Writing Jamaican

Jamaican Written the English Way We have, of course, all seen Jamaican represented in writing, in the poems of Miss Lou, the dialogue in newspaper cartoons, on posters and in slogans on tee-shirts. Nearly always, however, the language is spelt as if it were a form of English. When we see Jamaican written in this way, we often hesitate a short while, sometimes trying out a couple of pronunciations in our head, before we recognise the Jamaican word intended by the spelling used. Jamaican Written the Jamaican Way Frederic Cassidy, a Jamaican linguist, developed in 1961 a method of presenting the Jamaican language in writing. It is a method which represents the sounds of the language as faithfully as possible, without relying on the spelling conventions of English. It is an approach to spelling Jamaican which treats it as a language in its own right rather than as a form of English. His system has no silent letters and each letter or letter combination is always pronounced the same way. The system is, therefore, very easy to learn. However, it can be confusing to someone accustomed to reading English and who thinks that Jamaican is a form of English. Because Jamaican is a language in its own right and not just a form of English, a word which is pronounced the same in these two languages is often written differently. So, even though the Jamaican and English words for ‘bite’ are pronounced the same way, it is written as ‘bite’ in English, and as bait in the Cassidy system for Jamaican. This is confusing because this is the same spelling as the English word ‘bait’. However, since Jamaican is not English, the sounds which the letters carry in the Cassidy system for Jamaican are different from those which they carry in English. The equivalent Jamaican Language word for the English ‘bait’ is, in the Cassidy system, biet. Confused? Keep reading and everything will soon become clear. The system presented below, which we will call ‘Spelling Jamaican the Jamaican Way’, is one based on that developed by Frederic Cassidy with some modifications.

Spelling Jamaican the Jamaican Way Spelling the Vowels There are five short vowels. Single Vowel

Jamaican Word

English Translation

i e a

sik bel ban

‘sick’ ‘bell’ ‘band’ 1

o u

kot kuk

‘cut’ ‘cook’

The vowel o above is sometimes pronounced a bit differently when it comes before the sound r, as is vorzhan ‘version’. The sound of o before r is made with the lips spread rather than round as is the case for its other pronunciation. There are three long vowels. Long Vowel

Jamaican Word

English Translation

ii aa uu

tii baal shuut

‘tea’ ‘bawl, ball’ ‘shoot’

There are four double vowels. Double Vowel ie uo ai ou

Jamaican Word kiek gruo bait kou

English Translation ‘cake’ ‘grow’ ‘bite’ ‘cow’

There is one vowel marker, which is a letter combination which comes after the vowel in certain words and is used to mark such vowels as nasalized. Vowel Marker

Jamaican Word

hn

kyaahn, waahn

English Translation ‘can’t, want’

Have you ever wondered how to write the funny sound that comes at the end of sentence such as Im fuul iihn ‘He is foolish, isn’t he!’? You now know how to. That sound is a nasalized ii. We mark it as nasalized by using the double consonant hn vowel marker after the vowel to produce iihn.

Spelling the Consonants There are 22 consonants, made up of 18 single and 4 double consonants. Consonant

Jamaican Word

English Translation

b d ch

biek daag choch

‘bake’ ‘dog’ ‘church’ 2

f g h j k l m n ng p r s sh t v w y z zh

fuud guot (see below) joj kait liin man nais sing piil ron sik shout tuu vuot wail yong zuu vorzhan

‘food’ ‘goat’ ‘judge’ ‘kite’ ‘lean’ ‘man’ ‘nice’ ‘sing’ ‘peel’ ‘run’ ‘sick’ ‘shout’ ‘two’ ‘vote’ ‘wild’ ‘young’ ‘zoo’ ‘version’

In the above list, h has a peculiar status. For some speakers of Jamaican, notably those in the western and central areas of the country, this is a sound which is used purely for emphasis. For these speakers, the form hen with the h is simply an emphatic version of en ‘hen, end, the letter n’. For many speakers in Western Jamaica, however, hen can only mean ‘hen’, with en meaning ‘end or the letter n’. Writers should use the letter h in writing according to the manner in which they use it in their speech. Another item in the list of consonants, zh, is a bit of a problem. If we were strictly sticking to writing ‘pure’ Jamaican, that is, a version of Jamaican which is not influenced at all by English, we would have no use for zh. This is because words like vorzhan ‘version’ and vizhan ‘vision’ would be written and pronounced vorjan and vijan. However, many of the persons who will want to be writing Jamaican actually say vorzhan and vizhan and would wish to write them in that way. Either spelling for words such as these, i.e. vizhan or vijan, vorzhan or vorjan, is therefore acceptable. It should be noted that in the above list there is no q. The sound(s) represented by the letter ‘q’ in the English spelling system are represented by k(w) in the Jamaican spelling system, e.g. Jamaican kwiz versus English ‘quiz’. There is, also, no x. The sounds represented by the letter ‘x’ in English are written as ks, e.g. Jamaican siks versus English ‘six’. There is also no c when writing Jamaican the Jamaican way, except when it is part of the consonant combination, ch. The sounds represented by English ‘c’ are either spelt the Jamaican way as k as in kuul versus English ‘cool’, or as s in piis versus English ‘piece, peace’.

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Spelling Words Vowels Following Each Other Now that we know how to spell the individual sounds, we have to deal with the problems of writing them down together to represent words. The only unbroken strings of vowels that should appear in writing are the long vowels and double vowels. This is because these are the only cases when two vowels can belong to the same syllable in Jamaican. When two vowels belong to two separate syllables, they are usually clearly separated from each other by a consonant. Naturally, this consonant has to be written. Sometimes, however, it is not clear that there is a consonant in the pronunciation. Nevertheless, in writing, vowels belonging to two separate syllables always are separated by a consonant. The consonants involved are y and w as in the examples below. Syllables

Written Form

Translation

lai + ad plie + a kou + ad gruo + a

laiyad plieya kouwad gruowa

‘liar’ ‘player’ ‘coward’ ‘grower’

© 2003 Jamaican Language Unit

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