The Salient Features of Caribbean Creole

The Salient features of Caribbean Creole
 Jamaican Creole is considered a language like

any other for two basic reasons:
 1. It possesses the characteristic features of

a language
 2. It performs the functions of a language.
 This is the sound system of a language.
Creole has a sound system independent of
English.
 Jamaican Creole does not use the 'th' sound
but substitutes with two other sounds: the 't'
sounds as in 'tik' for the English 'thick' and the
'd' sounds as in 'dem' for the English 'them'.
 Jamaican Creole does not pronounce the 'h'
sound at the beginning of English words.
Therefore English 'hour' becomes 'our'.
Similarly there is the tendency to hyper-
correct and pronounce the 'h' sound at the
beginning of words that do not require it,
therefore English 'egg' becomes 'hegg' and
'exam' becomes 'hexam' and so on.
 Final consonance clusters tend to be
devoiced for some words in Caribbean Creole
English. So ‘becomes’ is pronounced
‘become’ and ‘reduced’ is pronounced
‘reduce.’ Sometimes the final consonant
sound is deleted.
 child’ pronounced ‘chil’
 ‘last’ pronounced ‘las’
 ‘respect’ pronounced ‘respek’
 Colloquial aphesis (Alleyne, 1980) is a
tendency to omit unstressed syllables in
pronunciation.
 Kaaz- because
 Gains- against
 Memba - remember
 Epenthesis pronunciation of words
 Occurs in cases where ‘s’ precedes the
consonants ‘m’ or ‘n’. A vowel sound is
inserted between the two consonants.
Examples: small – sumall
 Smith – simit
 Smell - sumell
 V is pronounced as b
 Love – lub
 River – riba
 Shove – shub
 Shortening of long vowel sounds
 Eat – it
 Go – guh
 Broke - Bruck
 Identify 10 words with distinctively Creole
pronunciations.
 The lexicon of a language refers to its
vocabulary. In the case of Caribbean Creole
English the vast majority of lexical items are
derived from English but, there are many other
lexical items that are derived from other
languages (Europe, Africa and Asia). Also, there
are some English words, that the usage and
meanings of which are inconsistent with
traditional English usage. Some Creole words
are not recognized to be English words but they
do not mean the same thing as they do in
English.
CREOLE ENGLISH
 Ignorant  Lacking knowledge

 Miserable  Wretched and unhappy
 Salad  Tomato, raw vegetable
 Dark dish
 Without light
 Some English words are compounded to
create nouns not present in English. These
are called calques. Examples:
 Foot battam - sole of the feet
 y’eye water - tears
 an miggle - palm
 neck back- nape
 ead tap - crown
 Compound adjectives formed in Creole are:
 ‘hard-ears’ (stubborn),
 ‘sweet-mouth’ (flatter),
 ‘bad-mouth’ (to discourage by destructive
critcism),
 ‘force-ripe’ which means forward or
precocious and
 ‘red-eye’ (envious).
 Some Creole words are formed by
reduplication (base words are repeated to
form new words). For example:
 friedi friedi to mean fearful or timid,
 chati chati to mean talks excessively or out of
turn.
 Some Creole words are adopted from other
non-English languages, eg, maroon-Spanish,
pikni-Portuguese, unu, (you plural) -Igbo
 List 5 examples of each of the following
found in your territory:
 Calques
 Reduplication
 English words with distinctly Creole meanings
 These are rules governing the correct use of
language.
 Pluralization is signaled by the addition of the
'dem' after the noun eg. The people dem. Or
to emphasize the numerical marker- 'de two
book dem'.
 Possession is not signaled, as in English, with
the apostrophe 's' suffix but by the word 'fi' as
in 'A fi mi bag‘
 Possession is also signaled by juxtaposing the
thing owned with the owner for example ‘a
Marie bag.
 Zero Copula construction. A Copula links the
subject to the predicate. It is derived from the
verb 'to be'. Creole can have a zero copular
structure eg. Jane sick for Jane is sick in
English or Jane de home for Jane is at home.
 Verb forms do not change in Caribbean
Creole to signal the time. The context of the
sentence indicates this.
 mi drive de van yesterday”
 Him did see mi at the beach las Sunday
 Tense may also be signaled by:
 Did, ben, wen - past tense
 a go, wi - future
 This is the proper agreement and ordering of
words in a sentence.
 Patois mainly uses syntax to highlight certain
elements within a sentence while English
often uses pronunciation by verbally stressing
that which is to be emphasized. For
example Creole: Is Susan eat di chicken?
versus English Susan ate the chicken? Creole:
Is di chicken Susan eat ? versus Susan ate the
chicken?
 Identify the Creole features in the following
scenario then translate it into English:
 Pickney nowadays nuh hab nuh mannaz. Las’
week mi did buck up pon a set a dem dung
town an yuh wah fi ear ow dem a gwaan. Mi
mek di mistake fi call to dem and ear one a
dem nuh: “A fi mi mout an mi a go chat
anyting mi wah.” Mi jus shet mi mout an guh
bout mi bizniz.
 McDermott, H. (2008) Cape Communication
Studies, pp 327-335
 Danique W. http://cape-
commstudies.blogspot.com/2011/08/linguisti
c-features-of-jamaican-creole.html

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The Salient features of Caribbean Creole

 Jamaican Creole is considered a language like

 1. It possesses the characteristic features of

 Ignorant  Lacking knowledge

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