languages (again, the term ‘Creole’ is of European origin, and therefore troublesome for several reasons) have their origins in African languages. Thus, while their vocabulary or lexicon may be largely European-based (with lexical contributions from the hypothesized ‘superstrate’ languages), their syntax or grammar is distinctly non-European, and certainly more closely African (a continent historically described as “the dark continent” and therefore genetically contributing hypothesized ‘substrate’ languages).

5. The Creole languages of the Caribbean Basin are essentially syntactically more alike than they are different in their underlying or deep structure, despite their surface phonological, morphological, and lexical differences.

6. Creole languages all adhere to linguistic standards. This means it is linguistically correct to speak of Standard English, as well as Standard Jamaican, Standard Haitian, Standard Sranan Tongo, etc., with these latter languages being separate languages and not dialects of English or Dutch.

7. These standards adhere to the rules of their own grammar, which makes communication reliable, uniform, and possible among speakers of the various Creole languages.

8. Creole is not the name of a language, but the family name of several distinct languages which include Jamaican, Haitian, Garifuna, Sranan Tongo — and, yes, Afrikaans (in South Africa) and Yiddish (in Israel and other countries around the world).

9. All human languages belong to language families: as examples English, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish (to Germanic); Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese (to Latinate or Romance); Chinese, Korean, Japanese (to Sino-Sinnitic), etc. Languages which belong to the same language families can be expected to share similar phonological, lexical, morphological, and syntactic features; but they are different enough to be recognized as different languages, and not dialects of one another.

10. Languages, in general, are named after the countries that produced them natively: English(England); German (Germany); French(France); Spanish(Spain); Russian (Russia). Occasionally languages bear the name of ethnic or cultural affiliations. Thsis logically suggests that the language of Jamaica should more properly be called “Jamaican” — certainly not “Patwa” or “Patois” which is a derisive term that was spawned by Europeans within a a colonial imperialistic paradigm to describe and to maintain relations of inequity between ‘slave’ and ‘master’. These terms should no longer be used, certainly not in Independent Jamaica.

11. All languages, including Jamaican, started out in spoken form only. That is a natural course of linguistic development. The written forms came afterwards. More importantly, all spoken languages can — without exception– be represented uniformly in writing.

12. When a language is represented uniformly in writing (i.e., when there is uniformity in phonemic-graphemic correspondence, presdtige is given to the language around the world and literacy development of the speakers of that language is encouraged in the native language.

13. Most Jamaicans are bilingual to varying degrees in Jamaican and English. Of course, some Jamaicans are monolingual Jamaican, with a small percentage monolingual English (perhaps the British, Americans, or Canadians in Jamaica).

14. “Jamaican” is the native language of most of its speakers for whom English is indeed a second language.

15. It is psychologically uplifting and culturally empowering to be bilingual and biliterate!

To get your hands on the definitive book for learning Jamaican Patois, check out www.jamaican-slang.com

Do You Undertand “Overstanding”?

Posted on by
Reply

bongo-timothy-hill-photo-by-jake-homiak-smithsonian-institute.jpg

Bredren and Sisdren, to speak Jamaican is to speak the language of the rastas, overstand? Yes…the word is overstand as opposed to understand and it is a key aspect to the way rastas communicate. Here is a great article by Unika Hypolite of Rasta-Reason.com about “overstanding”:

“Overstanding” is a play on words like many other words in the Rastafari Language. These play on words originated as a symbol of separation from the Western ideology and as well as a continual (I-tinual) remembrance of the struggle for emancipation.

It is overstood that when one communicates, they are communicating an idea to another individual. Ideas are created by men thus the idea cannot be superior to its creator; similarly to the concept (I-cept) held by the Islamic ideology that man cannot be God because God created man.

The Rastafari philosophy asserts that every man woman and child are equal (hence the term InI) therefore the individual who is receiving the information is equal to the communicator of the information and superior to the idea being communicated. That being said, one should not “understand” or stand under an idea; when they absorb and correctly perceive an idea they “Overstand” it.

Very insightful about the language spoken by the rastas. Well, I hope you overstand overstanding. For more information about Rastas and Jamaican language get The Rastaman Vibration at www.jamaican-slang.com

What is a Classic Reggae Album?

Posted on by
Reply

The question is rhetorical for me and could be for anyone that speaks Jamaican. Have you ever heard an album and it just touches you in a way that you cannot describe? Well, I have and it is a true classic as far as reggae is concerned and really music. No need to hold back, the album is called Da Real Things and the artist/deejay is Sizzla Kolanji! Before, I breakdown why this album is a true classic in all ways, shapes and forms, it’s important to know who is Sizzla Kolanji.

Sizzla, born Miguel Orlando Collins, is the most prolific deejay (Deejays are the artists or singers in reggae while selectas are the disc jockeys) of recent years. It is rare that you will hear a riddim that is not blessed with his presence. Sizzla, a Bobo Dread, started to get recognition in the late 90s for his unique style and conscious lyrics. Always a versatile deejay, Sizzla can be heard on roots tracks as well as dancehall (ragga) tracks. Presently, Sizzla has more than 45 solo albums and it would be a lie to say that all are classic, but several are classics such as Black Woman and Child, Praise Ye Jah and Royal Son of Ethiopia. Some of the albums have very similar sounds and one would have to question the detail each album is given before being pressed. For many of the albums, debate and discussion is warranted, but for Da Real Things…there is NO DEBATE!

Da Real Things is the best of the best from sizzla, reggae and all genres of music. It is one of those albums that you can put on play and not need to skip through any song. The album has an overall roots theme and it really gets to the core of who Sizzla is…a talented deejay that is a rastafarian and loves women especially his Mama. Speaking of Mama, Thank You Mama is arguably the best song on the album, if not the best. The lyrics paint real imagery and touch the heart of any mother. Have doubts? Play this song for your mother and watch the tears come down the side of her face. But, the hits do not stop there. Solid as Rock is just one of those songs that can be applied to any adversity you face in life. I was living in the Caribbean when I first heard this song. The bus that I was on was packed and there were several rastas on the bus. Everyone was smiling with a face of amazement. The riddim of this song seems like it was made especially for Sizzla even though other artists recorded tracks to it, none were as good as Sizzla. Another song that stands out is Woman I Need You. This song is the essence of Sizzla. He changes his voice multiple times in the song to compliment the melody and really pours his heart into the song. This a positive, upbeat tribute to women done in a masterful manner.

I tried to write about a few of the songs without spoiling the album. This album holds special meaning in my life because I remember where I was and what I was doing when I first heard it and then subsequently heard it 100 times after that…yea, I might be a fan. I had always been a fan of Sizzla Kolanji, but this put him up there with the elite in reggae music. Get this album, listen to it, learn to speak Jamaican and get into the vibes of this classic album. This is the definition of classic.

Praises to the Most High and Thank you Sizzla for your masterful sound/music,

Ras Zuke

Rastafarians take on Jamaica, the Caribbean and now…the World!!

Posted on by
3

Okay…so maybe rastas don’t run Jamaica, but they might as well. The world is getting smaller and rastas have spread out of Jamaica to all corners of the world. I have met rastas in Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Brazil, England, even Belgium. Now, some of those countries are tropical places  with similar histories to Jamaica, but Belgium has a completely different climate and colonial history. And I hear that Rastas are even in Japan!!! So why are rastas popping up in random places around the globe?

For starters, we have to give thanks to the late great Bob Marley. Bob Marley is a legend and people all around the world connect with his music and struggle. His songs are easy to sing along to and memorize. I have friends in Brazil who do not speak English (nor Jamaican patois), but can sing the lyrics to every Bob Marley song and they have an understanding of what the legend is saying. Bob is the world’s most famous rasta and that has been tremendous for the rasta way of life.

Secondly, a core premise of Rastafari is standing strong in the face of adversity and this resonates with many people around the world. People in all cultures, societies and environments are held back from various opportunities based on their race, believes, culture, gender and thousands of other reasons. Rastafari is a way of life that gives the oppressed a voice and sense of peace. While living in Brazil, I was amazed at the number of rastas I met who lived in the favelas. They were always at peace and lived life according on their terms, despite being largely oppressed.

Another factor in the spread of Rastafari is identification. This is especially true in places with large Afro-Jamaican populations and large Afro-Descendant populations. Yes, there are rastas all over the Caribbean because Jamaicans have moved to neighboring islands, but also because there is a connection in struggle. Although each country that enslaved Africans, used different methods of enslaving and breaking down the slaves, there are certain connections that people of African descent have and Rastafari helps build on those connections. One of the major connections or experiences is a gaining a true knowledge of self and one’s past. Some people do not care, but Rastas do care and people that care tend to be drawn to Rastafari.

Finally, Rastafarians are about peace, love, knowledge and acceptance. These are core values for most societies, yet not enough people remember these values in their day to day life. Sometimes, we see rastas roaming around aimlessly amongst the world, but what might appear to be idleness is actually deep thought, analysis and isolation from negative influences brought on by Babylon (the oppressive forces of the world). The majority of the world is moving towards peace and that means the seeds of Rastafari will spread even more. I hope you will take the time to learn more about Rastafari, wherever you are…and remember, “yuh don’t haffi dread to be rasta“!

To learn more about Rastafari and the Rasta way of life, visit: www.jamaican-slang.com to get the definitive book on Jamaican culture and language.

Give Thanks,

Ras Zuke

Why all the Haters? Come on People, Speak Jamaican and Read Jamaican: The Debate to Translate the Holy Book into Jamaican Patois Continues

Posted on by
1

People are haters when it comes to creating more resources for the masses to speak Jamaican. The good people of Jamaica are trying to make it happen…translate the Bible into Jamaican Patois, but like Buju Banton says, positive things always generate controversy. People in and outside of Jamaica are questioning the worthiness of the translation project. The project has been described as a waste of time, a waste of money and step in the wrong direction as far as the education system is concerned. Click here to read some of the letters sent to the Jamaica Gleaner about the Patois Translation project.

I hope that the project continues. Patois is truly something Jamaican and the world is ready to learn and hear the language. People make the argument that Patois is just a dialect, but I am sure English and many other languages were just dialects at one point. Sure, maybe Jamaican Patois does not have a ton of economic value, but does Swahili? Probably not! Yet, there are books already translated into Swahili and nobody is complaining at this point.  From an educational standpoint I think it is important that Jamaicans speak English well, but ignoring Patois is ignoring the culture and history of the island. In addition, there are many multilingual societies that never really are concerned with the fact that some people speak one language stronger than the other. Its exciting to know that Jamaican youth will grow up speaking two languages and ultimately, will have two thought processes when speaking. Bottom line, the more languages you speak…the better for your thinking process and ability to learn other languages.

So…I think Jamaica needs to get started on the darn thing and bring “More Fiyah”! Buju is right, positive things always generate controversy.