Phase 1: My Patois

 

          It’s the year 2021 and I’m taking English 110 during my first year of undergrad at CUNY City College. First day of class we’re given this assignment to talk about our earliest memories of learning and developing different language dialects. This was the first time I’d ever even heard of the word “dialect” and I went to search online for examples of what dialect looks or sounds like and I recall seeing “Jamaican patois” as an example for “English dialect.” Immediately I remembered a conversation I had with my grandfather as a kid. I was sitting on a wooden barstool at their nice marble stoned countertop. I could hear the kettle screeching real loudly as he was preparing morning tea for everyone. He asked me to go to the store to get him (in his native tongue) “a loaf ah bread, a half dozen carton of h’eggs, and tree Advil” and I remember feeling puzzled as to why he spoke the way he did. Growing up it’s naturally taught in school that three is a number and tree are those tall things that grow in nature and provide oxygen. Yet this man used the word tree to represent the number three. Nevertheless, I knew what he wanted so I went to get it. When I got back, I asked him why he said three the way he did, and he explained how back in Jamaica that’s how the English was taught in his schools. I remembered thinking “That’s weird that they’d intentionally teach you guys the wrong word” but that was my own biased viewpoint.

         Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to look further into this “dialect”. I discovered that in Patois the sound of H is used in front of a word that starts with a vowel but is silent where it would be vocalized in accordance with standard English. Now I was absolutely confused because why take the H from where it belongs and put it somewhere it doesn’t? But looking back, perhaps I was conditioned to think there was only one way to say these words. As if vocabulary wasn’t something individually unique to every one of us. But I can’t lie, I love how vocalizing the sound of H in front of certain words adds a bit of “oomph” to it.

EX: Patois: H’often (Often) – “Me see ‘im pass ‘ere so very h’often.”

Standard English: “I see him pass by here very often.”

Same as how my grandfather speaks.

Grandpa says: ‘amburger & ‘otdog

Standard English: hamburger & hot dog

          It was after this realization that I started to pay more attention to the way everyone in my grandparents’ house spoke. I often spent weekends there to hang out with my cousins. My cousin Latepha would always be blasting reggae music because she was a big fan of Vybz Kartel who was a huge reggae artist back in the year 2009 when he released his single “Romping Shop” ft Spice. (Vybz Kartel ft Spice – Ramping Shop – YouTube). Romping shop was essentially my first study guide for learning Patois. I used to feel really baffled hearing my cousin sing the lyrics fluently because I couldn’t even fluently grasp the chorus. The very first verse of the song is “Ah di Teacha” and I noticed the letter H wasn’t silent when it fell after a consonant in words like; “teacher” or “chair” or “shell.” Yet when Spice says “Cah me haffi wine” (*Haffi = Have to), she vocalizes the letter H which was opposite to my grandfather’s tongue. However, in another song Kartel sings, “Gaza Man Mi Name” ft Sheba (2010), Sheba isn’t vocalizing the H in her lyrics when she says, “No baby Mi wah ‘ave a baby” same as how my grandfather doesn’t. So now it seems that there’s personal choice behind whether to vocalize H at the start of a word or not because Spice vocalizes H where it would be according to standard English, but Sheba does not. Ex:

Sheba: “No baby mi wah ‘ave a baby”   

Standard English: “No baby I want to have a baby”

Spice: “Cah me haffi wine”

Standard English: “Because I have to wine”

*(Also take note of how “I” when referring to self in a subjective case is replaced with the word “Me” which also means self when referring to self in an objective case.)

          All the while growing up, how my grandfather spoke had always just been the way he spoke. Before learning what an “English dialect” was, I secretly referred to my grandfather’s tongue as “Shortcut English” as if he was too lazy to form complete sentences and would just cut words out where he could and still get his message across. In a way I found it humorous and one day me and my cousins were browsing YouTube and stumbled across Jamaican comedy videos (Dutty soda machine. Jamaican comedy – YouTube) which unintentionally helped me understand the language a lot better from a young age. Next thing you know Patois had transitioned from “Shortcut English” to “Comedic English” because nowadays I only ever really use it to make people laugh or to lift their spirits because I find it funnier and more light-hearted to say, “Aye bad mon wha app’n to yuh” versus “hey is everything okay?” Despite some of these other races thinking Patois is some kind of jacked up broken English, Patois has always English to me.

Works Cited:

Patryk10036. (2009, May 12). Vybz Kartel ft Spice – Ramping Shop [Video]

Youtube. Vybz Kartel ft Spice – Ramping Shop – YouTube

Williams, Yashica. (2017, January 1). Dutty soda machine. Jamaican comedy [Video]

Youtube. Dutty soda machine. Jamaican comedy – YouTube

Reggae Gold 2003 album cover (2010, January 20)

Reggae Gold 2003 – Various Artists | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic

Turnpike, Design. “Jamaica Flag Vintage Distressed Finish by Design Turnpike: Flag Art, Jamaica Flag, Fine Art America.” Pinterest, 2016, www.pinterest.com/pin/513269688762885241/.