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Jamaican Creole: Its Continuity in the United Kingdom

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Jamaican Creole: Its Continuity in the United Kingdom Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Bc. Zdeněk Nývlt Jamaican Creole: Its Continuity in the United Kingdom M.A. Major Thesis Supervisor: PhDr. Kateřina Tomková, Ph. D. 2012 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the sources listed in the bibliography. Brno, 28 April 2012 ....……………………………..... I would like to express many thanks to my supervisor, PhDr. Kateřina Tomková, Ph.D., for her kind and valuable advice and help. I would also like to thank inhabitants of St Pauls, Bristol for allowing me to interview and record them during my fieldwork. 3 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 5 2. Jamaican Creole ............................................................................................................ 9 2.1 History of Jamaican Creole ..................................................................................... 9 2.2 Varieties of Jamaican Creole ................................................................................ 21 2.3 Jamaican Creole Phonology .................................................................................. 24 2.3.1 Vowel System ................................................................................................ 26 2.3.2 Consonant System ........................................................................................ 35 2.3.3 Distribution and Realization of Phonemes ................................................... 38 2.3.4 Prosodic Features – Suprasegmental Phonology .......................................... 45 2.4 Jamaican Creole Recording ................................................................................... 47 2.4.1 Transcription of the Recording ...................................................................... 49 2.4.2 Recording Analysis ....................................................................................... 51 3. British Creole .............................................................................................................. 55 3.1 British Creole Phonology ...................................................................................... 57 3.2 Fieldwork and Recordings .................................................................................... 61 3.3 Locality ................................................................................................................. 62 3.4 Speaker A - Chantal .............................................................................................. 64 3.4.1 Transcript ....................................................................................................... 64 3.4.2 Recording Analysis ....................................................................................... 66 3.4.3 Full Tapescript ............................................................................................... 68 3.5 Speaker B - Candice .............................................................................................. 71 3.5.1 Transcript ....................................................................................................... 71 3.5.2 Recording Analysis ....................................................................................... 74 3.5.3 Full Tapescript ............................................................................................... 76 3.6 Speaker C - Sammy ............................................................................................... 78 3.6.1 Transcript ....................................................................................................... 78 3.6.2 Recording Analysis ....................................................................................... 80 3.6.3 Full Tapescript ............................................................................................... 82 3.7 Speaker D - Marquis ............................................................................................. 84 3.7.1 Transcript ....................................................................................................... 84 3.7.2 Recording Analysis ....................................................................................... 86 3.7.3 Full Tapescript ............................................................................................... 88 3.8 Speaker E - Elaine ................................................................................................. 92 3.8.1 Transcript ....................................................................................................... 92 3.8.2 Recording Analysis ....................................................................................... 94 3.8.3 Full Tapescript ............................................................................................... 96 3.9 Speaker F - Richaune .......................................................................................... 103 3.9.1 Transcript ..................................................................................................... 103 3.9.2 Recording Analysis ..................................................................................... 105 3.9.3 Full Tapescript ............................................................................................. 107 3.10 Speaker G - Simba ............................................................................................ 109 3.10.1 Transcript ................................................................................................... 109 3.11.2 Recording Analysis ................................................................................... 111 3.12.3 Full Tapescript ........................................................................................... 113 3.11 Problems Encountered ...................................................................................... 116 4. Conclusion................................................................................................................. 117 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 121 Appendix: CD with Jamaican & British Creole 4 1 Introduction This thesis is dedicated to both Jamaican Creole – the English variety commonly spoken on the island of Jamaica in the Caribbean – and British Black Creoles, which are the contemporary accents of English derived from Jamaican Creole, and spoken by generations of Jamaican descendants living in Britain. There are a lot of various different labels used for Jamaican Creole – it is referred to as simply Jamaican, Jamaican Patois or Patwa, Black English, broken English, baby talk or even slang. The popularity of this English variety grew in late 1970s and early 1980s after Jamaican music started to have a bigger influence on the global music industry, bringing Caribbean speech among non-Caribbean public. It is now clear that the emergence of reggae music and Caribbean speech in the music charts over the years has made Jamaican Creole recognized all around the globe, not only by a limited number of experts in the fields of linguistics. Naturally, since reggae, dancehall, dub and various other music genres originated in Jamaica became highly acclaimed by European music producers and DJ’s, it is not a surprise that my generation, which is the first Czech generation who grew up in the liberal democratic society, also has not remained untouched by this musical fashion. A random listener is delighted with the dynamics and lively nature of Jamaican music but for anybody interested in the English phonology Jamaican music presents different challenges. A linguist is urged to grow his concern over the melody, bassline and beats, and become fully interested in the lyrics of Jamaican songs. The efforts spent on probing and analyzing the lyrics of a Jamaican tune might not work perfectly at first. Jamaican Creole, although unmistakably an English variety and a speech-style, can be 5 in some cases not easily accessible. The truth be told, Jamaican Creole, which is the native language variety of majority of Jamaican singers is rather irregular, considering its pronunciation, rhythm and intonation with its sounds sometimes not making sense even to a trained ear. An enormous effort had to be made to find out whether it is possible to fully decipher the song lines to make Jamaican lyrics more comprehensible. At the time of my first contact with Jamaican Creole I only had a few general ideas about English phonology and was lacking thorough knowledge and confidence to believe in the possibility of actually breaking into the realm of this unique language variety. However, the only way to fully understand Jamaican Patwa is every day face- to-face experience with somebody who actually speaks it. It was very fortunate that I was given this rare opportunity and met a native speaker called Conrad, a middle aged man from Kingston, whom I met in July 2006 and collaborated with him for the following few months. Although representing completely different generations and cultural backgrounds, in the United States we were both inferior in socioeconomic terms, which was probably the fact that made the mutual cultural exchange even stronger. It was his passion and enthusiastic support which helped me get over the initial doubts and eventually brought me to get a sense of what Patwa truly was. Since this initial
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