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Jamaican Creole Texts
Peter L. Patrick
Here are collected a few texts of
various sorts, at various levels of the Jamaican creole continuum. They are in
different formats -- some include phonological transcription, gloss and
translation, others occur in discourse transcription only, with a few features
noted, etc.
Most of the ones I'll put up are
ones I have gathered myself, but not all of them: for example, I have
transcribed the first few lines of dialogue from Perry Henzell's 1972 movie The Harder They Come (an excellent film in terms of displaying Jamaican urban life at
the start of the 1970s), and some tapes recorded by other linguists in Jamaica,
e.g. the late David DeCamp.
1. The Mango Story: a small narrative of indignation, recorded
2. The Harder They Come: the first few minutes of dialogue from the 1972 movie,
transcribed.
3. Roasta's Harangue: part of an argument between two young men in their 20s,
best friends, recorded
4. Anansi a Mek Grong: an Anansi story, or traditional West African-descended
folktale, told June 1958 by Mr. J. D. Lewis of Belmont, Portland JA, to David
DeCamp, who recorded it (transcription by Peter L. Patrick).
5. Shootout in the Barbershop: a danger-of-death narrative set in the
political violence of Jamaica's 1980 election year; recorded November 12, 1989,
by Peter L. Patrick in a working-class 'yard' in East Kingston.
6. Sweet and Dandy: the classic Maytals song, a portrait of a Jamaican
country wedding.
Some of the speakers above are featured in my book,
Urban
Jamaican Creole: Variation in the Mesolect
A few Jamaican
proverbs are at the CACOEU (Caribbean Communities In
Europe) site, here. Other sources of Jamaican proverbs
include:
Anderson, Izett, & Frank Cundall. 1927. Jamaican Negro proverbs and sayings.
Kingston: The Institute of Jamaica.
Beckwith, Martha Warren. 1929. Black roadways: A study
of Jamaican folk life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Cassidy, Frederic G. 1961. Jamaica Talk: Three hundred
years of the English language in Jamaica. London: Macmillan & Co.
Maxwell, Ken. 1981. How to speak Jamaican. Kingston:
Christopher Issa.
Watson, G. Llewellyn. 1991. Jamaican Sayings:
With notes on Folklore, Aesthetics and Social Control. Tallahassee FL:
Florida A&M University Press. (Reviewed by PL Patrick in Journal
of Piudgin and Creole Languages 9(1):182-7.)
Peter L. Patrick's www Links page
My Pidgins and Creoles for
Beginners page
Resources for beginning linguists
Last updated 03 June 2004