Conversation

Over the years of me being in this country, one of the things most people have asked me about my island is how to speak the language.  The Jamaican language is of a English dialect, but, consist of British English, Scottish English, and Hiberno-English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

A lot of people may ask how did all these different languages come to be on this small island.  Well, as I've stated in one of my earlier posting, Jamaica was once under British rule.  The island was also used as a port for ships carrying slaves as well as cargo.  Now as with any ports, things are exchange, bought, and often left behind, including people.  In those times of slavery, slaves often escaped and became a large population of the island, along with its main inhabitants of the island who were the Arawak Indians.  Today, the Indians nation of the island are referred to as Coolie.

I state all this to give you an idea of how Jamaica got its very interesting dialect (Patois).  The motto that is stated on the islands crest says its all, "Out of Many, One People" and because of this, we had to develop a way to communicate between the different cultures of the island, so all the languages were combine in broken form, giving you the short and broken phrases of some of the English words, mixed with some of the other languages.

Now that you got a short history of how our dialect was formed, I'm gonna give you a few phrases along with its translation, so the next time you have a conversation with your Jamaican friend, you'll have an idea of what's being said if you don't already know.