As we can see. this is non the state of affairs in Jamaican Creole. Case is ever demonstrated by place. Any pronoun before the verb is the topic. and after the verb it is either the direct or indirect object. Other characteristics to observe are the deficiency of gender and absence of nominative and accusatory instance signifiers. Besides missing in Jamaican Creole are genitive pronouns like my. your. his. her. its. our. their. To show ownership. Jamaican Creole either has the simple pronoun straight in forepart of a noun. ( for illustration ‘my book’ would be ‘mi buk’ ) . or adds the prefix fi- . ( as in ‘fi-mi buk’ besides intending ‘my book’ ) . Plural Marking Plural taging in Standard English is a odds and ends of different signifiers borrowed and assimilated from many linguistic communications. The original Old English manner of doing plurals was either the add-on of -n or -en or the changing of the vowel sound. as it is for Modern German. Those original Old English plural markers survive in a few Modern English words.
For illustration child/children. man/men. ox/oxen. foot/feet. The Norman Gallic manner of doing plurals was to add an -s. -es or an -x. Merely the first two signifiers were borrowed into English at first. bring forthing signifiers like hand/hands. eye/eyes. bus/buses. Recently the -x stoping had been borrowed for words like bureau/bureaux. adieu/adieux. chateau/chateaux. but it is pronounced as if the ten were an s. During the Renaissance. Classical Latin and Classical Greek became stylish. and although being nonextant linguistic communications. they added a great trade both to the grammar and vocabulary of the English linguistic communication. peculiarly in the Fieldss of scientific discipline and innovation. Plurals produced at this period of clip include datum/data. octopus/octopi. medium/media. index/indices. helix/helices. matrix/matrices.
These plural signifiers cause the most confusion non merely to foreign talkers but besides to a batch of people who speak English as their first linguistic communication. Plural marker in Jamaican Creole is much more logical and easier to larn. In fact Jamaican Creole behaves like Nipponese for the most portion in that it does non by and large mark the plural of nouns. To bespeak plurality. inspire nouns ( and sometimes other nouns to be stressed ) are followed by the postfix -dem. This produces constructions such as ‘di uman-dem’ or ‘di pikni-dem’ significance ‘the women’ and ‘the children’ severally. Tracing roots of Jamaican CreoleThe alone vocabulary and grammar of Jamaican Creole did non merely merely jumping up as an easy manner for plantation slaves from different folks to speak to one another. Many words. phrases. and constructions have an interesting etymology. ( Etymology is a lingual term for the history of the development of a word ) . In Middle English. there was a differentiation between remarkable ‘thou’ . and plural ‘you’ .
This differentiation has been about wholly erased apart from in some North Yorkshire dialects where the remarkable signifier ‘tha’ is still used. E. g. ‘tha’s nice’ means ‘you are nice’ . In some English idioms an effort has even been made to replace the losing pronoun. In Southern States of America ‘y’all’ is used ; in Scouser ( a idiom found in Liverpool ) ‘youse’ or is used ; and a common signifier in London is ‘you-lot’ . In Jamaican Creole. the pronoun ‘oonu’ is found and this is similar to the signifier it has in modern Igbo ( spoken in Nigeria ) which was the most likely donor linguistic communication. Forms of the pronoun ( such as uno. unu. unoo ) can be found in widely scattered parts of Africa in the Nubian and Nilotic linguistic communication households and even every bit far as the Negrito linguistic communications of Malaysia. The word ‘seh’ as in ‘im tel myocardial infarction seh…’ ( he told me that… ) has similar beginnings. Belly laugh! ! ! Another interesting word normally used is ‘pikni’ . intending ‘child’ .
The word was borrowed originally organize Lusitanian ‘picaninni’ . Prior to British laterality. it was used by Lusitanian Masterss to mention to black slaves. who picked up the word and began utilizing it to mention to their ain kids. In Jamaica today. despite its guiltless original significance ( kid ) . it has acquired a dyslogistic intension because of its history in Jamaica. Two more interesting words that have spread across the English speech production universe. but have their beginnings in Jamaica. are ‘buddy’ and ‘cuss’ . These was a mispronunciations of ‘brother’ and ‘curse’ severally. The first recorded usage of ‘buddy’ was in 17 ; whereas the word ‘cuss’ is a word that has entered our vocabulary merely since the late fortiess.
The difference in age of these footings shows how much influence Jamaican Creole has on the English speech production universe. The word ‘buddy’ is even found in the Oxford English Dictionary and ‘cuss’ is used so much among the younger coevals in peculiar. that it is merely a affair of clip before it excessively is added to the OED. in position of the popularity of stylish civilization and music signifiers that have their beginning in Jamaica Jamaican Creole is likely to go on to hold considerable influence of English as a planetary linguistic communication. but should it be classed as a idiom of English or should it hold official acknowledgment as a linguistic communication in its ain right? Language Standardisation.
There are more outstanding differences between Jamaican Creole and English than there are between Swedish and Norwegian. yet the latter are classed as two separate distinguishable linguistic communications. Swedish and Norse people have about no trouble understanding one another. whereas some Englishmen will non hold a hint what a Jamaican is stating. Similar instances are Czech and Slovakian. and Punjabi and Urdu. of which the spoken signifier is the same but merely the written signifier is different. Many people who have stated that stating ‘mi de a di paak’ as opposed to ‘I am in the park’ . sounds infantile. are wholly nescient of the fact that ‘mi/me’ is a common autochthonal Niger-Kongo signifier of the first individual pronoun. I would hold been easy for early Jamaicans larning this unusual alian linguistic communication. to go on utilizing ‘mi’ in that place instead than exchanging to ‘I’ . Besides the English at that clip didn’t precisely have schools and colleges to learn inkinesss the proper manner of organizing the first individual remarkable nominative pronoun.
