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Stu Spelling Bee

Have you heard Caribbean patois and do you understand any of it?

It is spoken in Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and other countries. For example, a child is a "pickney" and nouns are made plural by adding "dem," as in two (or more) pickney dem. An older person might refer to a grandchild as "my grandpickney."

Posted - May 16, 2020
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Responses


  • 52936

      I’m not intimately familiar with it, I’ve only had cursory interaction with people from that part of the world, and/or it’s been so many years (decades) that I don’t remember very well.

      One of the Sergeants in my platoon was from Saint Kitts and Nevis, he spoke with a quite noticeable clipped English reminiscent of his homelands, another man I knew in the Marine Corps was from Aruba, in addition to the way he talked there was also the cavern-like deepness of his voice.  While in the Corps, I knew scads of other men from various Caribbean locales who had lived in the US for varying amounts of time, either since very young or only a few months/years. Many of them had ways of speaking that called to mind their Caribbean roots, to be sure. Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Cuba, The Bahamas, Antigua, The Virgin Islands, etc. 

      Before marrying, I once dated a woman from Trinidad and Tobago. I was as enamored with her speech as I was with everything else about her, both physical and non-physical. 

      In current more recent years, I have had a lot of contact with many people from The Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba, few of whom speak English or speak it fluently. Your question focuses on English, correct?  While I do speak Spanish, I am not proficient in picking up the subtleties and idiosyncrasies of colloquiums, especially with the diversity of country or region or culture or customs thereof. 
    ~


      May 16, 2020 9:36 AM MDT
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  • 13257
    My wife is from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. She calls it dialect, and I've learned a lot from listening to her speak on the phone with friends and family members, and she has taught me a lot about it in the last 10 years. I always make her and them laugh when I try to speak that way, lol.
      May 16, 2020 10:03 AM MDT
    1

  • 52936

      I’ll bet there is a lot of code-switching going on with her, depending on her audience, right?  I’m familiar with that same circumstance with my wife: when she speaks with her family members, it’s never in their national language, it’s always in the (regional) dialect.

    ~ This post was edited by Randy D at May 16, 2020 10:34 AM MDT
      May 16, 2020 10:10 AM MDT
    1

  • 17398
    I guess I better learn it.  When the one-world vision becomes reality the UN has me no longer in the same region that most of America will land.  I will be in the Caribbean region.  Got it, mon?

      May 16, 2020 1:24 PM MDT
    1