Jamaican Creole, some guides into the language.

In Jamaica, official lenguage coexist with Jamaican Creole. They are likely to each other, because Creole has had his origins in english. Official lenguage is used in prestige situations, and Creole is usually seen as socially unacceptable.

Today we are going to explain some basic structures of Jamaican Creole.

Plural structures

To put a sustantive into the plural we add "dem"

For example, we have the sentence "The girl is running"

So, in Jamaican Creole it will be: "The girl dem is runnin"

As you see, there is no change in the verb.

Use of the third person.

The light shines brightly (English)

The light shine bright (Creole)

As you can see, there is no use of the third person in Jamaican Creole.

Modal verbs

mos(-a, -i) ‘must’
kuda ‘could’
wuda ‘would’
shuda ‘should’
mait(-a) ‘might, may’
wi ‘will’
kyan ‘can’
fi ‘ought’

Complementation and subordination 

Jamaican Creole clause structure contrasts with English dialects in several ways.
Non-finite complements use the verb stem only: there are no gerund forms with
–in(g). More radically, Jamaican Creole, like other Atlantic Creoles possesses serial verb
constructions (SVCs, below), due to the substrate influence of West African
languages.

Personal pronouns

Person   Singular                 Plural
1             mi, a (ai)                 wi
2             yu                          unu
3             im, i (ii) (shi) (ar)    dem

Demonstratives

Proximal Singular: 

dis-ya ting
dis ting-ya
da ting-ya
‘this thing’

Distan Singular:
dat-de ting
dat ting-de
da ting-de
‘that thing’

Proximal plural:

dem-ya ting
dem ting-ya
‘these things’

Distan Plural

dem-de ting
dem ting-de
‘those things’

Hope you had enjoy learning some of the Creole rules. Have fun in the holidays!

Jose Miguel Rodríguez Jimenez