de patwa chat

Sorry it has been a little while since we've updated. This has been a crazy busy week packed with lessons plans, assignments, and presentations....buuuttttt, it's now Friday night, and we are currently enjoying our beautiful view on the veranda while sipping on our respective drinks (a bottle of Guinness and coconut rum with juice).

Anyway, we thought we might address a little more of Patwa, and culture in general.
First of all, we are extremely fortunate to have Joan Andrea Hutchinson as our Language and Cross Culture Coordinator. She is a national icon here in Jamaica, and she heads up teaching us Patwa and helps us to adjust to the many cultural differences between Jamaica and the US. Joan meets with us on a regular basis, and originally we had no idea that she was famous here in Jamaica. We've since realized her notoriety here, and feel lucky to be on a first name basis with her. We've mentioned her name in many differing circles throughout Jamaica, and without fail, people seem to know who she is. She is a champion for Jamaican culture, and is a well-known journalist, story-teller, actress, teacher, motivational speaker, producer, and writer. Here I am with one of her books:

Secondly, we wanted to make sure to get a disclaimer out of the way. Jamaican language and culture tends to be a little more brazen and upfront that what is generally experienced in the States. Please bare with us, as our American English will undoubtedly change over the next couple of years. I'm sure we'll misspell things from time to time, as Patwa and English are so alike, yet so different. We've already experienced "brain farts" when we've struggled to recall common English words, even though we speak English the majority of the time. It's like our brain is on overload and hits a glitch from processing so much differing language/accents/slang/etc. all the time.

Also, you might find us saying things, or making references to someone that wouldn't exactly be considered politically correct. There's really no such thing as political correctness here in Jamaica, unless it is to mock Americans. People are commonly called whitie, fatty, ugly, big nose, slow, big bumpa, and so on. If you can't sing, or dance, or cook, or...whatever, people will tell you. If you do something stupid, no one will hesitate to laugh at you, but largely because they expect you to laugh at yourself too.

Anyway, those politically correct lines are probably going to blur more and more in our minds as we become accustomed to the norms here. However, please let us know if we ever push it too far.

Aside from all that, let's go over a few common Jamaican language idiosyncrasies.
Probably one of the most noticeable differences is the lack of the 'h' sound. Everything is pronounced everyting; throw is trow; house is ouse; overhead is over-ead; and so on.
We started cracking up the other day when some of the 12-14 year old girls started singing us one of their favorite Michael Jackson song: "Triller" -dance moves and all.

The ironic thing is that Jamaicans do add the 'h' sound when we don't. Hour is pronounced hour (with the 'h' sound) and so is herb. Not only this, but they also tend to overcompensate for the apparent lack of 'hhhhhh' sound by adding it in places where it doesn't belong at all. 'Eggs becomes 'Heggs', or 'all of you' becomes 'hall of you'.

There are also some common phrases that mean the exact opposite than their literal translation:
~'jus roun de corna' could be anywhere from 200 yards to 2 miles, or even further
~'likkle more' essentially means 'see you later' as in whenever
~and the ever-so-popular 'soon come', which can directly be translated to 'eventually'.