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.

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

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 nonCaribbean 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 speechstyle, can be

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 toface 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 sparkle of excitement over Jamaican Creole, I also became aware of its history and started focusing on its linguistic distinctions. Soon after

Jamaican Creole ignited my academic interest, my knowledge about it has increased rapidly to be, one day, eventually transformed into the theoretical base for my thesis.

Theoretical knowledge about Jamaican Creole is meant to serve as the essential linguistic framework for practical fieldwork of tracing Creole patterns in the speech of the second and the third generation of Caribbeans living in the United Kingdom. The objective of the present study is to decide to which extent Jamaican Creole is preserved

in today's language of Britishbased Jamaican communities. Next step is confronting the reality of language from acquired data with the theoretical knowledge about Jamaican

Creole. Is there more similarity or variability between the language of motherland and the language of exile?

In the first part of my thesis I examine Jamaican Creole, taking into account phonological aspects of its most frequent form but also briefly summarizing history and development of this unique variety of English. However, Creole is a language of a special type – it is a language which is created by means of a mutual contact between two or even more languages. There is a range of various language forms spanning from upper to lower boundaries within a socalled “PostCreole Continuum”. Although

Jamaican Creole demonstrates rich variety of its forms I will focus on “mesolectal form” which is most frequently spoken in Jamaica. I introduce phonological analysis of the dialect, which involves building the phonemic inventory of the chosen variety i.e. creating the chart of vowels and consonants, then considering the differences between the Creole and the English Standard in terms of phonological features and phoneme realization and distribution. The main goal of the first part is a systematic description of the most distinctive features of modern Jamaican Creole phonology, not tracing its historical development.

The second part includes the project of investigating the linguistic behaviour of

Britishborn Caribbeans. During the fieldwork I recorded samples of the second and third generations of speakers with Caribbean background living in the mixed neighbourhood of St. Paul's in the outskirts of Bristol, United Kingdom. One thing was clear right from the beginning. People who came to England from Jamaica, same as those from other parts of the Caribbean spoke, and in many cases still do speak, the original Creole languages they used to speak in their home countries. They make use of

nonstandard syntax, irregular morphology and distinctive accent and intonation. For the people of the first generation and a large portion of those from the second, it would not be far away from the truth to claim that these Creole languages are their first language, and the Standard English, if they ever speak it, is something they just had to learn afterwards, outside the circle of family, usually while being educated at school.

Considering the second and the third generations the situation gets complicated.

The Caribbean speakers who are now attending British schools are mostly children or grandchildren of the first or second generation of immigrants. The parents might had told their children the language they spoke at home was an inappropriate form of

English or socalled broken English and did not encourage them to speak it. Yet on the other hand, these unusual Creole varieties symbolize their cultural roots and they are also a source of solidarity and pride for the community. The question arises: can the youngest generations be considered Creole speakers or have the distinctive variations in their speech vanished due to the contact with local English variety?

2 Jamaican Creole

2.1 History of Jamaican Creole

Jamaican Creole, most frequently referred to by its speakers as “Patwa” 1, is the

English variety and the language of ethnic identity for almost two and a half million inhabitants of the island of Jamaica in the Caribbean Islands, also known as West

Indies. Jamaica is the region of the highest population density in the Greater Antilles and the largest English speaking territory of the whole area. The volume of speakers using Jamaican Creole as their common means of communication also makes Jamaican

Creole the most frequent language of the area and the most common Englishbased

Creole spoken in the Caribbean (Wells 1982: 575).

The language of Jamaicans reflects the history of a wide variety of the country’s interactions within a range of different cultures, languages and ethnics. The notion of

Arawak Indians as the original inhabitants of the island of Jamaica is undoubtedly correct – even the name of the island comes from Arawakan language “Xaymaca“ meaning “rich in springs“ (Klein 1971) – but their presence in the area left hardly any influence on the language development; Jamaican Creole owes almost nothing to the indigenous people as the whole population nowadays consists mainly of immigrant and slave descendants (Devonish & Harry 2003: 450). 2

1 Patwa meaning "a provincial dialect" was coined in 1640s. The word is derived from French patois "native or local speech," from Old French patoier "handle clumsily“. The language sense is probably from notion of clumsy manner of speaking. Especially in reference to Jamaican English from 1934. (Klein 1971: 11381139). 2 There can be traced only a limited number of original Arawak words surviving in Jamaican vocabulary. Filtered through Spanish, the Arawak terms include words for natural objects and events (savannah, agouti, hurricane, cassava); others have disappeared along with the culture in which they were rooted (Lalla & D’Costa 1990:9)

Although the position of Jamaican Creole as being one of the major English lexifier Creoles spoken in the Caribbean is taken for granted – with most linguists agreeing on the mixed English/African origin of the language – this situation has not been established sooner than in 1660 (Cassidy 1971: 10; cf. Lalla 1979; Rickford 1987).

The establishment of Englishspeaking colonies in North America and Caribbean at the beginning of the seventeenth century was the first stage of the British colonial expansion that, as its consequence, made English an international language (see Fig.1).

Fig.1 The Atlantic slave trade and colonization in America and the Caribbean (Graddol, D., Leith, D. and Swann, J. 1996: 195)

The first English settlers, however, were by no means the first Europeans to set foot in the Caribbean, claim land and found colonies. South and Central America was

the first to be ‘discovered’ by Europe – by the Portuguese and Spanish – starting with the expedition voyages of Christopher Columbus and the first settlement of the island of

Jamaica by the Spanish troops. The plantation colony was founded in 1509 under the auspices of the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella.“This is a useful reminder that other European languages often came into contact with English in the colonies and influenced its development. The much later colonization of Australia in many ways followed a pattern simile to that in North America. In both cases, large- scale immigration of English speakers and other Europeans displaced existing populations.” (Leith 2007: 133).

During the TransAtlantic Slave Trade, which is a term covering the peak time of slavetrading between late 17 th and 18 th century the astonishing numbers of captured

African slaves have been brought to the island of Jamaica to work on sugar plantations. 3

In 1655, when the British expedition lead into capturing island from the Spanish, 1,500 inhabitants with African roots constituted 25 per cent of the population (the other 4,500 inhabitants were Spanish). In 1670’s amount of people with African roots overtook the

Europeans and there were already about 9,000 enslaved Africans (50 per cent of the population). In 1703 the numbers of Africans working on the island exploded to 45,000 which lead to situation in which over 90% of the population were slaves or their descendants. This proportion has not changed since then (Lalla & D’Costa 1990: 1315; see Fig.2).

3 To learn more about the impact on the slave trade on both African and colonial societies over these centuries and the role of the slave trade in social transformation and political change see Curtin 1969 and Northrup 2002.

Fig.2 Jamaican population (Cassidy 1971: 16)

The policy of English colonisers was to import slaves from different locations, who speak different languages to prevent them forming groups or simple organizations which could have tried to rebel against the English (Cassidy 1971: 16). Due to the non existence of the common means of communication between master (slave traders, later plantation owners) and his servant (captured Africans) and between the slaves themselves, the development of the new language designed for limited forms of interaction had to be created. If there is no proper language that can be used as the common instrument to communicate the needs of the speakers of both differing languages (socalled “common language” or “lingua franca”), improvisation takes place to construct an alternative means of communication. Such makeshift forms of communication are called “pidgins”. A pidgin develops between two groups of speakers with no language in common by blending highly simplified versions of incompatible languages, smoothing phonological contrasts and reducing considerably their

vocabulary, morphology and grammatical framework. Pidgins are only required to be employed as a temporal tool in achieving shortterm goals in trade and then, when they are no longer used, they tend to disappear. The linguistic fact that partly supports this theory comes from the etymology of the word pidgin. As far as its origin is concerned, the term most probably comes from Chinese Canton (present Guanghzou) where British arrived in the 17 th century to trade goods with Chinese. The meaning of the term is clear when we take into account the phonology of the southern China – “pidgin” comes from the mispronounced English word “business”. ChineseEnglish Pidgin was used as a trade language and did survive only a century when in the 19th century English began to be a compulsory language standard taught in schools of China (Hall 1966: 7).

In most cases the period of time in which the basic form of a pidgin remained in service counted in hours and days – which was enough time for a trade transaction of goods to be made – rather than months and years required for a closer cultural exchange and a thorough development of the language. This also accounts for the primal stage of

Jamaican Creole. The ancestor of all creoles spoken nowadays on the islands off the coast of American mainland is believed to be a WestAfrican pidgin which was developed in 15 th or 16 th century by European traders and local African tribes. “In one widely-held view, it was a Portuguese-based pidgin, subsequently re-lexified (given new vocabulary within essentially the same grammatical framework) in the case of those creoles which are now characterized by an essentially English or French vocabulary.”

(Wells 1982: 562).

Originally, the pidgin that later developed into Jamaican Creole was a result of a mutual influence of the dominant Portuguese language of the slave traders and a wide variety of West African languages and dialects spoken by the captured Africans. It is a history fact that Portuguese seafarers were the first Europeans discovering new colonies

and successfully establishing trade routes across both Indian and Atlantic Ocean. It logically follows that it was in principle only Portuguese merchants and traders providing the first slave transactions between western coast of Africa and newly founded colonies in the Caribbean and Americas. Rather than trading enslaved Africans themselves, many European empires chose to prefer services of experienced Portuguese merchants, awarding them with the license to supply their colonies with the cheap

African labor. This situation consequently led into a Portuguese monopoly on both the slave market and language development during those ancient times.

The number of languages spoken among slaves themselves was great and since it was Portuguese which was the first European language African tribes got in contact with – and it was also the language of the socially and economically superior – it is believed to be a dominant language that initiated forming of a new pidgin. The process of creating a pidgin undergoes varying degrees of simplification and blending of source languages. The dominant language, usually called a “lexifier” is a language from which pidgins derive most of their vocabulary (Sebba 1998:1). The most basic grammatical rules are drawn from the inferior input language, in case of Jamaican Creole this applies to a mixture of West African languages. A new stable variety of the contact language called Jamaican pidgin, restricted in context of its use, emerged from this reduction process and from universal human tendencies to simplify their native languages in order to make them more intelligible to foreigners. Same as any other provisory means of communication, Jamaican pidgin does not have any native speakers (Hall 1966: 25).

The Portuguese only operated as traders and providers of the indigenous peoples. The mutual contact of the Portuguese and different West Africans was limited to capturing or kidnapping slaves, marching them to the ports, shipping them overseas and selling them. It is now very disputable to believe these two incompatible groups of people shared more than the basic language functions for essential communication.

African men and women were considered less than human beings, they were dragged far away from their home villages, families and ancestors to spend months and months on sea, stowed and shackled under a deck of a slave ship in horrific conditions, to be sold as goods after (if ever) they arrived to Caribbean and American colonies. It is a reasonable presumption that Portuguese linguistic contributions ceased to affect the language formation right after the ship’s arrival and delivery of the cargo. In present

Jamaican speech there are not many traces of Portuguese retained in its structure.

According to studies of Lllala and Cassidy, the early Jamaican vocabulary strictly reflects the composition of the island’s population with all words concerning farming, soil cultivation and irrigation of English or African origin (Cassidy 1984: 25). The only identified words of the Portuguese origin preserved in today Jamaican language might then be the term “crioulo”, meaning a local person with European ancestors who was born and raised in the colonies, and “pikni” which stands for a small child. 4

The main developments of the language in the land of Jamaica arrived with

British soldiers who attacked the former Spanish colony and claimed the land for British monarch in 1655. British colonists exploited African slaves as providers of high workforce productivity on sugar plantations and as a source of capital profits maintaining the high living standards of both colonial planters and shareholders in

4 Besides Portuguese there can also be traced a limited number of original Arawak words in Jamaican vocabulary. Filtered through Spanish, the surviving Arawak terms include words for natural objects and events (savannah, agouti, hurricane, cassava); others have disappeared along with the culture in which they were rooted (Lalla & D’Costa 1990:9)

England. In the meantime, Spanish and Portuguese influence gradually declined and the early forms of Jamaican pidgin vanished with the old generations of its users. Shortly after a pidgin acquired the first generation of its native speakers who treat the language as the mother tongue of a speech community, it was naturally transformed into a more complex language known as a Creole. “This will occur once a pidgin-speaking community is sufficiently settled for children to be born, and to grow up hearing the pidgin spoken all around them. Once established as the most widely spoken language in the community, the Creole would soon supersede African languages for most functions except, perhaps, religious ones. Today, although there is a definite legacy of African languages in many parts of Caribbean, the languages themselves are no longer spoken there.“ (Sebba 1998: 3).

The process of widening domains of usage and extending of communicative and expressive functions of a pidgin by subsequent generations of its speakers is known as creolisation. The new generations demand more perfect communication and are driven to use their inner resources to create linguistic innovations to elaborate the language of their parents which is too impoverished to serve the brand new communicative needs. A stable, more sophisticated variety of a fully referential language is born after it undergoes a process of complication of its outer form, expanding its vocabulary, restructuring and fixing the morphophonemic system and increasing the context of extension of its use (Wardhaugh 2002: 60).

The important influence on the early Jamaican Creole development was the exposure to various English varieties. The soldiers who came to invade Jamaica in 1655 and stayed to settle the land were Englishmen recruited from Midlands, Southwest

England, and North. The new influences also came with Englishspeakers from New

England, Barbados, Montserrat and other Caribbean islands such as St. Kitts and Nevis.

Furthermore, the white population of West Indians was outnumbered by the black community by over ten to one. In fact, in late 17 th century security laws were adopted through the legislation to maintain a specific ratio of white to black population, and the lowest classes of British society were brought over to meet the obligation. “In 1672, amid threats and rumor of war, Jamaica passed a law requiring each planter to keep one Christian servant for every ten Negroes on his plantation.” (Smith 1947: 31).

The people who were brought to island to be hired as overseers of black slaves, and thus keeping the designed black to white quota, were often criminal convicts, runaway prisoners, adventurers and indentured servants from all over England.

According to a list of landholders in Jamaica in 1670 as many as ten per cent were Irish and that is probably only a glimpse of the whole Irish population on the island. By 1790 it is estimated that one third of all whites in Jamaica was of Scottish origin. At the same time, the influence of educated speech was maintained. Almost three quarters of the landholders’ sons were sent back home to England to receive traditional English education (Lalla 1979: 43). Due to the exposure to various English varieties, both regional and nonstandard dialects and posh English standard of boarding schools, the heterogeneous nature of English input in the development of Jamaican Creole can hardly be underestimated.

The situation that arose from Creole speakers being in a habitual social contact and adapting to the various British varieties and English Standards resulted in shifting into a next stage in a language development known as “PostCreole continuum”. In a speech continuum various local speech forms tend to coexist due to the motivation of

Creole speakers to modify their language according to their social and economic needs.

The varieties are oscillating between two extremes. There is the most upscale variety at one end of the span called the “acrolect”. An acrolect is the educated model of the elite

showing the most influence and prestige of the dominating lexifier language. In the case of Jamaican Creole we speak of a Jamaican English Standard, which is close to British

Received Pronunciation. The other extreme is the “basilect”, the broadest Creole spoken by little educated laborers. Their language is lacking prestige and it manifests a great deal of the inferior language influence. In the case of Jamaican Creole these are the speech forms that reflect most influence of West African languages, the native tongue of slaves (Svartvik & Leech 2006: 176).

The language development is an unceasing process and although the most important stages of Jamaican Creole can be traced to the British imperial era the

Jamaican language is not complete with the end of British domination. A very significant period begun for Jamaica in the 1960s after achieving independence from

Great Britain, leaving its status as a sugar colony and becoming entirely independent country by leaving the West Indies Federation in 1962.

In the late 50’s and throughout the 60’s a new unique form of a language emerged with the spread of a religious and political movement called Rastafarianism movement. “Dread Talk” was formed as an act of resistance and it is a language promoted in majority of Jamaican popular music, especially reggae. The origins of

Dread Talk lie in repressive tactics of postcolonial political establishment. In fact, it is a variation of a variation. The innovative adjustments to lexicon and structure of a broad

Jamaican Creole was created by a community of underprivileged people to form a language of their own to express „resistance to the mental and spiritual entrapment of the black mind in its search for peace and love“. (Allsopp 1980: 102).

Although reggae established itself as the global music of protest, it also served many other, adequately important purposes. In the first place it was the only phenomenon that emerged from the Rastafarian community to promote Jamaican Creole

all around the world. The unprecedented success of Jamaican tunes in the global industry encouraged pride in the hearts of Jamaicans and made them forget partially about the deterioration of the country into a political instability and socioeconomic disorder of the late 1960s. There can be no doubt that until relatively recently the

Jamaican Creole was regarded only as something inferior, an inconsistent jargon, a broken form of English. This position started to slowly shift with apparent identification of young Jamaican generations with their history and culture. The new generations were determined to keep their identity as direct African descendants and pure Jamaicans who resist the domination of oppressing outsiders on the island. Rastafarians are considered the moral and spiritual leaders of the country among underprivileged lowclass communities during the 1970s. Their language was symbolizing solidarity; it was a powerful tool to share the common beliefs and contempt for the corrupt society and imperial ideology. The acceptance of broader Creole varieties and rejection of modern, more prestigious language standards simply reflected a society devoted to retaining its roots and cultural pride (King 2002: 27).

Jamaican Creole and its religious and political modifications have evolved into a powerful language tool promoting social and political change from “Babylon” – a Rasta term referring to the western society of patriarchal domination of the white race and hundreds years old oppression of the black race through physical and economic slavery

– towards the ideal vision of “Zion”, synonymous with the biblical promised land, where black people can live in harmony – as they used to in Africa before they got brutally kidnapped, tortured and sold into slavery. Moreover, while Jamaicans embraced devotion to their mother tongue, their vision got simultaneously incorporated into reggae records which challenged listeners in all countries in the world to adopt higher, nobler feelings and social and political values and goals.

Nowadays it is clear that popularity of Jamaican Creole derives from the protest character of the music and language with its attraction to the youth associated with political revolts dating back to the 60’s. Although the social inequality and frustration resulting from economic underdevelopment into a civil resistance has weakened, there are still negative attitudes towards the Caribbean establishment remaining in Jamaican society. The Jamaican youth of today still use Creole more than one would have thought; it is a source of the power, an expressive language indicating difference and diversity of Jamaican people (Sebba 1993: 69).

Unfortunately, it is not only the prevalence of traditional trends and pride towards the language which forms its present appearance. Since we live in a globalised world, there is much bigger pressure from dominant sources which, as the side effect, can wipe out delicate cultural distinctions. Nowadays, due to the closeness of Jamaica to the coast of the United States of America and busy economic and cultural exchanges and high rates of migration between two countries (not mentioning the aggressive nature of advertisement, promotion and entertainment) the influence of American

English has been gradually increasing and has already negatively affected the development of Jamaican Creole.

2.2 Varieties of Jamaican Creole

English is spoken by almost a quarter of the world’s population; over 1,5 billion speakers all around the globe are already fluent or competent in the language (Crystal

2003). Such a high number of users of the English language implies a wide global variability of English. There are many distinctive varieties of English with specific linguistic properties coexisting due to the different history of the language development and the heterogeneous nature of other language inputs. The situation of Jamaican Creole is somehow parallel to the global trend.

The extreme variability of modern Jamaican Creole and the linguistic situation in the area can be illustrated by the model of linguistic spectrum called the PostCreole

Continuum (DeCamp 1971: 350). This model suits best the current situation on the island of Jamaica. It is the complex linguistic situation where the set of language variables becomes attested in a language community forming a highly complex linguistic system which consists of a volume of coexisting language varieties that are used in relation to education and social status of the speaker. Although the popular perception of Jamaican language reality is that it consists of only two varieties, it cannot be described as simply multilingual or multidialectal as there are no sharp boundaries between coexistent varieties within the whole language community. It is true that there are two poles of Jamaican PostCreole Continuum, but these are only ideal abstractions.

There are collections of features which are most likely to be applied by a speaker of mostlike standard Jamaican English called “acrolect” or most creolized variety of language called “basilect” (Patrick 2004: 3). Furthermore, outside these two extremes, linguists distinguish two other fundamental degrees of the scale – the higher and lower mesolectal varieties, which form the intermediate part of the Continuum (Fig.3).

This idealized classification only serves to maintain contrasts of extremes within the span of the Continuum. None of the fundamental speech varieties can be clearly separated from the other. In fact, both extremes of the Continuum are abstractions composed of phonological features as close as possible to standard English (the acrolect) or most distant from it (basilectal forms). No such extremes can be found in pure form in language reality of Jamaica – the everyday speech lies somewhere in between. 5 6

Fig.3 – Illustration of Jamaican PostCreole Continuum (Akers 1981)

Basilectal and lowermesolectal forms of Jamaican Creole are characterised by morphosyntactic features that are absolutely unknown in any of the traditional English varieties of the United Kingdom. The opposite extreme which is the local English standard shows only a petty difference in several phonological features if compared to any other standard of English variety. However, the most important variety of Jamaican

Creole is the intermediate one which is called the mesolectal variety. The average speaker, taken from strictly social and demographic perspective, is a speaker of a

5 Further details on JC classification and linguistic spectrum can be found in Cassidy 1971 and Akers 1981.

mesolect. He comes from a middleclass neighbourhood of Kingston, his speech is not the broad Creole you can hear in the rural parts of Jamaica, nor is it the highclass acrolect. Nevertheless, he speaks the most frequent form of Jamaican Creole. The span of mesolectal varieties covers the speech of most Jamaican speakers in most situations and provides a reliable source of middle and lowerclass urban speech of Jamaican

Creole.

The mesolectal variety of Jamaican Creole is characterized by its autonomy on either of the PostCreole Continuum extremes; it is not a nonsystematic mixture resulting from a random switching between the standard English and Patwa but rather an organised nonrandom collection of distinctive norms and regular patterns which have evolved over three centuries. Mesolect incorporates both English constraints and substantially Creole structure yet the variation of linguistic choices within the language system is fixed by the convention and social pattering (Patrick 2004: 4).

The mesolect is the most important variety of Jamaican Creole and also the most suitable one for a phonological analysis. Naturally, the Jamaican upper mesolect will be the object of further description in this study. For sake of clarity every time I use term

Jamaican Creole later on in my paper I will be referring to the higher mesolectal variety of Jamaican Creole.

2.3 Jamaican Creole Phonology

This chapter, which is covering Jamaican Creole phonology, deals mainly with phonemic features and descriptions of phonemic inventories of Jamaican Creole. Before describing the phonemic system, some of the principles without which a language variety in would not be possible to exist need to be explained. All languages are systematic and operated by a common set of rules – no judgments or conclusions on the language can be made without first formulating these theoretical grounds.

The most essential is awareness of the systematic nature of the language and the elements which it consists of. Before describing any linguistic model the most basic phonological unit which is called a “phoneme” must be shortly introduced. It is the minimal unit of the language system which identifies a contrast in meaning. In the real speech production more different sounds might be applied to pronounce the very same phoneme. The set of these sounds is made of “allophones” of a certain phoneme.

However, building up a phonemic system of a variety is using descriptive methods to characterize the system of sounds, not physical production or their perception. My objective is to describe the systematic nature of Jamaican Creole, to give a reliable report on which phonemes are formed into the language subsystems.

Phonemic system in English, same as in any other language considered, consists of vowel and consonant subsystems. Vowels are phonemes which are articulated with no obstruction in the passage of airstream along the vocal tract with vocal cords vibrating periodically. For consonants, on the other hand, apply to some extent constrictions or even full closure of vocal cords when producing a sound. The analysis of these phonemic members of particular language subsystems results in creating so

called phonemic inventories of the language variety. These can help understand position, history and change of the language variety in contrast to its standard.

However, no investigation on phonology of a variety is complete with description of its phonemic inventory. Next evaluations that need to be taken into account are differences of phoneme distribution, phoneme realizations and nonsegmental phonological features dealing with the prosody and the oral qualities of a variety.

2.3.1 Vowel System

To fully understand the character of a distinct English variety, it is necessary to base the analysis on the comparison of phonemic systems of both the variety and its

Standard. As far as the linguistic approach is concerned, it is natural to draw upon the contrasts detected and incorporate the findings into the final conclusion about the variety.

The number of members in a phonemic inventory of a language depends on the number of sounds actually employed by its speakers. Considering vowels, we determine the number of inventory members (vowel sounds) in a system according to articulatory features of vowel quality (which are the front or back position of the tongue, the height of the body of the tongue in the oral cavity and the additional degree of lip rounding) and vowel quantity (duration of articulation). It is common that phoneticians schematically arrange all employed vowels of a language or variety spoken within a particular community into an articulation chart.

The chart of standard English varieties usually takes up a form of a quadrilateral

– the figure represents the position of the body of the tongue relative to the remote back part of the mouth (front, central, back) on the horizontal axis and the position of the tongue tip relative to the bottom of the lower jaw on the vertical axis (close, midclose, midopen, open). In symbols which are paired we distinguish between a rounded vowel on the right and an unrounded vowel represented by the symbol on the left. The most elements included in a single vowel chart can be found in the Cardinal Vowel Scale, which is a chart providing the parameters of all general vowels that can be possibly produced by employing the egressive pulmonic airflow (cf. Fig.4).

However, there is no such language that would utilize all the specific vowel sounds included in this chart thus it is used only as a point of reference when analysing vowels of various accents.

Fig. 4 – Cardinal Vowel Scale (Ladefoged 1993)

For the purpose of summarization of the sounds that are phonemic in a specific language the extension of its members is optimized to a number which is effective. The chart for each language differs slightly from the charts of other languages or their varieties due to simply inclusion of the characters representing the phonemes characteristic for a specific variety and exclusion of those phonemes which are not employed by speakers of a variety. The volume of phonemes which are actually used by speakers of British Standard English is represented by the socalled Received

Pronunciation Chart (cf. Fig.5).

Fig.5 – RP Vowel Chart (Gimson 1994)

In contrast to the phonemic richness of English, it is apparently a striking aspect of any Creole language that the number of phonemes in its inventory is considerably smaller. The total number of phonemes is determined by the history of a Creole language development. The whole system is simplified due to the pidgin roots of the language. Some phonological contrasts are absent. For example, length distinction used to to be of no phonological importance in some of historical stages of Creole languages development and even today vowel quantity (duration of articulation) is not a distinctive feature of Jamaican Creole – it does not determine the phonemic distinction of a phoneme in Jamaican Creole. This is not a surprising fact; the lack of distinction between long and short vowels can be traced to the early forms of Africanamerican dialects (Alleyne 1980: 38). “Many instances of length in modern Jamaican Creole can be traced to a vowel + / r/ source, where / r/ has been lost with compensatory lengthening (RP ‘more’ -> JE ‘mo’ )“ (Lalla 1983: 122).

There is the strong tendency for vowel phonemes of languages with pidgin origins to be reduced, especially as phonemic contrasts not common to the languages in contact are lost (Hall 1966: 27). This is also the case of Jamaican Creole vowel system development. The distinctions in quality between, say close and midclose front vowel

/I,i / or close and midclose back / u,U / are not usually preserved. Further on,

Jamaican Creole, like many other creoles and a number of WestAfrican languages, has only one “a” vowel. The only one character / a/ is included in Jamaican Creole vowel subsystem, the other “a” vowel distinctions disappeared. Next feature which is essential in Jamaican Creole is the absence of central or unstressed vowels / Q, ´,Œ/, and the fact that the midopen and open vowels are more centralised than their standardised English reflexes. According to Lalla there were several steps of Jamaican Creole development that considerably affected the vowel inventory (Lalla 1983: 123).

Fig.6 – Vowel inventory development of JC (Lalla 1983)

Possibly we can talk about three linguistic phases that were sparked by the creolisation of the former pidgin language. The first and the second phase reduced the whole system. During the first step of the language development the distinction caused by a vowel length was removed; the second step introduced the merging of vowels towards the quality distinction reduction like tense/lax and close/midclose. Although the discussion on the vowel formation can proceed far beyond speculation, the real nature of this process will remain unknown (Lalla 1983: 123).

The last step in the vowel development expanded the phonemic inventory of the variety. Phonemic members of the vowel system gained additional lengthening and diphthongisation. For instance, the midclose front vowel / e/ expanded to / e˘ / which in certain linguistic surroundings formed a diphthong of / ie / (as in words like “Jamaica” –

/dZame˘ka / /dZamieka /.

As far as we consider vowel subsystem of Jamaican Creole, there is no final authority to turn to. Since the first modern research of the language was carried out by

Cassidy in 1950 (Simon 2000: 2), various different arrangements of Jamaican Creole vowel set were introduced. Classic works on the topic present vowel sets with the number of phonemes ascribed to them oscillating between 5 up to 12 (Devonish &

Harry 2003: 452).

Fig.7 – Jamaican Creole Vowel Sets (Devonish & Harry 2003; Cassidy & LePage 1980)

Fig.8 – Lexical sets of Jamaican Creole

RP JC RP JC

GOOSE KIT I i u˘ u˘

PRICE DRESS e e aI aI

CHOICE TRAP Q a çI aI MOUTH LOT Å a, A aU çU

NEAR STRUT √ a I´ e˘®

SQUARE FOOT U U E´ e˘®

START BATH A˘ a˘ a a˘

NORTH CLOTH Å a˘ , ç˘ ç˘ a˘ , ç˘

FORCE NURSE Œ˘ a®, a ç˘ o˘®

CURE FLEECE i˘ i˘ U´ o˘®

happY FACE eI e˘ , ie I i

lettER PALM A˘ a˘ ´ a

commA THOUGHT ç˘ a˘ , ç˘ a a

GOAT , ´U o˘ uo

Following the research of Devonish & Harry, I adopt their arrangement of vowel sounds into groups of simple and complex phonemes (cf. Fig.7). The relationship between these groups is in vowel quantity (duration of articulation) rather than vowel quality. Only two features of vowel quality (front/back, open/close) are necessary to describe the whole vowel set of Jamaican Creole.

The group of complex vowels consists of simple vowels combined (in some linguistic sources are long vowels represented phonetically as double vowels i.e. /i˘/ as /ii /). The reintroduction of phonemic contrasts that have been lost by means of pidginization of the formerly dominant lexifying language is not maintained by all speakers, and this has the ultimate effect on the possible constructions of the vowel systems. For the sake of inventory description I decided to represent short (simple) vowels of Jamaican Creole by the following symbols: /a/, / e/, / i/, / o/, / u/ and discard other possible linguistic variations for structural reasons.

The significant aspect of the phonemic inventory of Jamaican Creole is the absence of central and unstressed vowels /Q, ´,Œ/. Central vowels have been completely dropped from the vowel set. The midopen and open vowels are however more centralised in contrast to those included in a phonemic inventory of, say Received

Pronunciation. In those positions where a RP speaker employs either central or unstressed vowel, a Jamaican Creole speaker will tend to avoid them and get by with unreduced (peripheral) vowels. The absence of reduced vowels can be traced also in

West Indian diphthongs.

“letter” / lQt´® / /leta / “nation” / neIS´n/ /nieSan /

“running“ / ®√n´N/ /®anin / “ago” / ´g´U / /ago /

The phonemic inventory of Jamaican Creole also lacks “typically British” open back rounded vowel / Å/ (as in “lot“). Instead, Jamaican Creole speakers employ a typical / o/ phoneme, described as a halfrounded short centralised midback vowel. This vowel sound reflects Received Pronunciation symbols of / Å/ and / √,Œ /.

/Å/ /o/ “knowledge“ /nolidZ /

The set of complex vowels of Jamaican Creole includes 4 diphthongs. The prestige forms of Jamaican Creole for FACE and GOAT words are phonetical monophthongs /e˘ / and /o˘ /. However, the opening diphthongs of /ie / and /uo / can be applied in these lexical sets to function as social or allophonic variants of the monophthongs mentioned above (Wells 1982: 571). “face” / fe˘s / /fies /

In comparison to RP there is a greater tendency toward retention of rcolouring of the Jamaican Creole diphthongs (Cassidy & Le Page 1980: xlvii) – “fierce” /fi˘´s/

/fie®s/. The consonant loss and the consequent diphthongisation of the preceding vowel is also nothing unordinary in Jamaican Creole – “till” /tIl / /tie /. The

Jamaican Creole diphthong /ai/ is the reflex of RP /aI / and also /çi/ “boy” /bwa i/.

The lipglides employed after initial labials in Jamaican Creole might be a relic of the

/U/ and /ç/ element retention in the language history. The /uo/ diphthong is the regular reflex of RP /´U / and /ç/ “coat” /kuot/, “four” /fuo/. The last diphthong out of the set is /ou/, which is the reflex of RP /AU/. The Jamaican Creole pronunciation is close to that of Northern English varieties as in “house” /hous/ (Cassidy & Le Page 1980: liv).

A rather contemporary feature of the phonemic inventory of Jamaican Creole is the introduction of open back unrounded vowel /A/. This sound was adapted due to the approximation to General American Standard. This linguistic modification is a toll to cultural and economic bounds to the United States and the ubiquitous English variety

which is getting influential all around the world. Originally only an open front unrounded vowel /a/ was included in phonemic inventory of Jamaican Creole.

Rhoticity situation of Jamaican Creole is slightly complicated. Evidently, rhoticity has been partly lost. For linguists like Wells, Jamaican Creole is described as semirhotic. Same as in many English varieties, postvocalic /r/ has been lost. In

Jamaican Creole this happens mostly in segments before a consonant within the same morpheme. For majority of Jamaican speakers “court” and “coat” form homophonic pairs [kuot]. The case of wordfinal /r/ is little complicated. In the most frequent informal conversations of all social classes Jamaican Creole is nonrhotic wordfinally

[‘fa:da]. Nevertheless, the sociolinguistic confusion to some degree attaches linguistic prestige to rhoticity which makes phonetic /r/ sound subject of possible hypercorrection.

However, rhoticity in Jamaican Creole evidently correlates with social status and speech style of the speaker. Although they are really not very frequent, phonetic /r/ sound is apparently to be observed in speech of more educated part of the population.

There is a pattern which holds that /r/ sound is most likely to be retained in Jamaican

Creole for lexical sets words of NURSE, NORTH and START. This pattern is usually characteristic for mesolectal and acrolectal speakers (Wells 1982: 577).

2.3.2 Consonantal System

Set out below are consonantal charts for both Standard English (RP) and

Jamaican Creole. In accordance with convention, the places of articulation are listed on top (horizontal axis), starting from the most forward articulation (labial) and going toward the sounds made in the back of the mouth (velar/glottal). The manners of articulation are on the left side (vertical axis) of the chart. If there is a pair of symbols in a cell, it indicates the voicedvoiceless distinction. It is also given by convention that voiceless symbols are placed to the left of the voiced ones.

Fig.9 – RP consonant chart

Fig.10 – JC consonant chart

Post- Labial Alveolar alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal

Nasal mmm nnn

Stop p b t d ccc ÔÔÔ k g

Fricative f v s z S

Affricate tS dZ

Approximant ®®® jjj www

Lateral lll

It is evident that the same reduction of phonemes of the Creole language inventory which we might perceive in vowel system is also valid to consonantal system.

These system simplifications can be traced to pidgin origin of the Creole language. If a phonemic feature was not included in inventories of both languages – neither in the dominant lexifier (in our case British English dialects of the 17 th century) or a subordinate language (West African languages) – it is most probable that such a feature will not emerge in the inventory of the resulting Creole language either.

It is true that dental fricatives /T/ and /D/ are extremely rare in West African languages. This is the reason why in most contact situations when a pidgin is established in various parts of the world the dental fricatives of /T/ and /D/ are replaced by /z/ and /s/ but more frequently by /d/ and /t/. Jamaican Creole consonant inventory fully reflects these trends, as dental fricatives are apparently missing in the JC chart.

Voiced postalveolar fricative /Z/ was lacking in inventories of both West

African languages and British English dialect of the 17 th century as it was not naturalized as an English sound until the end of the century (Cassidy & Le Page 1980: lx). Not surprisingly, voiced postalveolar fricative also lacks in present Jamaican

Creole inventory.

Glottal fricative /h/ does not have a phonemic status in Jamaican Creole as it has in RP. “Initial / h/ is frequently lost in unemphatic contexts and used as a hypercorrection in emphatic contexts.” (Cassidy & Le Page 1980: lxii) ”would have”

/hude /.

The other important feature of Jamaican Creole consonant chart is the presence of palatal stops / c,Ô/. These phonemic features are the reflex of 17 th to 18 th century

British palatal / ky / and /gy / before front vowels, which became the accepted polite usage in the 18 th century (Dobson 1968: 379).

Velar nasal of /N/ has been eliminated from the JC consonant chart. Even in final positions, it is always realised as alveolar nasal /n/.

2.3.3 Distribution and Realization of Phonemes

Jamaican Creole exhibits social variety in speech. This applies all across the

Jamaican Continuum, in all transitions between its two extreme linguistic poles. It is a patchy nature of the Jamaican language that allows wide range of sociolinguistic features within a single variety. There are features to be found in all degrees of

Jamaican Continuum (unaspirated stops, clear lateral liquids, THstopping, Hdropping and affrication), features that could be found in both mesolectal and basilectal varieties of Jamaican Creole (semivowel insertion, consonant cluster simplification, palatalization of velar stops) and finally features that are especially to be found only in the lowest mesolectal varieties and in the basilect (epenthesis, VB confusion, metathesis, velarization of alveolars and omission of wordinitial fricatives).

Voiceless stops /p/,/t/,/k/ are always unaspirated in initial positions in

Jamaican Creole. Unaspirated stops are typical for all Africabased creoles and thus common in the whole Caribbean area.

“pot“ [»pot ]

Clear lateral liquids emerge at all positions in Jamaican Creole. Jamaican /l/ is, as in all West Indies, typically clear in all environments. Jamaican Creole simply does not employ a velarized allophone in its /l/ realization. Thus “milk” is always lightly palatalized [»milk ] and not [»mIlÚk] as in Received Pronunciation or General

American, where a dark lateral liquid is frequently employed.

Avoiding dental fricatives, often known as THstopping is another sociolinguistic feature of Jamaican Creole. Although dental fricatives /T/, / D/ are not present in phonemic inventory of Jamaican Creole, the most educated speakers would still employ them in his/her attempt to reach the Standard English in formal conversations. For the speakers of less prominent varieties of the Continuum the oppositions / T/ & / t/ and / D/

& / d/ are neutralised in all words with initial THsound in favour of using alveolar plosives. For an average Jamaican Creole speaker words like “faith”, ”fate” and “thin,

”tin” or ”though”, “dough” and “breathe”, ”breed” are homophonous (Wells 1982: 565).

”thing” [tIn ] ”father” [»fa˘da ] ”faith” [fe˘t ]

Only the most educated speakers are consistent in their dental fricatives use. In popular speech, in informal conversations, most Jamaican Creole speakers are inconsistent. Sometimes even some degree of hypercorrection might happen. This applies to those speakers of Jamaican Creole with some degree of lexical illiteracy among them. It is not clear whether hypercorrection takes place within the socially inferior speakers who try to improve their speech in formal conversations or if it is just their inability to distinguish lexical categories (i.e. in words like “faith, fate” or “thin, tin”). When analysing such a wide social and linguistic spectrum as the one of Jamaican

Creole Continuum, some tendencies toward generalizations cannot be avoided; the distinction between the proper use of dental fricatives or alveolar plosives is not always maintained mainly by the speakers of mesolectal varieties of Jamaican Creole.

Another important feature of Jamaican Creole is Hdropping. Hdropping is performed by a speaker in segments where /h/ is in initial position of the syllable.

Words like “hear“ and “ear” or “hold” and “old” form allophonic pairs. “In popular speech /h/ does not really exist as a phoneme, although [ h] as a speech sound is quite commo n.” (Wells 1982: 568)

Hdropping phenomenon in Jamaica is virtually identical with Hdropping in

England. Same as in England, Hdropping is the demonstration of a low class origin – its use is not considered sufficiently polite in formal conversations and is avoided by educated speakers while speakers little lower on the social scale use it variably.

“hear, ear” [ie® ] “half” [a˘f ]

Hypercorrection of Hsound also takes place in Jamaican Creole, usually as an attempt of upgrading speaker’s utterance by attaching additional /h/ in words like ”egg”,

“off” or “end”. Hypercorrect /h/ attaching can also be considered an emphasizing device used whenever a word beginning phonologically with a vowel is emphasized (Wells

1982: 569).

Affrication (palatalization of alveolar stops) is another typical feature of

Jamaican Creole. Affricated Tsounds are especially realised in environments where R sounds follow. Sometimes affrication can occur simultaneously with THstopping

(Wells 1982: 565).

“three“ [tS®i˘]

In Jamaican Creole it is common to insert glides (semivowels) initially in emphatic contexts before /uo/ and /ai/ (Cassidy & Le Page 1980: lxi). Labialvelar semivowel (glide) /w/ is inserted between a bilabial stop preceding a diphthong, as in

“open“ [wuopm`].

Fig.11 – Table of Semivowel insertion realized in JC

RP JC

"point" [pHoInt] [pwaInt]

"boy" [boI] [bwaI]

"pint" [pHaInt] [paInt]

"buy" [baI] [ba˘]

Velar stops /k/ and /g/ are realized as palatalized in speech of mesolectal and basilectal speakers of Jamaican Creole in initial syllables in segments where they precede low vowels, but only if the vowel corresponds lexically to CHOICE rather than

PRICE.

Fig.12 – Table of velar stop palatalization in JC

RP JC

"cat" [kHQt] [kJat]

"gas" [ga˘s] [gJas]

"cot" [kHçt] [kat]

Consonant cluster simplification is a feature typical in many English varieties around the world, and a feature shared by all Africabased dialects. However, it is most prominent in West Indies English varieties, where the wordfinal /t/ segment in consonant clusters preceded by an obstruent is often not realized (Aceto 2003: 487). It is apparent that cluster simplification also affects the realizations of past tense allomorphs in wordfinal clusters. These past tense allomorphs are missing phonetically as well as morphosyntactically – basilectal and lower mesolectal varieties of Jamaican Creole do not use tense flection. Cluster simplification is sociolinguisticaly sensitive and most probable to be heard in speech of a basilectal or a lower mesolectal speaker.

“touched“ [tatS ] “left“ [lef] “act“ [ak ]

A number of other realization changes are frequent in Jamaican Creole. As already mentioned before, Jamaican Creole prosody has a tendency towards open syllables and maintaining CV syllable structure. The open syllable might be formed by adding an extra vowel (paragogue) or conversely deleting one (elision). These features reflect phonotactics of WestAfrican languages and pidgin origins of Jamaican Creole.

“occasion “ [kJieSa ] “in“ [ena ] “talk“ [ta˘ki ]

Metathesis is also quite frequent in speech of Jamaicans. The changing of order of two phonemes is nothing extraordinary in all West Indies Creoles. A change in order of produced sounds commonly occurs in voiceless clusters. The reason for the shift of phonemes might be the misleading assumptions of common people resulting in altered pronunciation of a word which is not familiar to them. This happens mainly due to misunderstanding of language ancestry of a particular word and consequent creation of a false etymology for a word.

Another possibility might be differing sound laws. A loanword is adapted into the target language (Jamaican Creole) in its original form but its pronunciation is subject to different sound laws that operate in the target language. Simplification of a word by means of a sound shift can take place not because of the lazy speaker; more likely the constant difficulties faced while trying to pronounce the word properly might lead the speaker to phonetically improve its pronunciation. “Metathesis often occurs in those sequences unacceptable in a West African-based phonotaxis .”(Lalla 1983: 128).

“ask” [a˘ks ] “turkeys” [tS®akIs ] “arse” [ra˘s ]

A rather lower mesolectal feature of Jamaican Creole is VB Confusion. Voiced labiodental fricative /v/ is replaced by voiced bilabial stop /b/ and words like ”love” and

“lab” form allophones. This feature is a clear demonstration of proliferation of both basilectal and mesolectal lects and their mutual influence on lower mesolectal levels of the Continuum. Avoiding /v/ is of African origin – most West African languages lack this phoneme in their inventories.

Words ”love” and “lab” are felt to be, whatever their position in a sentence might be, freely interchangeable by most basilectal and lower mesolectal speakers.

Other situations where replacement of voiced labiodental fricative /v/ by voiced bilabial stop /b/ takes place can be easily traced to anticipatory assimilation.

“love” [lab ] “overseer” [obiSa ] “give the” [gIb|da ]

Velarization of alveolar stops applies to /t/ and /d/ before syllabic /l/. The contrast between alveolars and velars has been historically neutralised (Cassidy 1971: 40). However, sociolinguistic classification of alveolar consonant velarization is disputable. Although this feature is most prominent in basilectal varieties of Jamaican Creole, it frequently appears in its mesolectal variieties.

”bottle” [bakl`] ”idle” [aigl`]

Omission of wordinitial fricatives is the last feature which can still be considered partly mesolectal. It occurs usually on wordinitial unvoiced alveolar fricative /s/ in larger consonant clusters. For some rural and loweducated speakers of Jamaican Creole, pairs like “spit” and ”pit“ or “skate” and “Kate“ are homophonous. This feature can be traced to pidgin origins of Jamaican Creole as most West African languages lack these complex consonant clusters.

“spoil” [pWail ] “scratch“ [kratS ] “strong” [tranga ]

2.3.4 Prosodic Features – Suprasegmental Phonology

A language variety is not only determined by its phonemic inventories and qualities. Speech also has prosodic features of intonation, rhythm and stress. These features may form patterns which extend over large chunks of speech utterances than a single phoneme. This is the reason why they are called suprasegmental.

As already mentioned, Jamaican Creole has a tendency to avoid weakening of vowels in unstressed syllables. This results in the most obvious characteristic of

Jamaican prosody which is the even rhythm. To a listener from Europe or America

Jamaican Creole sounds more evenly stressed, having less contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables than any other English variety (Wells 1982: 572). Considering word stress, there are a lot of words in the vocabulary of relatively highly educated

Jamaicans which receive final stress in their speech although they have initial stress in

Received Pronunciation or General American. After comparing the stress patterns in words like “realize” (RP ‘realize JC rea’lize) linguistics like Wells or Lalla arrived at conclusion that Jamaican Creole lacks the Alternating Stress Rule. 7 Furthermore, it is quite common to find disyllabic words in Jamaican Creole which appear to have the main stress on the syllable which is unstressed in all other varieties of English, like in

“kitchen” [ki»tSin ]. This prosodic feature might be considered the emphasis phenomenon with the effect of shifting the stress by one syllable in emphatic contexts.

7 Alternating Stress Rule is a phonological rule which assigns primary lexical stress before the penultimate syllable of a word. The final primary stress is thus reduced by the rule to a secondary stress (Chomsky & Halle 1968).

The other very important prosodic feature is intonation – Jamaican Creole clearly shows a tendency towards occurrence of a rising intonation in segments where

Received Pronunciation would apply falling intonation (Lalla 1986: 121). Isolated words, or words in the final position of a declarative utterance normally have rising intonation in Jamaican Creole, although they are not rising as high as the final elements of interrogative utterances. However, some part of this impression of rising intonation might be due to the even rhythm of Jamaican Creole and false belief of a listener from

Europe or America expecting a falling cadence of the speech (Cassidy & Le Page 1980: xliv).

2.4 Jamaican Creole Recording

The speech recording chosen as an illustrative sample of Jamaican Creole for this study – which is at the same time integrating the theoretical background of the preceding chapters – is taken from the original movie The Rockers .8 The movie was shot completely in Jamaica (mainly in the ghetto neighbourhoods of Kingston and few nearby locations) in 1978 with all characters featuring in the movie actually being first time actors playing the roles of themselves. Although the film is scripted and follows a fictive plot line, the final impression is similar to that of watching a music documentary

(which it was originally to be) – with all ‘actors’ being natives, speaking the local language in their natural background.

The speakers making appearance in the analysed sample are Leroy

“Horsemouth” Wallace (28, a reggae drummer) and Richard “Dirty Harry” Hall (25, a reggae saxophonist). Socioeconomic background of the speakers is not a relevant parameter to determine whether their speech can serve linguistic aims of this study as they are clearly urban dwellers – who were born and raised in Kingston – and thus speaking urban intermediate variety of Jamaican Creole. 9 The exact position of the speakers in the language span of PostCreole Continuum is complicated, but it would not be far away from truth to place them into the range running from the lower up to the higher mesolectal varieties of Jamaican Creole.

8 cf. The Rockers . Dir. Theodoros Bafaloukos. Perf. Leroy Wallace, Richard Hall, Gregory Isaacs, Jacob Miller, Robert Shakespeare, Frank Downding and Winston Rodney. Jesse Burton Stone Ltd, 1978. Film 9 Wallace was born in Rose Town, Kingston in 1950. Hall in Kingston’s neighbourhood of Veeton in 1953 (Barrow 2004)

Apparently being filmed did not impose any linguistic difficulties on the speakers, as they were musicians by their professions and thus accustomed to the audience. Their speech is coherent and relatively authentic, in its way. In the analysed passage, Leroy comes to meet Richard in the yard of his house where he has a jamming session with his band. 10 Leroy needs the money Richard owes him for two LP’s they recorded together in a reggae studio. The passage has been transcribed into a script which was later used as a source text for analysing other respondents.

10 Jam session is a musical act of improvising without prescheduled arrangement, sometimes used as a practice session or a soundcheck.

2.4.1 Transcription of the Recording

What happened Harry? [wo ap/ ɑa˘®i˘]

What happened Horsie? [w´ apm` ɑa˘®sI]

Right no rasta you wanna see the broke rasta. What happened [ɑ®aI/ no ®asta jU wa˘ sId´m ɑb®okn` ®asta wo ɑapm`] what happened about the money that I say I give them rasta ? [wuapm`` bçR´ ɑmo˘nI d´daI se /a ɑgIbem vasta]

Well, rasta the man know the session business. Me and Tommy and [wU ®asta Reman noR´ ɑseSam bIz´ ɑmIJan ɑtHa˘mIJ am]

Bobby and Marquis are over that tune now for the last [ɑba˘bIJ am ɑma˘k´z a®o˘b´ da/ ɑtSun naf´ R´ las] two days, rasta. Man know the session business. [tSu ɑde˘ ®asta // ma ɑno˘ d´ ɑsESam bIz´]

Got twenty dollars a side I and I get. [ɑgat tweR‚I ɑdala saI RaI ´R‚aI ɑget]

The man played two LP’s (for) Bunny Wailer, rasta. Me know that. [d´ man ɑpi´ tuWEl ɑpi bwuonI ɑvie®a ®asta mI ɑno d´t]

Rasta just give me the one, two man. [®asta dZas ɑgIb|mI ´ wan ´ ɑma‚n]

Ah, who tell the man that? [/a wu ɑtel d´ man ɑdet]

Me know that from bigger source ... [inaudible] [mi ɑno a/ fam ɑbIga so˘s]

Horsie, what you want the money to do? [ɑa˘sI wot j´ ɑwan´ monI tud´]

Rasta no shit, man. Evil time(s) Dirty Harry I know, rasta. [®asta na ɑSI´ man // ei ɑt´mE du´ RaI®a ɑno ®asta]

Me a (gonna) buy a bike, rasta. What you do to the bike? [mIo ɑbaI ´ ɑbaIk ®asta // wa ju ɑdu R´ ɑbaI/]

More sell, distributing, rasta. More sell record(s). Ya see. [mo sel dIs ɑtS®IbJutIn ®asta mo ɑsel ®eɑka˘ ja ɑsi]

Bunny Wailer know they’re no good men (for) Wailer’s business rasta. [ɑbaI®a´ ɑnoa de˘no ɑgUd man o ɑwaIl´ ɑbIznIs ®asta˘]

That's true, I am a brethren. [Dets ɑtS®iJam ´ ɑb®ŒdZIn]

And I say true is up since [´na ɑse an ɑtSrU iRap ɑsInts]

I prove this to my ideal(s), seen. I – I support that [aI ɑp®ubIs tU ma˘ ɑa˘di´l ɑsin // aI aI ɑsUpo˘ Det] to the fullness, seen. Yes sir. I lend you the money, seen? [tU de ɑfUlnes ɑsin // jE ɑsa˘ a˘ɑlIn ja ´ ɑmuonI ɑsin ]

Sure. Control this. Man cool, yo! [ɑSo˘® // ɑkHa˘ntS®o˘l ɑdIs // ɑman kHul ɑjo˘]

All right. Nice to meet you. Irie! Yes sir. [ɑaI˘t // ɑnEs t´ ɑmitJe˘ // ɑaI®i // ɑjesa˘]

2.4.2 Recording Analysis

Since there are nearly a dozen various analyses on phonemic inventories of

Jamaican Creole, it is always a very difficult task to arrive at a compromising phoneme notation that would fully suit our linguistic needs. In the chapter dealing with vowel system of Jamaican Creole (cf. Chapter 2.3.1) I decided to support the vowel description of Jamaican Creole with the orthography developed by Cassidy, which was motivated more by historical transparency than by systematic quality distinction. In the phonemic notation used by Cassidy in the Dictionary of Jamaican English and many other scholarly studies and works by his supporters and followers (i.e. LePage,

Devonish & Harry) phonemes of /i/ and /u/ are used for Wells’ /I/ and / U/. It is very convenient in studies dealing only with Jamaican varieties of English but rather impractical for comparative purposes, which is the reason why I eventually applied

Wells’ orthography for these phonemes in phonetic transcription of the speech.

Considering the vowels of the recording, the reduction of the inventory can be demonstrated on the avoidance of central and unstressed vowels. The speakers use peripheral vowels closer to cardinal ones in unstressed syllables where a RP speaker would use one of the central vowels of /Q/, /´/, /√/, /Œ/. Most striking examples, out of many, are phoneme distributions in “money” [ɑmo˘nI], “records” [®eɑka˘] or

“bigger” [ɑbIga] . However, /´/ phoneme is also rather frequent throughout the transcription, most likely due to the quite relaxed pronunciation of final syllables by the featuring speakers or my inability to recognize the distinction between the midcentral unstressed vowel and its centralised Jamaican counterpart.

In the analysed passage, there is the clear emergence of the opening diphthong of /ie/, which is a typical allophonic variant to lengthened monophthong of /e:/ used in

FACE words in Jamaican Creole. Leroy pronounces “play” as [ɑpi´] and “Wailer” as [vie®a] . Also, Richard pronounces “money” as [ɑmuonI], which shows the emergence of the other opening diphthong of Jamaican Creole – /uo/.

The occurrence of semivowel glide insertion can be observed before opening diphthong of /uo/ in “Bunny” which is the speech segment on which Leroy needs to put the stress – [bwuonI] .

Rhoticity of the speakers in the recording perfectly correlates with their social status and informal nature of the conversation they are having. The loss of wordfinal /r/ is best to be observed in “sir”, “yes, sir” – [jE ɑsa˘]. Postvocalic /r/ is also not pronounced, as in examples of “source” and “dirty” – [so˘s] and [du´]. Other loss of phonemic /r/ can be subject to consonant cluster reduction as in “dollars” or

“records” – [ɑdala] ,[®eɑka˘].

Arriving at analysis of consonants in the recording, a rather remarkable feature can be noticed right from the beginning – the phonemic inventory seems to be rather wider than the one suggested by scholarly studies mentioned in chapter dealing with consonant system of Jamaican Creole (cf. Chapter 2.3.2). The most conspicuous feature here is the occurrence of dental fricatives. Throughout the recording Leroy always prefers to use alveolar plosives and neutralise THsound but Richard employs voiced dental fricative at least twice – in “that’s true” [Dets ɑtS®i] and “support that”

[ɑsUpo˘ Det].

Although dental fricatives are missing in phonemic inventory of Jamaican

Creole, they still can be employed by more educated speakers in their attempt to approximate the Jamaican English Standard and thus give their speech more prestige.

However, only the most educated speakers are always consistent in their use of dental fricatives. In the analysed recording we can notice Richard does not belong to the crust of the Jamaican society as his dental fricative use is rather inconsistent with TH stopping being more frequent than proper dental fricatives use – “who tell the man that”

[wu ɑtel d´ man ɑdet].

The social class of Leroy and Richard can also be demonstrated by their use of

/h/ phoneme. If they were the acrolect, they would probably carefully pronounce /h/ phoneme everywhere they could. However, they both treat /h/ phoneme simply as it does not exist, dropping it everywhere – as in Leroy’s “Harry” [ɑa˘®i˘] , “what happened” [wuapm``]or Richard’s “Horsie” [ɑa˘®sI] and “happened” [apm`].This clearly shows they are truly the speakers of mesolectal varieties.

Palatalization of alveolar stops (affrication) is also very frequent in the sample.

Richard affricates in ”tune” [ɑtSun],”two” [tSu],”true” [ɑtSrU],”brethren”

[ɑb®ŒdZIn] or ”control” [ɑkHa˘ntS®o˘l]. Leroy does not have a chance to affricate as much as Richard as the words of his utterance does not allow him to do so.

The only case he palatalizes the alveolar stop is in ”distributing”

[dIs ɑtS®IbJutIn], which is also the segment that clearly demonstrates the phonemic absence and realisation of velar nasal / N/ in the Jamaican Creole.

Lateral liquids in the recording are realized as lightly palatalized, they are always clear – even in environments like those in “fullness” [fUlnes]or “tell”

[ɑtel]and ”sell” [ɑsel]. On the other hand, no case of palatalization of velar stops

/k/ or /g/ has been detected in the sample.

Considering the occurrence of phonological processes generating consonant changes, deletions and transpositions, they appear mainly in the form of consonant cluster reductions and phoneme omissions – ”what happened” [wuapm``], ”business”

[bIz´], ”dollars” [ɑdala], ” evil times” [ei ɑt´mE], ”records” [®eɑka˘] or ”I lend” [a˘ɑlIn].

Switching between /v/ and /b/ phonemes (VB Confusion) can be detected in the recording in ”I give them, rasta” [/a ɑgIbem vasta], ”are over” [a®o˘b´],

”give me” [ɑgIb|mI] and ”I prove this” [aI ɑp®ubIs].

Prosody and intonation of the recording are truly Creolebased – stress is evenly distributed to syllabletimed tones in a regular pattern. Rhythm is formed by shifting two contrastive tones – the low tone and the high one in a repetitive, regular order. For somebody with untrained ear, the intonation might seem to be rising in final segments of declarative sentences (as in “The rasta know the session business.” or “Just give me the one, two man.”). This only shows that our European perception is highly influenced by prosody of our own language which do not make use of such significant shifts of pitch during our speech. The recording also includes disyllabic words with the main stress on uncommon (relatively to other English varieties) syllables – as in ”records”

[®eɑka˘].

3 British Creole

British Creole is a variety of English which is shared as a common language by ethnic communities of people of Caribbean background living in the United Kingdom.

With respect to the dominant linguistic input – as the majority of Caribbean migrants are from Jamaica (almost 60 per cent) – the language which emerged in Britain is sometimes also referred to as British Jamaican Creole (Gesslbauer 2003:7).

The contemporary speakers of British Creole are British citizens who are already born in the country but whose ancestors, parents or grandparents settled in the United

Kingdom after the Second World War. The cause for the massive waves of immigrants in 1950’s and 1960’s was the economic situation in the West Indies and the shortage of labour force in Britain (Sutcliffe 1986:111). Caribbean immigrants were offered illpaid unskilled jobs and formed the lowest part of working class in Britain. Black immigrants were exploited the very similar way in the motherland as they used to be in the former

British colonies. It was not only social and economic discrimination that Caribbean immigrants were forced to face. Their language was considered insufficient and it was refused to be formally legitimized. Language policies of that time ordered Creole speakers to abandon all nonstandard forms of English in favour of achieving linguistic competence in local English Standard (Edwards 1986: 16).

Black Creole which developed over time due to intercultural and interracial contacts of Caribbeans with local British population is a mixture of original Jamaican

Creole, as it is spoken in the West Indies, and various local forms of British English.

Over the years the language of migrants keeps changing due to the dominant influence of the local English varieties and also because of the socioeconomic pressure.

The consequent fusion of languages cannot be effectively described as it varies regionally, socially and individually. Considering the language development of an implemented language, there are usually two possible scenarios which might occur. In the first case the contrasting features of the implemented variety disappear as the original immigrants pass away leaving their descendants to fully assimilate into major society. Children of immigrants become native speakers of the local variety. However, the original language still might be preserved, but only as a domestic marker, the means of communication that serves the needs of a cultural and social distinction within a community to keep the sharp boundary between insiders and outsiders (Patrick 2003:

231).

The other scenario occurs less frequently – the softer “crossbreeding” of the languages enables preservation of the most prominent features of the implemented language. Also, both the language structure and the social functions of the language are maintained. A community in command of the language becomes recognized by the locals but never really assimilates (Patrick 2003: 232).

It is not easy to draw any conclusion on which scenario suits best the linguistic situation of British Creole. Since Caribbean population already moved beyond the original entry areas of migration into a range of different other locations and completely mixed with local residents, they became fully integrated into the original speech communities. On the other hand, British Creole tends to be very conservative – the continuity with Jamaican Creole has been until today kept very strong. However predictions on how far can this status be projected in the future is generally unknown.

3.1 British Creole Phonology

It is almost a futile task to comment on the phonology of British Creole since it is always a mixture of Jamaican Creole and regional British vernacular of the specific community. Because of the apparent Jamaican input which is obvious at both the lexical and grammatical level, British Creole has been described as “a collection of local

British varieties of Jamaican Creole” (Sebba 1993: 139).

There is not simply the only variety of British Creole – a wide range of speech and language forms can count as British Creoles. “Furthermore, since there are now well-established communities in a dozen or so English cities, each with a slightly different population … any attempt to discuss the language behavior of Caribbeans in

Britain will need to consider each community separately” (Sebba 1993: 1). British

Creole resists to be put into a single model which could be systematically described in terms of distinctions and similarities to other models in the system. In proportion to the variability and complexity of all its forms, the attempts to describe British Creole seem almost impossible.

Although all British Creole varieties have their origins in Jamaican Creole, the longer the original Creole is exposed to a local regional variety of British English, the less of the original Creole’s phonemic authenticity is preserved. Nowadays we talk about the second or the third generation of speakers which means the language analysed is a second or a third modification of the original. The gap between the original

Jamaican Creole and the newly emerging variety of the Caribbeanbased British Creole can produce a wide range of varieties within a single speech community. According to linguists, the variation in British Creole can be accessed only by a detailed observation on how the language is performed, adapted and acquired (Sebba 1993: 10).

The description of the major trends within British Creole is uneasy but we can attempt to draw near and sum up only the most apparent features. The widespread perception of Jamaican Creole by the British majority in the United Kingdom as an inferior means of communication puts the pressure toward acquiring more elements from British phonology and incorporating it into local Creole varieties. This is apparently true already if the phonemic inventories of Jamaican Creole and British

Creole varieties are compared.

In principle, the approximation of British Creole vowel system to British English can be shown in the table of lexical sets, although the variants attributed to British

Creole only suit linguistic reality of a single regional variety of British Creole and thus present only a rough and imperfect image of the vowel system alternation (cf. Fig.11).

Despite problematic character of attributing vowels to British Creole, one thing is evident – more phonemic contrasts can be found in modern British Creole in comparison to relatively poor vowel inventory of Jamaican Creole. The vowel contrasts in Jamaican Creole are based on the length alone while British Black Creoles show variable distinctions preferring to realize more variants that may be encountered in the speech of nonCaribbean speakers.

Considering the rhoticity of the language, British Creole varieties are less rhotic than original Jamaican Creole, which is semirhotic. This feature might be interpreted in the context of linguistic environment and longterm accommodation to British English, limiting /r/ phoneme to surface only in the final position morphemes in the segment

(Patrick 2003: 241).

Fig.11 – Lexical sets of SE England British Creole (Patrick 2003: 234)

JC BC JC BC

GOOSE KIT i I, i u˘ u

PRICE DRESS e e, E aI ai , aI

CHOICE TRAP , , , a a Q aI oI aI çI MOUTH LOT a, A a, Å, ç çU çU , aU

NEAR STRUT a ç, å, √ e˘® Ie® , i

SQUARE FOOT u U, u e˘® e˘® , E˘

START BATH a˘ a˘ , A a˘ a˘

NORTH CLOTH a˘ , o˘ a˘ , A a˘ , o˘ a˘ , ç˘

FORCE NURSE a®, a o˘® , Œ˘,Œ˘ Ƚ o˘® o˘® , Uo

CURE FLEECE i˘ i˘, Ii o˘® jç˘®

happY FACE e˘ , ie e˘ , ie , eI i I, i

lettER PALM a˘ a, A˘ a a, å

commA THOUGHT a˘, o˘ a˘ , o˘ a a, å

GOAT o˘ , uo o˘ , uo

Discussing consonants and their realization in British Creole, the same situation applies here – the extent to which the implemented and the target languages mingled together is reflected in preference of consonant realizations. As a good example might serve glottalisation of /t/ phonemes, which is a feature completely absent from Jamaican

Creole but appears rather regularly in British Creole varieties. By contrast, some typical features of Jamaican Creole like palatalization of velar phonemes /k/ and /g/, substitution of /v/ for /b/ or semivowel insertions of /j/ and /w/ are features practically unknown to British Creole.

On the other hand, the Jamaican feature which seems to become fully incorporated into any British variety of Jamaican Creole is neutralisation of /t/&/ T/ and

/d/&/ D/ contrasts. THstopping emerges regularly in language behavior of most

Caribbeans, with the realization of alveolars varying slightly, by being more fronted than those in Jamaica (Patrick 2003: 242). Hdropping or the omission of the word initial /h/ phoneme is a feature shared by both Jamaican and British Creole varieties with no significant differences in use. Discussing laterals, velarization of alveolar stops

/t/ and /d/ before syllabic /l/ has been altered by speakers of British Creole adapting

“bottle” [bakl`]to [bAtl`] or [ba/´]and ”needle” [ni˘gl`] to [ni˘dl`]. There is also some evidence of velarized, socalled dark [lÚ] emerging in the speech of young

Caribbeans in regions where the local speakers make regular use of it.

Prosodic system of British Creole resembles to that of Jamaican Creole by syllabic timing and even rhythm. The high pitch employed on the final syllable can be mistakenly interpreted as stress or rising intonation by a listener not accustomed to

Caribbeanbased prosodic patterns (Patrick 2003: 241).

3.2 Fieldwork and Recordings

In order to get material for phonology analysis of British Creole, fieldwork was carried out in June 2011 in the mixed neighbourhood of St.Pauls in Bristol, United

Kingdom. The research was focused on exploring the extent of Jamaican Creole varieties use among both generations of young and matured speakers of Caribbean background. The research was mainly directed to gain knowledge about Creole maintenance by the speakers of the community, but – to a lesser extent, by means of a few research questions – I also tried to briefly investigate speakers’ attitudes towards their language, the role it plays in their life and the importance which they think is given to the preservation of their language.

The fieldwork was designed to examine phonetic variations in speech of contemporary British Caribbeans by collecting both formal and informal utterances of the respondents. The methods used to gather linguistic material and additional information about the language use were rather simple. First there was a plain text passage presented to respondents as a transcript of Jamaican speech. Respondents were encouraged to read the passage aloud in the way that best represents their language in the usual, every day situation. Next they were asked a set of questions drawing on their relation to the language(s) they use. Employing a text passage enables the comparison of individual speakers and phonetic variations and characteristics of their speech.

However, the utterances acquired from reading the text are far from being authentic and natural. After all, it is still a controlled monologue. To partly reduce the problematic nature of the material acquired from the text reading and to get more spontaneous and uncontrolled speech sample I always tried to start the dialogue and lead the conversation in an informal way by asking about family and language background, attitudes toward the language and opinions on its future.

3.3 Locality

Although the choice of St Pauls neighbourhood in Bristol perfectly suited the aims of the research, performing a linguistic fieldwork in the area was a real challenge. St Pauls is a suburb with a complicated past. It is an example of historical irony that the first residents in the suburb – which now holds the largest AfroCaribbean community in Bristol – were rich merchants who grew their wealth out of slave trading business (Aughton 2000: 148). During the Second World War the area sustained large air raids and excessive bombings. After the war the first Caribbean immigrants came to live in the devastated area (Dresser 1996: 175). Due to the lack of council’s interest in restoration and redevelopment planning schedule, crime and drug problems became frequent in St.Pauls and persist until today. A drug raid in the premises of a Caribbean restaurant sparked the St.Pauls riots in April 1980. The high rate of unemployment, alienation and racial tension of black youth caused a turmoil that resulted in the clash with police after which 134 people were arrested and 25 people taken to hospital. The most recent civil unrest occurred in April 2011, just 2 months before the fieldwork was carried out, and then in August 2011 when 160 policemen in full riot gear were confronted by over 200 young protesters. The riot was lit by the massive police crackdown on inhabitants of a local squat after their refusal to leave the premises (Beal

2011).

As the history shows, the civil disorder is a common phenomenon in St.Pauls. In addition, the district has the reputation of being the centre of drugs and crime in Bristol.

Due to the problematic character of its past and socioeconomic situation of its inhabitants, St.Pauls received negative press and was labeled “no go zone” by many

Bristolians who also advise people to avoid the area and never enter the part of the city

after sunset (cf. Slater 2011). However, the crime and drug dealing has decreased over past twenty years and the risks of being mugged during the day are now really low.

From the point of the personal experience, St.Pauls turns out to be a quiet and safe place if the precautions are taken and basic safety rules are followed.

3.4 Speaker A – Chantal

3.4.1 Transcript

Yeah, what happened Horsie [jE˘ wH´ »apń` ha˘®sI] right no rasta you wanna see the broke rasta [»®aIt noU ®√st√ »jU wan´ sI D´ »b®Úk ®√st√] what am I what I am what happened about the money [whÅt Qm »aI whÅt aI Qm wHo »apń` ´baUt d´ »manI]

I say I give them rasta? [aI seI aI »gIv´m »®√st√]

Rasta the man know session be that. [»®asta man »no˘ s´»San bi˘ »dat]

Me and Tommy and Bobby and Marquis [mi˘Jan »tamIJan »babI an »ma˘kUoz] are work up a tune now for the last two days, rasta. [a˘® »wç®k apa»tu˘n naU fŒ® la˘st tu˘ »dIe˘z ®√st√]

The man know the session business. [d´ man »nç˘ d´ s´San »bIznIs]

Got twenty dollars a side I and I get. [»gQt twQntI »dala a saI ´n aI »gQ/]

The man played two LP’s for Bunny Wailer, rasta. [d´ man »plIe˘d tWu El»pi˘z fç »b√nI vIe˘la ®asta]

Me know that. Rasta just give me the one to man. [mi˘ »nç˘ dQt // ®asta dZ√s »gIv mI D´ »wan tU mQn]

Ah, who tell you that? Me know it from bigger source.

[a˘ whu tHQl jU DQ/ // mi˘»nç˘ It frÅm bIga »sç˘Ƚs]

Well I see. What you want the money to do? [wel aI »si˘ whÅt »jU wÅnt d´ »manI tU »du˘]

Rasta no shit, man. Dirty Harry things are hard. [®asta noU »SIt man »dE ȽtI ha®I »tɫINz a˘r a˘®d]

You wanna buy a bike like rasta. [jU wÅn√ »baI ´ »baIk laIk ®asta]

What you do with the bike? [whÅt jU »du˘ wId5´ »baIk]

Me sell, disturbing, rasta. Me sell records. Ya see. [mI sel dIs»tŒ®bIn ®asta mi˘ »sel»rekHç˘Ƚdz ja si˘]

Me don't like the way the business go. [mI dçn »laIk d5e»we˘ d5´ »bIznIs gç˘]

That's true, my brethren. That's progress. [Dats »tSru ma »brQdZrIn Dats »p®ç˘grQs]

I support that to the fullness, seen. [aI s´»pçȽt DQt tU d´ »fUlnes »si˘n]

Yes sir. I give you the money, seen? [jes »sE® aI »gIv jU D´ »m√nI »sin]

Yes, control this. Cool man, yo. [jEs kH√n»t®çl d5Is // kHu˘l m√n joU]

A'ight! All right. Nice to meet you. Irie. Yes sir. [a˘´It // çl ®aIt naIs t´ »mi˘t j´ // aI®i˘ j´s »sE®]

3.4.2 Recording Analysis

Chantal is a 16 year old teenager who attends local Colston’s Girls’ School. She was born in Jamaica but she and her family left for Britain when she was 6 years old. It is hard to comment on the impact of the British education and integration on Chantal’s linguistic behaviour. However, she seems to be competent in both local urban variety of British English and a variety of British Creole which sounds truly authentic and which would probably pass as Jamaican Creole back in the Caribbean. The vowels employed by Chantal in the recording reflect the situation and emotional setting of the moment of recording. She starts reading the first few sentences in rather not very interesting way concerning Jamaican phonology, but since she gets more focused and particularly after being encouraged by her friends who were present at the recording she makes a one(wo)manshow out of it. In the end, she sounds completely like an upset Jamaican mama telling off her kids in the yard of Kingston’s suburbs. Chantal makes use of a set of standard vowels when she responds to questions or chat with her friends but when she reads the monitored text her vowel inventory changes. Although her speech consists of more central vowels of /Q/, /´/,/Œ/ than would be present in the speech of a pure Jamaican, it still resembles more to the vowel inventory of Jamaican Creole than to British English. This can be best demonstrated by her use of the lengthened monophthongs as in ”know” [»nç˘], ”way” [ »we˘], ”go”

[gç˘] and ”progress” [»p®ç˘grQs] . Similarly, the opening diphthongs Chantal uses do closely resemble to those of Jamaican Creole, i.e.”Marquis” [»ma˘kUoz ], “days”

[dIe˘z] “Wailer” [vIe˘la ] and “played” [»plIe˘d].

Considering the rhoticity of the recording, Chantal carefully pronounces almost all of her /r/ phonemes, which can be attributed to either the prestige (sic) which is given to rhoticity by Jamaican speakers or simply the fact that urban English in Bristol is rhotic itself (Wells 1982a: 342). Analyzing consonants in the recording reveals glottalisation of intervocalic /t/ phonemes or /t/ phonemes in segmentfinal positions, however this feature does occur only scarcely in the monitored passage – “tell you that” [ tHQl jU DQ/] or “I get”

[aI »gQ/] . The thing is, glottalisation in these segments might serve to mark

emphasis. More important is the presence of dental fricatives in the sample. The TH sounds are realised partly as alveolar stops (or their dentalized variants) or by dental fricatives. Frequent emerging of dental fricatives in the recording is not a surprising phenomenon as their use is universally adapted by speakers of all British Creole variants. Hdropping is carried out twice in “happen” [»ap´n`] also in “hard”

[a˘®d] but not in “Harry” [ha®I] or “Horsie” [ha˘®sI ]. Same as glottalisation, H dropping seems to be the emphasizing feature of Chantal’s speech. Palatalization of alveolars is also represented in Chantal’s speech. She affricates twice in “that’s true my brethren” [Dats »tSru ma »brQdZrIn] . She would probably affricate the /t/ phoneme also in “distributing” if she only did not misread it as “disturbing”. Lateral liquids are realised as clear – in “cool” [kHu˘l], “sell” [ »sel ],

“tell” [ tHQl] and “fullness” [ »fUlnes ], which corresponds with Jamaican Creole realizations. On the other hand, there is only a slight trace of phonological processes generating consonant changes to be detected in the sample. Consonant clusters stay mostly unreduced as in “records” [»rekHç˘Ƚdz ] but a single case of simplification occurs in “dollars” [ »dala ]. Consonant omissions are to be detected for example in

“happen” [»ap´n`].

Discussing the prosody of the sample, there are marks of rising intonation and pitchshifts in final segments of declarative sentences (“The man know the session business. Got twenty dollars a side I and I get.”). Furthermore, Chantal follows Jamaican tendency towards open syllables and maintaining CVCV structure with peripheral vowels – “work up a tune” [ »wç®k apa»tu˘n].

3.4.3 Full Tapescript

Zdenek: It's the project about phonetics of Jamaican variety of English.

Chantal: Okay.

Zdenek: Yeah, so, basically..

Chantal: Hold on. Can you roll it for me please?

Candice: I'm still crap at those. I'm still crap doing these.

Chantal: So am I. Britney. Britney! Can you do one of those for me, please? Sorry. No, do my.. no! Hi. Yeah. Carry on.

Zdenek: Right, young lady what is your name?

Chantal: Chantal.

Zdenek: Nice. So can we please start? Can you please read out loud this text.

Chantal: Yeah, what happened Horsie right no rasta you wanna see the broke rasta what am what I am. What happened about the money that I say I give them rasta?

Rasta the man know the session be that. Me and Tommy and Bobby and Marquis are work up a tune now for the last two days, rasta. The man know the session business. Got twenty dollars a side I and I get. The man played two LP’s for Bunny Wailer, rasta. Me know that. Rasta just give me the one to man. Ah, who tell you that? Me know it from bigger source. Well I see. What you want the money to do? Rasta no shit, man. Dirty Harry things are hard.You wanna buy a bike like rasta. What you do with the bike? Me sell, disturbing, rasta. Me sell records. Ya see. Me don't like the way the business go. That's true, my brethren. That's progress. I support that to the fullness, seen.Yes sir. I give you the money, seen? Yes, control this. Cool man, yo. A'ight! All right. Nice to meet you. Irie. Yes sir.

Zdenek: Oh, thank you very much!

Chantal: I was doing it too fast. I was missing out words.

Zdenek: Can I ask you a few questions then?

Chantal: Yeah, go on then.

Zdenek: So you were born in Jamaica, you have a very nice dialect.

Chantal: Yeah.

Zdenek: How long have you been here in Britain?

Chantal: I have been here for ten years.

Zdenek: For ten years?

Chantal: Yeah.

Zdenek: And you still can talk proper Jamaican dialect.

Chantal: Yeah, a little bit.

Zdenek: Yeah, yeah. And is there any kind of a difference between the language you use and your parents use?

Chantal: No, I don't think there's a difference. It's just more broken. Do you know what I mean? It is just like a form of broken English, do you know what I mean? It's a bit broken, it's still like English but it's broken.

Zdenek: Yeah, so is there a different kind of vocabulary as well?

Chantal: Yeah, that’s it.

Zdenek: And word order.

Chantal: Yeah. And word order. You wouldn't see in the dictionary the way we write.

Zdenek: Yeah. You can still switch like if you are having some kind of a formal conversation with somebody so you usually use British English and when you talk to some Jamaican friends you use Patwa.

Chantal: Yeah, when I talk with some Jamaican friends I use Patwa but I mostly speak English. British English.

Zdenek: All right so you are proud of this variety that you can use it as something close to your heart.

Chantal: Yeah, I've got two different dialects then.

Zdenek: Cool. Cool. Have you ever been ashamed of you using this kind of Jamaican (dialect)?

Chantal: No, no. I don't get like shame or shy. Most people I have been around they love all I speak like that. This is like – cool do it again – and I'm just like I'm getting shy just shy.

Zdenek: Yeah, great. All right. Thank you very much.

Chantal: Thank you very much. Wicked.

3.5 Speaker B – Candice

3.5.1 Transcript

Okay. [oUkHeI ]

What happened Horsie oh right no rasta you. [whÅt ɑhQpń` ɑhç˘®zi Ú // ɑ®aIt nÚ ɑ®√st√ ju ]

You wanna see the broke rasta what I am. [ju wÅn´ ɑsi˘ D´ ɑb®´Uk ®√st√ whÅ/ ɑaI ´m]

What happened about rasthe money. [whÅ/ ɑhQp´n` ´baUt ɑ®as D´ ɑm√nI ]

I say I give 'em rasta. Rasta the man know session. [aI seI ai ɑgIv´m ®√st√ // ɑ®√st√ D´ man ɑn´U ɑsQS´n]

Do I have to read it in Patwa? Rasta! [du˘a ´vt´ ɑ®id´t ´ »patU´ // ®√st√]

What happened Horsie? Right no. Right no rasta . [who˘ ɑ√p´n a˘®si˘ »®aI/ n´U // ®aIt // noU ®√st√]

I can't read it in Patwa together. Okay. [aI »kHa˘n ®id It In »pa/U´ tU»g´U // ´kHeI ]

The man know session thatbe that. [D´ man n´U ɑsQS´n D´ bi DQt]

Me and Tommy and Bobby and Marquis [mi ń ɑtHçmI ń ɑbÅbI ń ma˘ɑk´z]

are work up a tune now for the last three years [a˘® ɑwç®k √p ´ ɑtJu˘n naU fç® D´ la˘st T®i ɑji®z] oh last two days, rasta. [´˘ la˘s tu ɑdeIz ®ast√]

The man know the session business. [De ɑm√n n´U De ɑsQS´n bIznIs ]

Two twenty dollars a side I and I get. [tu˘ twentI ɑdÅl´®z ´saI aI ´n aI ɑget ]

I and I get what? [aI Qnd aI get ɑwhÅt]

The man played two LP’s Bunny Wailer. [De m√n ɑpleId tu elpiz e ɑb√nI veIl´®]

Rasta. Me know that. [®√st√ mi ɑn´U DQt]

Rasta thatoh rasta just givegive the one to man. [®√st√ De/ ´U // ®√st√ dZ√st ɑgIv D´ ɑUan tU D´ mQn]

Ah, who tell the man that? [a˘ whU ɑtHQlÚ D´ ɑm√n DQ/]

Me know itwhat? Me know that from bigger source. [mI ɑnoU i/ whÅ/ // mI ɑnoU DQt f®om bIg´® ɑsç˘®s]

Well I see. What you want the money to do? [wel aI ɑsi˘ // whÅt jU ɑwÅnt D´ ɑm√nI tU ɑdu ]

Rasta no shit, man. Dirty Harry things are hard. [®√st√ noU ɑSIt mQn // dE®tI h√®I ɑTINgs √® ɑhA®d]

Me a gonna buy a bike, rasta. [mI e ɑgÅn√ baI ´ ɑbaIk ®√st√]

What do you with bike? [whÅt dU ɑju wIT ɑbaIk ]

Me sell, distributing, rasta. Me sell records. Ya see. [mI sQl dIst®Iɑbju/´N ®√st√ ɑmI sQl ɑ®QkHç®dz ɑj√ si ]

Me don't like way the business go. [mI deUnt laIk ɑweI D´ ɑbIznIs ɑgeU ]

That's true, my brethren. [DQts t®u mI ɑbrQdr´n]

3.5.2 Recording Analysis

Candice is a friend of Chantal’s. She is also 16 years old and she attends a secondary school in Bristol. However – compared to her best friend – Candice’s command of Jamaican Creole has revealed somehow looser relation to her ‘roots’. Although her both parents were born in Jamaica, they do not seem to have encouraged their daughter to speak Patwa or any of its British varieties. She has never been to the Caribbean, either. Nevertheless, Candice embraces the original Jamaican language – she admires her friend’s ability to talk Creole on the daily basis. She adopted a few Jamaican phrases and grammar items herself but she uses them in a very limited number of contact situations, probably only as an ingroup slang with her friends in the neighbourhood. The language which she employs most of the time is the urban variety of British English characteristic by a lot of glottalisation and relatively standard pronunciation of consonant and vowel phonemes. The central vowels of /Q/, /´/,/Œ/ are regular in

Candice’s speech – as in ”happen” [ɑhQp´n`] or ”session” [ ɑsQS´n] – and so are the realizations of THsounds as dental fricatives – ”the last three years”

[D´ la˘st T®i ɑji®z]. In fact, there are no other realizations of THsound than dental fricatives. The dominance of the British English structuring Candice’s speech can also be demonstrated by her diphthongs, i.e. ”no rasta” [n´U ɑ®√st√], “broke”

[ɑb®´Uk ] or “go” [ geU ]. Candice’s speech is fully rhotic. She pronounces properly all /r/ phonemes, even in segments like “bigger source” [ bIg´® ɑsç˘®s], “Bunny Wailer”

[ɑb√nI veIl´®] or “for the last three years” [ fç® D´ la˘st T®i ɑji®z]. This only reflects the Bristol’s rhoticity (Wells 1982a: 341). Next feature which characterizes Candice’s speech is frequent glottalisation. Not only segmentfinal /t/ phonemes are realized as glottalized by Candice – ”what” [whÅ/], ”right” [»®aI/ ] or ”that” [De/ ] – she also employs glottalisation of intervocalic /t/ phonemes – “distributing” [dIst®Iɑbju/´n] or ”Patwa” [»pa/U´]. The important comment to make here – the glottalisation is not anymore the feature of

urban Cockney working class only – it is becoming a common feature of many urban varieties all across the United Kingdom and Bristol makes no exception. On the other hand, Hdropping which is very frequent in both Jamaican Creole and London (Estuary) English is not performed by Candice – all her /h/ phonemes are pronounced – “what happened Horsie” [ whÅt ɑhQp´n` ɑhç˘®zi ] or “Dirty Harry things are hard”

[dE®tI h√®I ɑTINgs √® ɑhA®d]. Candice never makes use of palatalized alveolars. She never affricates – “tune”

[ɑtJu˘n], “that’s true my brethren” [DQts t®u mI ɑbrQdr´n]. Also, there are no traces of phonological processes generating consonant changes to be detected in the sample. Consonant clusters stay unreduced as in “records” [ɑ®QkHç®dz ] or “dollars”

[ɑdÅl´®z]. Besides, intonation also sounds completely usual, as for the speaker of British English.

3.5.3 Full Tapescript

Zdenek: Oh I think it's quite enough, Thank you very much. Now can I ask you a few questions – this was just reading text. Do you sometimes use Patwa for talking to your friends or somebody who is from Jamaica?

Candice: Yeah to my dad or to my mom.

Zdenek: So do you think your dad uses much more Patwa than you do?

Candice: Yeah, all the time, he speaks he just speaks Patwa, he can't even speak English really.

Zdenek: Really?

Candice: Yeah.

Zdenek: And do you only speak kind of a British English, don't you?

Candice: I speak English, I can't speak proper Patwa. She can speak proper Patwa.

Chantal: No I don't.

Candice: She's proper Jamaican but um yeah only when I'm like messing about with my friends then I'm speaking Patwa. You sing to a song, like Jamaican song. Like, I cross vibes all the time.

Zdenek: So you can sometimes switch to the Jamaican dialect if you want to.

Candice: Yeah.

Zdenek: All right. And can you probably tell me something in Patwa?

Candice: Yeah, what you require?

Zdenek: Say whatever you want.

Candice: Uhm, me friend Chantal da show up and aks for a cigarette and I get none.

Zdenek: So what did you just say?

Candice: My friend Chantal just showed up and asked for a cigarette. She ain't getting one.

Zdenek: Okay, okay, okay. And have you ever felt ashamed when you spoke Patwa and somebody overheard the conversation?

Candice: No, no way coz it's like speaking another language. Patwa is a dialect. Do you know what I mean? Because speaking it is just simple..

Zdenek: So you are proud because it's your kind of thing.

Candice: I'm proud because yeah I come from Jamaica so that's why I know, innit?

Zdenek: Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. Amazing, thank you.

Candice: Thank you very much.

Chantal: Why you say I speak proper Patwa?

Candice: Coz you do speak proper Patwa.

Chantal: No I don't, all the time you just let me do when you you all around and then it's like a running joke.

Candice: Yeah, true.

Chantal: Yeah, I don't actually be going like.. when I'm at home my dad speaks Patwa but I don't speak it next to him.

Candice: Yeah, I speak English to my dad.

Chantal: Do you?

Candice: Yeah. Trust me, we do.

Chantal: Well my dad is like Chantal, ideal, come here!

Candice: That's power.

Chantal: I hate it when he calls me ideal. I'm just like flick, flick I wish you just stopped calling me that.

Zdenek: There you go. Thank you very much.

Candice: Thank you so much babe. It was amazing.

3.6 Speaker C – Sammy

3.6.1 Transcript

What happened Horse? [whÅ ɑap´n hçrs ]

Right, no rasta you wanna see the broke rasta. [ɑ®aIt noU ɑ®√st√ jU wÅn´ ɑsi De ɑbr´Uk ®√st√]

What I am what happened about the money [whÅ/ ɑaI Qm // whÅ/ ɑhQp´nd ´baUt D´ ɑm√nI ] that I say I gave ‘em rasta? [aI ɑseI aI ɑgeIv´m ®√st√]

Rasta man the man know the session be that. [ɑ®√st√mQn D´ ɑmQn n´U sQS´n ɑbi DQ/]

Me and Tommy and Bobby and Marquis are working [ɑmI Qn ɑtÅmI Qnd ɑbÅbI Qnd ɑma˘k´z a ɑwçkeI ] tune now for last two days, rasta. [ɑtSun naU fç D´ ɑla˘st tu ɑdeIs ®√st√]

The man knew the session business. [D´ ɑmQn nu D´ sQS´n ɑbIznIs ]

Got twenty dollars a side I.. and I get. [gÅt twQntI ɑdÅl´® ´ saId ɑaI Qnd aI ɑgQ/]

The man played two LP’s. Bunny Wailer rasta. [D´ mQn ɑpHleId tu˘ el ɑpiz // ɑb√ni weIlAȽ ®√st√]

Me know that rasta. That gives the one to man. [mI ɑnoU DQt ®√st√ // DQt ɑgIvs D´ ɑU√n tU mQn]

Ah, who tell them.. ah, who tell that man? [ɑa˘ whu ɑtHQl D´m // ɑa˘ whu ɑtHQl ɑDQt mQn]

Me know if that from bigger source . [mi ɑnoU if ɑDQt f®Åm bIg´Ƚ ɑsçȽs]

What I see. What’s you want the money to do? [w´t aI ɑsi whÅts jU ɑwÅnt D´ ɑm√nI tU ɑdu ]

Rasta no shit, man. Dirty Harry, things are hard. [®√st√ n´U ɑSIt man // dE˘®tI ɑQ®I tINgz a˘® ɑa®d]

Me a gonna buy a bike, rasta. [mi ´ ɑgÅn√ baI ´ ɑbaIk ®√st√]

What you do with the bike? [whÅt ɑju du wiD´ ɑbaIk ]

Me sell distribution, rasta. Me sell records. You see. [mI sQl ɑdIst®IbjuS´n ®√st√ mI sQl ɑ®QkHçȽdz jU ɑsi ]

Me don't like the way business go. [mI ɑd´Un laIk D´ weI ɑD´ bIznIs ɑgoU ]

That tune me breathing. That's progress. [DQt ɑtSJun mI b®ivIN // DQts ɑpr´Ugr´s]

I support that to the fullness, seen. Yes sir. [aI s´ɑpçt DQt tU D´ ɑfUlnIs sin // jes ɑsE Ƚ]

I’ll give you the money, seen? Sure. Control this man. [aI ɑgIv jU D´ ɑm√nI sin // ɑSç® kHÅnɑtSrçl DIs mQn]

Cool, yo! A'ight. All right. Nice to meet ya. Irie! Yes sir. [ɑkHul jçU a˘ɑ®aIt a˘ɑ®aIt naIs tU ɑmitja aI®i je ɑs´®]

3.6.2 Recording Analysis

I met Sammy, a 30+ AfroCaribbean man, in front of Point Barber Shop near Jamaica Street in Stoke’s Croft, Bristol. His both parents come from Jamaica, he was born already in the United Kingdom. He spent many years in London, which is also reflected in his speech. Sammy speaks a variety of an urban British English with features of London Jamaican / Estuary English. Sometimes it is not easy to decide whether the feature of his speech originates in Jamaican Creole or was acquired during the time he lived in London (Affrication, H Dropping). Although he admitted he was a competent Creole speaker he did not feel like using it in our conversation except of giving me an example of greetings in Patwa. In his own words, he is adapting – his Creole use depends on who he is talking to. He would not talk Patwa at work or if talking to authorities. Sammy also made some interesting comments on the Creole development in the United Kingdom considering the difference between his parents’ and his own speech noticing that Creole is “becoming looser”. The speech of both his parents is closer to that in Jamaica, meaning it consists of a lot of “slang” meanwhile Creole of Sammy’s generation has become more adapted to British setting. The monitored language sample shows only a few departures from the urban variety of British English. The vowel and consonant inventory systems are standard; the only variation can be noticed in phoneme realizations. The central vowels of /Q/, /´/,/Œ/ are frequently employed by Sammy – and so are the RPlike diphthongs, like those in

”progress” [ɑprÚgr´s], “broke” [ ɑb®Úk ] or “don’t” [ ɑdÚn ].

The THsounds are generally realized as dental fricatives – ”with the” [wiD´],

”I support that to the fullness” [ aI s´ɑpçt DQt tU D´ ɑfUlnIs ]. However, there is one case of other realization of THsound which is in “breathing” [b®ivIN ]. This is possibly a Londoninfluenced realization, resembling to Cockney/Estuary TH Fronting. Considering the rhoticity, it is fully maintained in Sammy’s speech. He pronounces /r/ phonemes, even in segments like “bigger source” [ bIg´Ƚ ɑsçȽs], “Bunny Wailer”

[ɑb√nI weIlA Ƚ] or “Dirty Harry” [ dE˘®tI ɑQ®I].

Hdropping is frequent in both Jamaican Creole and London English(es). Sammy’s Hdropping use is rather inconsistent. He employs Hdropping partly in “what happened Horse” [ whÅ ɑap´n hçrs ] or fully in “Dirty Harry things are hard”

[dE˘®tI ɑQ®I tINgz a˘® ɑa®d]. However, he does not employ it in “what happened about the money” [ whÅ/ ɑhQp´nd ´baUt D´ ɑm√nI ]. Palatalization of alveolars occurrs in “tune” [ ɑtSJun ] or “control”[kHÅnɑtSrçl]. Nevertheless, there are no phonological processes generating consonant changes occurring in the sample.

Consonant clusters stay unreduced in Sammy’s speech as in “records” [ɑ®QkHçȽdz ] or

“dollars” [ɑdÅl´®]. Considering the prosody of the recording, the intonation, the rhythm and the pitch do not show any departures from the British norm.

3.6.3 Full Tapescript

Zdenek: So I'm really happy that you can do this for me. Sammy: What happened Horsie? Right, no rasta you wanna see the broke rasta. What I am what happened about the money that I say I gave them rasta? Rasta man the man know the session be that. Me and Tommy and Bobby and Marquis a working a tune now for the last two days, rasta. The man know the session business. Got twenty dollars a side I.. I and I get. The man played two LP’s Bunny Wailer, rasta. Me know that rasta. Just that give the one to man. Ah, who tell the.. ah, who tell that man? Me know if that from bigger source... What I see. What you want the money to do? Rasta no shit, man. Dirty Harry things are hard. Me a gonna buy a bike, rasta. What you do to the bike? Me sell, distribution, rasta. Me sell records. You see. Me don't like the way business go. That's true my brethren. That's progress. I support that to the fullness, seen. Yes sir. I’ll give you the money, seen? Sure. Control this. Man cool, yo! A'ight. All right. Nice to meet ya. Irie! Yes sir. Zdenek: Thank you. That was the first part and now if I.. can I ask you a few questions? I told about the Caribbean kind of variety of English. Sammy: Yeah. Zdenek: So you were born here in Britain. Sammy: Yes. Zdenek: And you have some kind of a Caribbean background. Sammy: Yeah, mom and dad Jamaican. Zdenek: Yeah. So they can talk proper Patwa when they want. Sammy: Yes. Zdenek: And they can use a standard English as well. Sammy: Yes. Zdenek: Yeah, that's right. And do you think the language differs somehow between you and older generation of your parents? Sammy: Yeah, yeah. It's got more what is the word I'm looking for it's looser in that mean that its change is not as need some time for a word to explain that. It's been adapted. Uhm, should I describe them when we would be talking English that they talk slang. That's it. There's lot more slang.

Zdenek: All right but that didn't hit with the young generation. So do you think if your parents go somewhere where some British people run the business and they start talking like real Patwa, you know some kind of a Jamaican variety so there's some words you know that the proprietors of the bar or premises can't recognize or can't understand. Sammy: Yeah, Selassie Tuablah Zdenek: Huh, what is that? Sammy: How are you doing. Zdenek: So your generation can speak Patwa as well on a daily basis? Sammy: Yeah. Zdenek: But you can adapt and you can talk like.. Sammy: Depends on who you talking to. Zdenek: Yeah that's it. Sammy : Yeah and when you talk to people from Caribbean community you can switch to Patwa as well and talk? Sammy: Yeah. Zdenek: And have you ever been ashamed of using Jamaican or is it some kind of a.. Sammy: I wouldn't use it. I don't use it in front.. I'm adapting innit if I'm at work or.. Zdenek: Yeah, yeah like talking to authorities. Sammy: A lot of it a lot of it similar to Irish. If you ever heard Irish people talk. Zdenek: Yeah, yeah. Sammy: This is very similar by the way they say ‘things’ and ‘tree’. Zdenek: Yeah that's right, maybe in London as well they say ‘tune’ or ‘tube’. Sammy: Yeah like ‘one’, ‘two’.. ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘three’. ‘One’,’ two’, ‘three’ and Irish say ‘three’ as well. As for ‘three’, ‘three’. Zdenek: That's right. So there's the future for Jamaican English here in.. Sammy: Yes, definitely. Zdenek: So you won't forget it. Sammy: No, definitely not. Zdenek: Never. Sammy: Definitely no. Zdenek: And have you ever had a kind of a bad experience about being Jamaican living here in Bristol? Sammy: No. Zdenek: Okay, thank you very much for the interview, for your time.

3.7 Speaker D – Marquis

3.7.1 Transcript

What happened Horsie? What happened horse? [wÅt »hQp´n` hç˘®»si wuapm`` »ha˘®s]

Right no rasta you wanna see me [»®aIt noU »®asta »jU wana sI »mI] you wanna see the broke rasta. What happened? What am I? [jU »wana si d5´»b®oUk ®asta »wuapm`` whÅt Qm »aI]

What happened about the money I say I give him rasta? [wÅ apm`` ´baUt d5´ »manI aI »seI aI »gE˘ ´m »®asta]

Rasta the man know the session be that. [»®asta d5Q »man »nç˘ sE»San bi˘ »d5Qt]

Me and Tommy and Bobby and Marquis [mi˘JQn »tÅmI Qn »bÅbI an »ma˘kU´z] are work up a tone – are work up a tune [a˘Ƚ »wç®kapa »toUn a˘Ƚ »wç®kapa »tJu˘n] for the last two days, rasta. [fç˘R´ la˘st tu˘ »dIez ®asta]

The man know the session business. [d5Q man »nç de seSan »bIznIs]

Got twenty dollars I side and I get. [»gA/ twQntI »dala aI »saId Qn aI »gQt]

I get to play two LP’s for Bunny Wailer. [a gQ/ tU »plIe tu El»pi˘s fç® »banI veIla]

Rasta me know that. Rasta just give me the one to man. [®asta mI »nç˘ dQt ®asta dZ√s »gIv mI »wan tU man]

Ah, who tell the man that? Me know that. Me knew it [a˘ whu »tQl d5´ »man dQt mi˘»nç˘ dQt mi˘»nu˘ It] that from bigger source. Well I see. [d5Qt f®Åm bIga »sç˘®s wQl aI »si˘]

What you want the money to do? Rasta no shit, man. [whÅt »jU wÅnt d5´ »m√nI tU»du˘ ®asta noU »SIt man]

Dirty Harry things are hard. Me a gonna buy a bike. [»dE®tI ha®I»tINz a˘r ha˘®d mIJa gÅna »baI a»baIk]

You want to do what with the bike? [ju »wÅnt du »whÅt wIt d´ »baIk]

Me sell, distributing, rasta. Me sell records. Ya see. [mI sel dIs»t®IbjutIn ®asta mI »sel»reka˘ds jU si]

Me don't like the way the business a go. That's true. [mi doUnt »laIk d´»wIe d´ »bIznIs a go DQts »tru˘]

My brethren. That's processes. [mI »brQdrIn DQts »p®oUsesIs]

I support that to the fullness, seen. [aI sU»pç®t DQt tU d5´ »fUlnIs »si˘n]

Yes sir. I give you the money, seen? [jes »s´® aI »gIv jU d5´ »m√nI »sin]

Sure, control this. Man cool ya. [»Su® kan»t®çl d5Is // m√n kHu˘l »joU]

A'ight! All right. Nice to meet you. Irie. Yes sir. [çlaIt çl »®aIt naIs tU »mi˘t jU aI®i˘ j´s »s´®]

3.7.2 Recording Analysis

Marquis is a middleaged (4045 year old) construction site worker. He was born in the United Kingdom. Marquis is a second generation Jamaican who now lives in a small house on Winkworth Place, St Pauls. His daily shift was over when I met him so he had time for a “likkle chitchat” about Jamaican language and its perspectives in the backyard of his house. Marquis was curious about the fieldwork and the project. He also knew The Rockers movie, from which the material for a monitored reading passage was taken. Marquis is a proud Jamaican declaring that “Jamaica is such a small country but with such a massive influence on the world”. However, he does not want to go back, though he visited the island four times, he finds it “too depressing and upsetting” there. Thinking about the language development of the Jamaican Creole in the UK, he observes it is becoming more and “more English.” Marquis demonstrated this idea on his daughter, who is a third generation Jamaican and is not quite competent in Patwa. Although she understands it, she would probably “cut you” (meaning probably “tell you off”) in Patwa only if “you upset her”. According to Marquis, Creole features are “getting less and less prevalent” in the language of contemporary Jamaicans. On the other hand, people who were born in the Caribbean and came to the United Kingdom “as little kids talk like they never left Jamaica”. Besides, Marquis has been observing language integration in terms of St Pauls minorities starting to talk Jamaican Creole. He swears the Chinese man who “is selling him fucking fruit” sounds more black than Marquis himself. This integrating process and the unceasing influx of Jamaicans coming to the United Kingdom to “make some money to come home and live their life comfortably” is the reason why Jamaican Creole in the United Kingdom will never vanish. Marquis’ speech sample demonstrates bilinguality of contemporary Jamaican generations living in the United Kingdom. He starts by asking whether he should read the text “as an English person or as a Jamaican person”, then later on he decides to read it the way he would normally speak which is “like inbetween”. Marquis’ vowel realizations are really close to those in Jamaican Creole – he maintains the Jamaican tendency to limit reduced vowels in unstressed syllables, i.e. “session” [sE»San ], “wanna” [ »wana ], “brethren” [ »brQdrIn ], “Weiler” [ veIla ].

He also pronounces “man” as [man ] and employs lengthened monophthongs as in

”know” [»nç˘], “I give him” [aI »gE˘ ´m] and opening diphthongs as in ”play”

[»plIe ], “days” [ »dIez ] or ”way” [»wIe ].

The sample clearly shows that Marquis’ speech is fully rhotic, analyzing other consonants outside /r/ phonemes reveals the THsounds being mainly realised Jamaican way – as alveolar stops (or their dentalized variants) e.g. “who tell the man that” [whu »tQl d5´ »man dQt ] or ”things” [»tINz]. . Hdropping is not carried out by

Marquis – the only exceptions are formed by segment shortening and phoneme omissions in “what happened” [wuapm``].

Rather surprising is the fact that Marquis does not palatalize alveolars, there are no affrications to be detected in his speech i.e. “control” [kan»t®çl], “that’s true my brethren” [DQts »tru˘ mI »brQdrIn]or “tune” [ »tJu˘n]. Lateral liquids are realised as clear – in “sell” [ »sel ] or “fullness” [ »fUlnIs ], which corresponds with

Jamaican realizations. Consonant cluster reduction in the wordfinal segment occurs in “dollars” [»dala ] but not in “records” [ »reka˘ds ].

Discussing the prosody of the sample, there is an evident Jamaican Creole stress pattern and also the voice pitch and colour give the instant impression that Marquis’ background is undoubtedly Caribbean.

3.7.3 Full Tapescript

Zdenek: Okay I'm really glad that you can help me out with this. The first part of it is just reading out this text. Marquis: All right I do it. In what respect do you want me to read it? As an English person or as a Jamaican person? Zdenek: Yeah. Now that's the tricky question coz I think you can use both. Marquis: Shall I read it how I would normally speak? Which is like inbetween.. Zdenek: So.. like the usual kind of speak you use. Marquis: What happened Horsie? What happened Horse? Right, no rasta you wanna see me. You wanna see the broke rasta. What happened? What am I? What happened about the money that I say I give em rasta? Let me read it first. Let me read it first! Zdenek: Don’t worry! Thank you very much. Marquis: What is this? Zdenek: Transcription of the movie which was called The Rockers . I think it was shot in Kingston. Marquis: Yeah, yeah. A long time ago. Zdenek: Like 1970’s. Marquis: Before Harder They Come . Zdenek: That’s right. It’s one of those first Jamaican movies. So this is basically discussion of those three or four people. The band is talking about the one buying a bike. That’s it. Marquis: I’m lookinig at it and I’m thinking this is not one person speaking. Zdenek: Yeah. It does not make any sense. You know it’s just for the sake of the pronunciation. Marquis: Okay. Rasta the man know the session be that. Me and Tommy and Bobby and Marquis a work up a tune now for the last two days, rasta. The man know the session business. Got twenty dollars a side I and I get. The man played two LP’s for Bunny Wailer. Rasta me know that. Rasta just give me one man. Ah, who tell the man that? Me know it that from bigger source..Well I see. What you want the money to do? Rasta no shit, man. Dirty Harry things are hard. Me gonna buy a bike, rasta. What you do with the bike? Me sell, distributing, rasta. Mee sell records. Ya see. Me don't like the way business go. That's true my brethren. That's progress I support that to the fullness,

seen. Yes sir. I give you the money, seen? Sure. Control this. Man cool, ya! A'ight. All right. Nice to meet you. Irie! Yes sir. Simple thing. Zdenek: That was nice. You know a little bit of dramatic impression it has as well. Marquis: Playing a part innit? Zdenek: Yes, you can play drama or some kind of this. Marquis: Rockers. Zdenek: Have you seen this movie? Marquis: Yes I seen it twice actually. Both of them. A very long time ago. Jimmy Cliff and Harder they come. Excellent movie that gives you insight into the music business and how Jamaica works on this. Yeah and it got worse, not better.What you should always bury on mind is that Jamaica is such a small country but with such a massive influence on the world at the moment. It's amazing, reggae music counts. And black people in general. I personally been to Jamaica four times and I don't wanna come back there. I find it too depressing and upsetting. Zdenek: Somebody is coming. Marquis: Yeah. My kid. Whagwan! Zdenek: Hello. Marquis’ daughter: Hello. Marquis: Then you get kid like this, which is the third generation. English. Which are all here but they are even more English again. You understand? Zdenek: Can they still speak Patwa or..? Marquis: No, not as much. If you upset her she will cut you. You know what I mean. She will cut you. I am telling you by myself. She will understand. A lot of English people would not understand. I understand. She understands what she is saying. Zdenek: Is this somehow disappearing? Marquis: Yeah it's slowly watering down and it's getting more and more.. well, less and less prevalent. Yeah, it's not so much as my mother. My mother would talk to you like I'm talking to you and you would not understand her. Zdenek: Yeah. She would use the same language but different sentence structure. Marquis: Yeah totally, totally. Patwa. My sister.. she would talk to you. My older sister would talk to you. I'm sure you would notice already. She is ten years older than me. Yes she would talk to you. And she sounds less English than me. She has the same understanding of English as me but she was dealing with my father and my mother for longer and been to Jamaica more. And grow up around in the black community.

Zdenek: But she was born here, in the United Kingdom. Marquis: Yeah. Then you've got people born in Jamaica, come here as little kids and they talk like they never left Jamaica. They are in their twenties or thirties now. It just never leaves you. Once you are born to it and that's what you know it never leaves you. Never. You can learn different languages you know what I mean and you can hear it even in the different languages. Thing was crazy if you come across the Chinese man or India man with a turban. And a Chinese man, a proper Chinese man talking telling you about your bombacloth and raascloth. Blow your fucking mind I'm telling you. Blow your mind man. Do you understand? Zdenek: Ha ha ha. Marquis: My first reaction is exactly to laugh. You know what I mean. But then it does not sort in. Because I'm English. You understand and I'm looking at him thinking I'm more black than you but you sound more black than me. This ain't Jamaican. Zdenek: Doesn't it make you feel unhappy? Marquis: It makes me happy to know that integration is integrating. You know what I mean? There is no boundary. That all makes me happy that it is limitless. There's the different style out there to find a black man like myself to speak fluent Chinese.. Zdenek: Ha ha ha. Marquis: Do you understand? Zdenek: It's crazy. Marquis: Or to speak fluent Hindu. Again it's like.. come on man.. it blows your mind. It's funny you actually have to see it for yourself. Even now I can see the guy who is selling me fucking fruit and I'm thinking fucking hell say it again? I will never understand him. You are not used to it man. Zdenek: So you think Jamaican English will never vanish. Disappear? Marquis: Slowly yeah it would. Definitely. Zdenek: Have you ever been ashamed of speaking Jamaican English? Marquis: No. Never. Never, never. I found that.. everyone wants to.. I've been also in situations as well mindless mostly around white people when they say to me it's broken English and it's pidgin English. They said that to me but they wanted me carry on speaking it. Because they find it strangely amusing or whatever. Zdenek: Refreshing? Because the common language, British English, is too lame? Marquis: I don't think the impression they were giving me was refreshing. The impression they were giving me was like ah it's English but it's not proper English and

therefore in the end of the day everything you say in Jamaican is English but it's just put in a different way. So you have to understand it differently. Do you understand? Zdenek: Cool. Marquis: For example what I just said to you – “understand”. “Understand” for a Jamaican is more of a putdown. So they won’t say “Do you understand?” generally. They will say “Do you overstand?” Positive. Much more positive. Them little things there. But the western world don’t see it like that. Zdenek: Is there a future to Jamaican English? Is it not going to be vanished, watered down so there will not be any difference in Jamaican community in the United Kingdom. Marquis: Truth be told, if Jamaica was to stop exporting people – Jamaicans – and they stop travelling, obviously, yes, they would die out. Because each generation gets watered down and eventually it would stop. Yeah but I think they love sex too much so that would never happen. Zdenek: Ha ha ha. Marquis: That would never happen. People are always sending for people to come here and try to make some money to come home and live their life comfortably. You know what I mean? Zdenek: Yeah. Marquis: So nuh, nuh. There will always be Jamaicans and there will always be Patwa. I mean my daughter. My biggest daughter. When she listens to her grand talk, my mum, she turns and says to me what did she say dad? It is my daughter. And I say to her, don't ask me, ask your grand. And my mum will turn around and speak to her slowly saying the same things but slower. Zdenek: Then she would be able to understand. Marquis: And then she will understand. It's just like that. How she said that originally is quick. Jamaican Patwa is really, really quick. Zdenek: I know. I know. Marquis: And they cut the longest sentences into like two words! And once you overstand that – bum you’re there! It's not making things longer, it's making things much shorter. As simple as that.

3.8 Speaker E – Elaine

3.8.1 Transcript

What happened Horsie. Right no rasta you wanna see. [wH´ hap´n` ɑhç˘®si ɑ®aIt noU ɑ®asta ju w√n´ ɑsi˘]

See the broke rasta what I am? [ɑsi˘ d´ ɑb®ç˘k ®asta whÅt ɑaI ´m]

Rasta, the man know session be that. [ɑ®√st√ d5´ ɑman nç˘ ɑsQS´n bI dQt ]

So what’s going on Horsie. [waɑgWa˘n ɑha˘®sI]

What happened about the money I say I give the rasta. . [wUɑop´m` ´baUt d´ ɑmonI aI seI ai ɑgIv d´ ®asta]

Rasta the man know the session. [ ɑ®asta dQ man ɑnç˘ dQ ɑsQS´n]

Me and Tommy and Bobby and Mark [mi˘Jan »tamIJan »babI an »ma˘k] are work up of the tune now for by at least two days [a˘ ɑwç˘k op of d´ ɑtSun no ba˘ Qt li˘st tu ɑdIez]

The man know the session. [´ man ɑnç˘ d´ ɑsQS´n]

Got twenty dollars a side I and I get. [»gat twQntI ɑdal´z asaI ɑaI Qn aI ɑgQt]

The man played two LP’s for Bunny Wailer rasta. [d´ man »plIe˘d tWu El»pi˘z fç »banI vIe˘la ®asta]

Me know that. [mi ɑnç˘ dQt]

Rasta just give me the one to man. [®asta dZast ɑgIv mI d5´ ɑUan tU man]

Ah, who tell the man that? Me know. [a˘ whU ɑtQl d´ ɑman dQt // mI ɑnç˘]

Is that – this is from some of that bigger source. [Is ɑDQt TIs Is frÅm sAm´v dQt bIga »sç˘s]

Well I see. What do you want to do with the money? [wel aI ɑsi˘ // whÅt jU ɑwa˘n tU ɑdu˘ wId´ ɑmonI ]

Rasta no shit, man. Dirty Harry things are hard. [®asta no ɑSIt ma˘n // dŒtI ɑQ®I ɑtIn a ɑa˘d]

I go biking, rasta. [a ɑgo baIk ´n ®asta]

What you doing like to the bike? [whÅt jU ɑdu´n laIk to d´ ɑbaIk ]

Me sell, disturbing rasta.Why selling records. See ya. [mI ɑsQl dIs ɑtEb´n ®asta wUa ɑsQlIn ®Qɑkç˘dz sI ɑja ]

3.8.2 Recording Analysis

Elaine is a second generation Jamaican. Although she turned 42 last year and she is already a grandmother, she looks young for her age. Together with her husband she runs a family business called 'Bread & Ting' on Grosvenor Road in St.Paul’s neighbourhood. Elaine is known around the place as “Momma”. Not only is she the mother of five, she also does her best to make St.Paul’s a peaceful neighbourhood where each and every of its inhabitants can live in harmony as “one family”. Throughout our talk she kept greeting customers and saying hello to friends passing by. She had no problems talking about Jamaican Creole. Elaine also tried to teach me basic Jamaican phrases and felt unhappy for me to be leaving Bristol too soon because otherwise I could “stay a little bit longer and learn more”. Elaine carefully explained to me some of the most important features of Jamaican Creole – different THsound realizations and cluster reductions as well as universal simplification of the language by “breaking a lot of things (in a sentence) down”. According to Elaine, Jamaican Creole varieties will always survive in the United Kingdom. Not only that there still be a significant Jamaican population but actually more and more different nationalities start speaking Patwa. Elaine believes Jamaicans are a proud nation that will always keep their culture which was given to them by Jah RastaFarI. She also believes I am coming soon back to Bristol – to St.Paul’s – to learn more about Jamaicans and their culture. The vowels employed by Elaine are really close to those of original Jamaican

Creole, she makes use of monophthongisation in ”know” [ »nç˘] or ”broke” [ ɑb®ç˘k] and opening diphthongs in “days” [ »dIe˘z], “played” [ »plIe˘d], ”what happened”

[wUɑop´m`], ”why” [ wUa], “Wailer” [ vIe˘la ] and “what’s going on” [waɑgWa˘n]. In “what’s going on” a case of semivowel insertion was also detected. Considering the rhoticity of the recording, Elaine drops perhaps all of her /r/ phonemes in word final segments, which corresponds with rhoticity in the Caribbean –

“things are hard” [ ɑtIn a ɑa˘d], “bigger source” [ bIga »sç˘s] , “for Bunny

Wailer” [ fç »banI vIe˘la] or ”selling records” [ ɑsQlIn ®Qɑkç˘dz ].

Further analysis of consonants in the recording reveals the THsounds being realised as alveolar stops or their dentalized variants, with one exception of a segment which Elaine was unable to read first, and while facing difficulties, she automatically switched to British – “is that this is from some of that” [Is ɑDQt TIs Is frÅm sAm´v dQt]. Hdropping is carried out regularly in Elaine’s speech – of course, only after she switches from British English to Creole after first few phrases – “Dirty

Harry” [dŒtI ɑQ®I], “things are hard” [ɑtIn a ɑa˘d].

Affrications are carried out in “tune” [tSu˘n] and “brethren” [»brQdZrIn].

Lateral liquids are realised as clear – in “tell” [ tQl] and “sell” [ »sQl ]. These correspond with Jamaican Creole realizations. There is no example of consonant cluster reductions in the wordfinal segments i.e. “records” [»®Qɑkç˘dz ]. It is only maintained in phrases like “what’s going on”

[waɑgWa˘n] or ”what happened” [ wUɑop´m`]. Consonant omission is to be found in clusters mentioned above and also in ”selling” [ ɑsQlIn ]. Prosody of the sample keeps the Caribbean stress pattern and also the voice colour and pitch are refering to Jamaican Creole.

3.8.3 Full Tapescript

Zdenek: That I have what?

Elaine: Love your hair, it's like (inaudible)

Zdenek: It looks like black hair..?

Elaine: Yeah. Black and white. My children have the same hair.

Zdenek: It's just a pure coincidence, you know. But the quality of the hair is different. You know, it's smooth. Not like yours.

Elaine: Yes because I'm pure black, of course. My children are mixed race.

Zdenek: Yeah.

Elaine: And their hair is exactly like yours.

Zdenek: I bet.

Elaine: Exactly the same. Soft, in every way exactly like yours. For which college do you work?

Zdenek: It's the University of Bristol but this is the research for my university back home in the Czech Republic where I'm from. Yeah, like Eastern Europe.

Elaine: Yeah.

Zdenek: We are close to Germany, Poland, Slovak and Austria.

Elaine: Is there a lot of black people?

Zdenek: In Czech Republic? No. There are none.

Elaine: Oh my God.

Zdenek: Like maybe only a few.

Elaine: Oh.

Zdenek: Not that many. You know. Some basketball players or people who came to work. But there are just a few. It's not like in the United Kingdom. Here are a lot of varieties of people which I really like.

Elaine: Let's change the music, all right? Hold on.

Zdenek: Yeah. Thanks.

Elaine: Jack, Jimmy!

Zdenek: The first part is reading the text. Because I know how a speaker from Kingston, Jamaica would say this. If you please can read a few sentences for me? It is just a tapescript of the conversation. It does not make much sense.

Elaine: Some of this is in English. It has to be in Patwa. What happened Horsie. Right no rasta you wanna see. See the broke rasta what I am? Clearly like it’s completely (inaudible). Especially this one. Rasta the man know the session be that. So, kind of not,. not like Jamaican.

Zdenek: And how would Jamaican say this? ‘Rasta the man know the session be that.’

Elaine: Well if you gonna turn up and say ‘whagwan’.

Zdenek: Whagwan, whappen.

Elaine: Yeah. Whappen.Wham or whagwan. So it’s mainly like ‘what happened’.

Zdenek: So can you try to read a few sentences like Jamaican.

Elaine: In Jamaican, for you. So whagwan Horsie. What happened about the money I say I give the rasta. Rasta know the session, me and Tommy and Bobby and Marquis are work up a tune now for the last two days. The man know the session. Got twenty dollars a side I and I get. The man played two LP’s for Bunny Wailer, rasta. Me know that. Rasta just give me the one to man. Ah, who tell the man that? Me know. Is that – this is from some of that bigger source. Well I see. What you want to do with money? Rasta no shit, man. Dirty Harry things are hard. Lot of biking rasta. What you doing like to the bike? Me sell, disturbing, rasta. Selling records. See ya.

Zdenek: I think it is good enough. Thank you very much for this one.

Elaine: Brethren. That it is all used in the English verb.

Zdenek: Yeah I can't write Jamaican Patwa or something.

Elaine: You can get a book if you go probably to Waterstone's.

Zdenek: Yeah?

Elaine: And it can actually break down. It's like with 'whappen'. If you cross out the

'ed'. Keep it. In 'what' cross out the 't' and that's what you keep – whappen.

Zdenek: Whappen.

Elaine: Whappen. So you've got that piece. So where you've got the 'ed' cross it out.

Bless, baby see you later, yes? So you see that 'what happened Horsie'. So take off that, yeah?

Zdenek: All right.

Elaine: And have that. So it's er..

Zdenek: So is it some kind of Jamaican speak in Jamaica.

Elaine: Yeah. But it's kind of.. you've got to break a lot of things down.

Zdenek: Yeah and do you still speak like this? Here in Britain?

Elaine: Yeah all the time.

Zdenek: In the community but if..

Elaine: All in community. Like if you go to an Indian you will hear him talking

Jamaican. You will hear him talking Patwa. You will hear him..

Zdenek: And if you go and talk to some white people, you know, like authorities, can you somehow switch?

Elaine: Yeah. I'm talking to you here in English, which I speak normally. But if I see somebody who is Jamaican or black and I would talk to them..

Zdenek: And I would not be able to understand you. Not any more.

Elaine: No, but in some things you can. In some things you can kick off. It's like if I say

'Whagwan brethren.' or 'Whappen me brethren.' that means 'Hello. What's happening.'

Zdenek: Yeah.

Elaine: So 'Whappen Horsie.' or 'Whappen Caileen, you all right?'

Zdenek: You all right?

Elaine: When you say 'thereI' it means you are still here.

Zdenek: So you still preserve your language.

Elaine: Yeah. We keep our culture. We are proud. We'll always be proud.

Zdenek: Yeah.

Elaine: That's the blessings from Jah. RastafarI. Jah is the living conqueror.

Zdenek: I love that spirit, you know? It's my research about if there is still a future for

Jamaican English..

Elaine: Oh, all the time! We are all huge with children and all. You guys, you've got all these places up where to learn different nationalities. We can also learn them Jamaican.

We can also learn them as they say Patwa. We can also learn them all of that.

Zdenek: Yeah.

Elaine: It's also not the matter of what colour or age you are. Jamaican can be passed down on any child. You could learn them Jamaican language. It could be English, it could be Mandarin, it could be Indian, you know what I mean? Because I've got lady friends and they are Jamaican and they talk Jamaican so we sit together but even when you’re at the street barber's here you hear 'whagwan' and that's it – they are not

Jamaican. So when it comes to Jamaican you hear 'whagwan sista' you say 'whagwan likkle brethren'.

Zdenek: It's good to hear.

Elaine: It's fantastic.

Zdenek: It's great.

Elaine: We don't segregate. There is no segregation. It's peace, harmony and love.

Zdenek: One unity.

Elaine: One unity for all Jamaican people. Peace, harmony and love. That's how God has created us. Peace, harmony and love. United is one family. And that's what we are one family.

Zdenek: Yeah.

Elaine: We don't segregate. We don't care of what colour you were born.

Zdenek: Been really impolite. I haven't even asked your name. My name is Zdenek.

Elaine: Ha ha. Your name is..

Zdenek: Zdenek.

Elaine: Hello Zdenek. I'm Elaine but they call me Mommy.

Zdenek: Mommy?

Elaine: Mommy. Ha ha, it's just like you call your mum 'mommy'. It's just the way everybody calls me.

Zdenek: You look young. You look really young. So you are like twenty seven?

Elaine: No, no. I'm a grandmother. I'm a grandmother of five children.

Zdenek: Great! How old are you then?

Elaine: I am fourtytwo.

Zdenek: Really? You look younger.

Elaine: Oh, I wish. Now you gotta go ahead, you know.

Zdenek: Ha ha ha.

Elaine: Ha ha ha. This is a family community.

Zdenek: Yeah. St.Paul's.

Elaine: Yeah. It's a family community.

Zdenek: Good vibes?

Elaine: Yeah. If anything's happening to anybody we'll all be there to help.

Zdenek: Good to hear.

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Elaine: And that's what you have to do. Especially with the younger ones you still need to be there to help. As they grow you need to teach the children all about life, all about what's going around. What's this, what's that. They are all open to things in life and embrace them all and embrace their culture.

Zdenek: I love it.

Elaine: Oh. Oh you'd better stay a little bit longer so you can learn more, my darling.

Zdenek: Yeah, but unfortunately I need to leave. Sunday. Back home.

Elaine: Sunday? How long have you been here for?

Zdenek: For half a year.

Elaine: Oh my darling. Have you learnt more than you want to learn or have you learnt less?

Zdenek: More. Always when you go abroad and you have to take care of yourself you learn a lot. More things than being at home, you know.

Elaine: That's always when you get to one place but when you go out and explore then you go out and learn a lot of different things.

Zdenek: I'm just studying, not like you. I think you've got some kind of steady job here.

Elaine: Oh yeah. This is our apartement, we rented the house.

Zdenek: 'Bread & Ting'

Elaine: Yes, 'Bread and ting'

Zdenek: Ting.. yeah, okay. Because you talk Jamaican.

Elaine: Yes. Bread and ting, ha ha ha.

Zdenek: Ha ha.

Elaine: Instead of thing they cross out the 'h'.

Zdenek: They don't say 'this', they say 'dis'.

Elaine: Dis. Yeah, take out the 'th' and put there a 'd'

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Zdenek: Just putting it more simple. Yeah. Like that 'whappen'.

Elaine: Whappen. Yeah, whappen. Whagwan. Or you can say whagwan.

Zdenek: So it's like a short cut for 'what is going on'?

Elaine: Yeah. That's it. There you go.

Zdenek: Wow.

Elaine: So you know it but it's just you have to live it. It's just broken down like..they call it slam. A lot of people say it slams. It's broken down in a lot of context.

Zdenek: Thank you very much then.

Elaine: Thank you very much my darling.

Zdenek: It was a pleasure.

Elaine: It was a pleasure for me and I hope you're achieving what you want to achieve my darling.

Zdenek: I will, eventually. You know. It takes me long time.

Elaine: I hope you come back. Very soon.

Zdenek: Hope so. One day.

Elaine: One day.

Zdenek: You never can tell.

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3.9 Speaker F – Richaune

3.9.1 Transcript

What happened Horsie? [whÅ/ ɑhap´n horsi]

Right, no.. right no rasta you wouldn't see the broke [ɑ®aIt noU // ɑ®aIt noU ɑ®√st√ jU wUd´nt ɑsi DQ breUk ]

Rasta what I am what happened about the money [®√st´ whÅ/ ɑaI Qm // whÅ/ ɑhap´n ´baUt D´ ɑm√nI ] that I say I give him rasta ? [aI ɑseI aI ɑgIv Im ®√st√]

Rasta the man know the session be that. [ɑ®√st√ D´ ɑm√en noU sQSen ɑbi DQt]

Me and Tommy and Bobby and Marquis a work up [ɑmI Qnd ɑtÅmI Qnd ɑbÅbI Qnd ɑma˘®kUez ´ ɑwE®k ɑ´/] a tune now for the last two days, rasta. [´ ɑtSun ɑnaU fç® D´ la˘stSu ɑdEz ®√st√]

The man know the session’s business. [D´ ɑm√n noU D´ sQS´ns bIznIs]

Got twenty dollars a side I and I get. [gÅ/ ɑtwQntI ɑdÅl´®z ´ saId aI Qnd aI ɑgQt]

The man played two LP’s for Bunny Wailer [D´ m√n ɑpHleId tu˘ el ɑpiz fÅ® ɑbÅni˘ weIl´®] rasta me know that. Rasta just give the one to man. [®√st√ mI ɑnoU DQt ®√st√ dZ√st ɑgIv D´ ɑU√n tU mQn]

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Ah, who tell the man that? [ɑa˘ whu˘ ɑtHQl D´ m√n ɑd5√t]

Me know it from bigger source . [ɑmi // ɑnoU i/ f®Åm ɑbIg´® ɑsç®s]

Well I see. What you want the money to do? [wH´ aI ɑsi whÅt jU ɑwÅnt D´ ɑm√nI tU du ]

Rasta no shit, man. Dirty Harry, things are hard. [®√st√ n´U ɑSIt mQn dE®tI ɑhQ®I TINgz a˘® ha®d]

Me gonna buy a bike, rasta. [mi ɑgÅn√ baI ´ ɑbaIk ®√st√]

What do you want with the bike? [whÅt dU ɑju wÅnt wiT D´ ɑbaIk ]

Me sell, disturbing, rasta. Me sell records you see. [mI sQl dIs ɑt´®bIN ®√st√ mI sQl ®QɑkHÅ®dz jU ɑsi ]

Me don't like the way the business go. [ɑmI ɑd´Unt ɑlaIk D´ weI ɑD´ bIznIs ɑg´Us]

That's true my brethren. That's progress. [DQts tS®u maI b®edZ®In // DQts ɑpr´Ugr´s]

I support that to the fullness, seen. Yes sir. [aI s´ɑpç®t DQt tU D´ fUl´s ɑsin // je ɑs´®]

I give you the money, seen? Sure. Control this. [aI ɑgIv jU d5´ ɑm√nI sin // ɑSç® kHÅnɑtSrçl d5Is ]

Man cool, yo! A'ight. All right. Nice to meet you. Irie! Yes sir. [m√n ɑkHul jç aI˘ çl ɑ®aIt naIs tU ɑmitju aIri jes´®]

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3.9.2 Recording Analysis

Richaune is 12 years old. He attends St Barnabas Church of England Primary School in St Pauls. His grandparents were born in Jamaica. He was born already in the United Kingdom which makes him the third generation of Jamaicans in England. He is not sure whether there is a difference between his Creole and Creole spoken by his parents or grandparents but he definitely has no problems understanding it. However, his parents never encouraged him to speak Patwa nor did they teach him how to talk it. He has been gradually acquiring the vernacular by following and copying the speech of his parents. The monitored passage of Richaune’s speech reflects Jamaican Creole only in a limited number of features (mainly clear lateral liquids and /t/ and / T/ phoneme affrications), with majority of other features to be regarded as urban British English. The phoneme inventories are standard; the only variation can be noticed in some phoneme realizations i.e. “man” being pronounced as both standard British [mQn ],

Jamaican Creolelike [ m√n] or an inbetween realization of [ m√en ]. Richaune’s diphthongs are British i.e. ”progress” [ɑpr´Ugr´s], “broke” [ breUk ] or “goes”

[g´Us ].

The THsounds are almost always realized as dental fricatives – ”with the”

[wiT D´], ”I support that to the fullness” [ aI s´ɑpç®t DQt tU D´ fUl´s]. There are, however, some realizations as dentalized alveolars – “who tell the man that”

[ɑwhu˘ ɑtHQl D´ m√n ɑd5√t], ”control this” [kHÅnɑtSrçl d5Is ]. This is probably caused by Jamaican Creole taking over proper British English pronunciation in segments where a Creole feature immediately precedes so the speaker is tempted to finish the utterance in the same style (in “who tell the man that” there precedes a JC vowel realization in “man” before a THsound, in ”control this” there is a Caribbean affrication of a /t/ phoneme in a segment before a THsound realization). Considering the rhoticity, it is fully maintained in Richaune’s speech. He pronounces /r/ phonemes everywhere, i.e. “bigger source” [ ɑbIg´® ɑsç®s], “Bunny

Wailer” [ ɑbÅni˘ weIl´®] or “Dirty Harry” [ dE®tI ɑhQ®I].

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Richaune never drops his /h/ phonemes. On the other hand, he palatalizes /t/ and

/T/ phonemes in “tune” [ ɑtSun ], ”brethren” [ b®edZ®In ] or “control”

[kHÅnɑtSrçl]. Last but not least, there are no phonological processes generating consonant changes in the sample. Consonant clusters stay unreduced in Richaune’s speech as in “records” [®QɑkHÅ®dz ] or “dollars” [ ɑdÅl´®z]. Also the suprasegmental analysis of the sample did not reveal any Jamaican Creole features in Richaune’s speech.

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3.9.3 Full Tapescript

Zdenek: Okay, my name is Zdenek and your name is.. Richaun: Richaun. Zdenek: Richaun. It's a little bit strange for me. Alright. So if you can please read out loud a few sentences. You don't have to read all of it. Richaun: It just goes out of that? Zdenek: Yeah it's some kind of a discussion between a few guys and you can try to read it the way you would like to read it. Richaun: What happened Horsie? Right, no.. right no rasta you wouldn't see the broke rasta. What I am what happened about the money that I say I give him rasta? Rasta the man know the session be that. Me and Tommy and Bobby and Marquis a work up a tune now for the last two days, rasta. The man know the session business. Got twenty dollars a side I.. I and I get. The man played two LP’s for Bunny Wailer, rasta. Me know that. Rasta just give the one to man. Ah, who tell the man that? Me know it from bigger source... I see. What you want the money to do? Rasta no shit, man. Dirty Harry, things are hard. Me a (gonna) buy a bike, rasta. What you want with the bike? Me sell, disturbing, rasta. Me sell records you see. Me don't like the way the business go. That's true my brethren. That's progress. I support that to the fullness, seen. Yes sir. I give you the money, seen? Sure. Control this. Man cool, yo! A'ight. All right. Nice to meet you. Irie! Yes sir. Zdenek: Thank you. And now can I ask you a few questions? Your name I already know and what is your age? Richaun: I'm twelve. Zdenek: Twelve. Okay. So do you have any kind of relation with Jamaica? You were born there or some of your parents? Richaun: My grandmom and dad were. Zdenek: All right. And can you see some difference between the language you use or your parents use? Sometimes? Zdenek: You still can understand them that's for sure. Richaun: Yeah. Zdenek: And your grandma or grand dad's? Can you understand them?

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Richaun: Yes. Zdenek: You can use this Patwa in your everyday communication as well? Richaun: Yeah. Zdenek: But you don't use it if you are with kids. You know playing games or doing something at school. Richaun: No. Zdenek: Is it just about the community? Cool. So you can always switch you know like if you are talking to your family or somebody.. like in school. Is that right? Richaun: Yeah. Zdenek: Yeah. All right. Have you ever been ashamed of talking Jamaican or.. Richaun: No. Zdenek: No. You are proud of being one of the community. That's cool. So do you think there is the future for Jamaican English. Richaun: Yeah, definitely. Zdenek: You will always speak it even though you are living in the United Kingdom where you will be living for your life. or you think you are going back to Jamiaca one day? Richaun: Yeah, probably. Zdenek: So do you like it here or not? Richaun: Yeah, it's great. Fun. Entertaining. Zdenek: Yeah. Have you been there, to Jamaica? Richaun: I was born here but my mom moved from down there when she was ten then my dad did as well so.. Zdenek: But they can speak the proper way how Jamaicans do like in Kingstontown. Richaun: Yeah and then they speak proper English as well. They speak both. Zdenek: So did they teach you how to talk Jamaican English. Richaun: No, no I just like copy and following what they do. Zdenek: Yeah, all right. Thank you very much sir. It was a pleasure.

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3.10 Speaker F – Simba

3.10.1 Transcript

What happened Horsie [wÅt »apQn` hç˘®sI] right no rasta you wanna see you broke rasta [»®aIt noU ®asta »jU wÅna sI jU »b®oUk ®asta] what I am. What happened about the money [whÅt aI Qm wÅt hap´n` ´baUt d5´ »manI]

I say I give them rasta? [aI seI aI »gIvQm »®asta]

Rasta the man know the session be that. [»®asta d5Q man »nç˘ d5Q sQ»San bi˘ »d5Qt]

Me and Tommy and Bobby and Marquis [mi˘ Qn »tÅmI Qn »bÅbI Qn »ma˘ȽkU´z] are work up a tune now for the last two days, rasta. [a˘Ƚ »wçȽkap»tSu˘n naU f´Ƚ d5Q la˘st tu˘ »de˘z ®asta]

The man know the session business. [d5Q man »noU d5´ sQS´n »bIznIs]

Got twenty dollars a side I give. [»gÅt twQntI »dÅl´®s ´ saId aI »gIv]

The man played two LP’s for Bunny Wailer. [d5´ mQn »pleId tu® El»pi˘ fç® »banI veIl´®]

Rasta me know that. Rasta just give me one to man. [®asta mi˘»nç˘ dQt ®asta dZ√s »gIv mI »wan tU mQn]

Ah, who tell the man that? Me know it. [a˘ whu tHQl d5´ man d5Qt mi˘»nç˘ It]

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That for bigger source. Well I see. [d5Qt fÅȽ bIgQ Ƚ »sç˘Ƚs wel aI »si˘]

What you want the money to do? Rasta no shit, man. [whÅt »jU wÅnt d5´ »manI tU»du˘ ®asta noU »SIt mQn]

Dirty Harry things are hard. Me gonna buy a bike. [»dE ȽtI E®I »tHIN a˘r ha˘®d mi gÅna »baI ´»baIk]

What you do with the bike? [whÅt ju »du˘ wIt d5´ »baIk]

Me sell, distributing, rasta. Me sell records. Ya see. [mI sel dIs»t®IbjutIn ®asta mi˘»sel»rekç˘Ƚdz ja si]

Me don't like the way the business go. [mi doUnt »laIk d5Q»weI d5´ »bIznIs gou]

That's true, my brethren. That's progress. [DQts »tSru ma »brQdZrIn d5Qts »p®oUgr´s]

I support that to the fullness, seen. [aI s´»pç®t d5Qt tU d5´ »fUlnes »si˘n]

Yes sir. I give you the money, seen? [jes »sE® aI »gIv jU d5´ »manI »sin]

Sure, control this. Man cool ya. [Sç® kHÅn»tS®çl d5Is // man kHu˘l ja]

A'ight! All right. Nice to meet you. Irie. Yes sir. [çl ®aIt çl ®aIt naIs tU »mi˘t jU aI®i˘ jQs »sE®]

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3.10.2 Recording Analysis

Simba was born in Jamaica in 1955. Now he lives in a semidetached house on St.Nicholas Street in the very centre of St. Paul’s neighbourhood. Although it seemed that I woke him up from his afternoon nap, he agreed to share some of his views and attitudes toward Jamaican Creole. He insisted it is referred to as Patwa in Jamaica and that it is “broken English” characteristic by word shortening. According to Simba, people generally “follow what is there in front of them”. He probably means that Jamaican Creole can be “watered down” with time because of the adaption of the new generations of its speakers to their actual language setting. But Simba thinks this adaption is “all right” and it is “natural”. Simba believes that Jamaicans would speak Chinese if they lived in China and equally Chinese would speak Jamaican Creole if they lived in Jamaica. The language development is about “getting accustomed to what is there.” Analysis of Simba’s speech brings again the problem of proper orthography. Although the vowels employed by Simba are really close to those of original Jamaican Creole, it does not always seem suitable to use phonemic signs for cardinal vowels in the transcription. Nevertheless, the truly Jamaican feature of Simba’s speech is monophthongisation as in ”know” [»nç˘], “days” [»de˘z] or ”my” [ma ]. On the other hand, there are no opening diphthongs – so typical for Jamaican Creole – present in the recording i.e. “Wailer” [veIl´®] and “played” [»pleId ].

Considering the rhoticity of the language on the recording, Simba carefully pronounces perhaps all of his /r/ phonemes, which is not usual back in the Caribbean but almost a norm in Bristol. Analyzing other consonants in the recording reveals the THsounds being realised as alveolar stops (or their dentalized variants), which fully corresponds with realizations in Jamaican Creole. Hdropping is carried out rather inconsistently in Simba’s speech – “what happened Horsie”

[wÅt »apQn` hç˘®sI] and “Dirty Harry things are hard” [»dE ȽtI E®I »tHIN a˘r ha˘®d].

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Affrications are carried out at /t/ and / T/ phonemes in “control”

[kHÅn»tS®çl], “that’s true my brethren” [DQts »tSru ma »brQdZrIn]and of course in “tune” [tSu˘n]. Lateral liquids are realised as clear – in “sell” [ »sel ], “tell”

[tHQl] and “fullness” [ »fUlnes ], which also corresponds with Jamaican Creole realizations. On the other hand, despite his description of Jamaican Creole as the variety of English characterised by word shortening, Simba does not simplify consonant clusters in the wordfinal segments i.e. “records” [»rekHç˘Ƚdz ] and “dollars” [»dÅl´®s]. Discussing the prosody of the sample, there is an evident Caribbean stress pattern and also the voice pitch and colour give the instant impression that Simba is undoubtedly a Jamaican speaker.

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3.10.3 Full Tapescript

Zdenek: So if I can ask you what kind of relation you do have to Jamaica? If you were born there or are you like the second generation of people who came here..? Simba: Well I don't know about second generation. I was born in Jamaica in 1955. Zdenek: All right. So you basically talk Jamaican English as your first tongue, first language. Simba: Well we like to think of the language that Jamaicans speak as Patwa. Zdenek: Yeah. Simba: It's broken English. Zdenek: What does it mean, broken English? Like you use different sentences, vocabulary, different words being used? Simba: I think uhm they are probably shortening the words. That's probably the best way to describe it – by the words shorten(ed). Zdenek: Yeah and do you think that people who live here for a longer time they somehow switch when they talk to somebody else than people from Jamaican community? Simba: No I don't think it's quite all right. I think people firstly they have uhm the language that's known by everybody where they come from originally and then you do in time adapt to whatever language's been spoken around you. Zdenek: But you still preserve your original language. Simba: Yeah. Zdenek: And you speak it with your own people. Simba: Yeah. Zdenek: And if you are talking to some authority or some people so you somehow adapt to their language? Talking in office or the Council. Simba: No, not in that sense. I mean you you .. language that is your own yes you have the grasp of it but you will take up the language of where you are because it's something either you seen everyday or you use it everyday. Zdenek: Uhhuh. Do you still think that Jamaican English has some future that it will not be destroyed after a few generations living abroad? Simba: No I don't think. I can't think of being destroyed coz as I said if something is being used constantly and so on then it does become a part of or it becomes an origin in itself really.

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Zdenek: Yeah but you know in case like watering down the language. Simba: Well, yes. I can agree that it can be watered down yes. But I don't think you actually lose the.. Zdenek: And like maybe kids or if you have any grand kids so they possibly can't speak Patwa as well as you can. Simba : No, I don't think that one is quite true or feared. Zdenek: Do they still preserve it even you know the younger generations can speak it? Simba: Yes, and again as I said people tend to.. they follow what's there in front of them and that's all right. Jamaicans will speak Patwa but other speakers will speak Patwa too. Zdenek: Like Chinese or Muslim? Simba : Of course. Jamaicans will speak Chinese and Chinese will speak Patwa. Zdenek : Is it like this concept of one unity, people getting closer together? Simba : It's again as I said. You're there and you get accustomed to what is there. Doesn't mean to say that it's yours or whatever you just get accustomed to what is there. Zdenek: Yeah. Simba : So I guess if you're in Russia and you're there long enough then you will learn some Russian. It's the same thing. Zdenek: Yeah I'm from Czech Republic but if I ever lived in Russia probably I would you know talk Russian but I would preserve my Czech language as well. Simba: That's correct. Zdenek: Yeah. Simba: uhhuh. Zdenek: So can you please.. that's the last thing try to read some of these sentences like the Jamaican would? Simba: What happened Horsie? Right, no rasta you wanna see you broke rasta what I am what happened about the money that I say I give them rasta? Rasta the man know the session be that. Me and Tommy and Bobby and Marquis a work up a tune now for the last two days, rasta.The man know the session business. Got twenty dollars a side I and I get. The man played two LP’s for Bunny Wailer. Rasta me know that. Rasta just give me one man. Ah, who tell the man that? Me know it that from bigger source ... Well I see. What you want the money to do? Rasta no shit, man. Dirty Harry things are hard. Me gonna buy a bike, rasta. What you do with the bike? Me sell, distributing, rasta. Mee sell records. Ya see. Me don't like the way the business go. That's true my

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brethren. That's progress I support that to the fullness, seen. Yes sir. I give you the money, seen? Sure. Control this. Man cool, ya! A'ight. All right. Nice to meet you. Irie! Yes sir. Zdenek : Thank you very much.

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3.11 Problems Encountered

Although I managed to gather as much information on the use of Jamaican Creole among inhabitants of Caribbean background in St. Paul’s in Bristol as I needed, this was by no means achieved without encountering various problems. Firstly, by the time I realized even such a small community as St. Paul’s keeps its own hierarchy and unwritten laws, I kept asking Jamaicans standing on the corner of the street whether I could have a word with them and answer was either if “I was police” or “to fuck off” before I realized that they would talk to me only if I wanted to buy some “weed or dope”. Next thing, although my hair seemed to be of “mixed race” as Elaine brilliantly put it, my accent still marked me as an Eastern European and people who met me kept constantly making fun out of it. The chances of actually recording a representative of Jamaican community and thus reaching my academic goals were less than 40 per cent. The other problem was interview management – none of my originally scheduled interviews happened – the chef who served me Jamaican goat with rice in “Rice & Things – Exclusive Jamaican Restaurant” promised me to arrange a session for me to interview the whole shift but the interview never occurred as the chef stopped answering his phone and also his assistant kept telling me he “was not there”. I was valued as a customer but not as a guy “sniffing around”. After this experience I did not have a courage to ask in “The Plantation”, the much larger and more posh Jamaican restaurant located right on Gloucester Road. The interview which I arranged with a good Jamaican friend of my British housemate via mobile phone also did not happen as the respondent did not show up for the meeting. I realized the only way to collect material was to get to the streets, confront potential respondents face to face and record samples “on the run.” This sometimes brought me into an uncomfortable situation. Fortunately enough, nobody got hurt during my fieldwork and I still think it was only the matter of time before I was able to become a part of the community and to be completely free to chat and hang around with anybody in the area. No doubt, Jamaicans are the proud nation but on the other hand, they are willing to communicate; they are openminded, they embrace life and are eager to have an insight into different cultures outside their own. Talking to people like Marquis, Elaine or Simba was truly an enchanting experience and I’m hoping to see at least some of them in the near future.

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4 Conclusion

There are groups of speakers of AfroCaribbean background in the United Kingdom who use slight modifications of original Jamaican Creole – they blend it only decently with several elements of a local English variety in terms of vocabulary or accent but preserve the original structure of the language (Chantal, Marquis, Elaine and Simba). These people are usually the first or the second generation Caribbeans and they can truly be considered Creole speakers. The language of others, on the contrary, has undergone a long lasting process of accommodation to a local British variety because of the tighter interaction between immigrants and locals. Such variety blends both the features of Jamaican Creole and British vernacular and it has developed its very own characteristics reflecting the unique British black experience (Sammy, Richaune). The other forms of British Creole are used as a marker of ethnic identity (Candice). The suppressing language policies of 1960’s accelerated assimilation of Jamaican Creole speakers to British English but in the same time had some effect of increasing perception of continued use of Jamaican Creole as a symbol of the shared black identity and resistance against socioeconomic discrimination and political inequality (Edwards 1986:16). The following table (Fig.12) presents all social and phonological information about the speakers interviewed during the fieldwork in St Pauls, Bristol. For the sake of the phonological comparison there were also added ‘The Rockers speakers’. The table sums up both sociological data (age, sex, place of birth, generation of immigration) and data concerning phonology – distribution and realization of vowels (monophthongisation of diphthongs, use of opening diphthongs, use of peripheral vowels instead of centralised ones, semivowel insertion), distribution and realization of consonants (rhoticity, THstopping, Hdropping, affrication, avoidance of velar nasal /ŋ/, clear laterals, VB confusion, consonant cluster reduction, consonant omission) and prosody (even rhythm, irregular stress placing, rising intonation in declarative sentences).

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Fig.12 – St Pauls speakers Chart

BC BC JC

L&R L&R Richaune Richaune Marquis Candice Candice Chantal Chantal Sammy Simba Elaine Elaine

Richard Leroy 30+ 40- 45 56 12 42 16 16 25 28

Age

M M M M M M F F F Sex

1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 born in Jamaica

0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 born in the UK

1 3 2 2 2 2 1 0 0 # Generation ½ ½ 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 Monoph. Vowels Vowels 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 Open.diph. ½ ½ ½ 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 Cnt.-> Card. ½ ½ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 Semi-vwl's

1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rhoticity ½ ½ 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 TH-stopping ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 1 0 1 0 0 H-dropping Consonants Consonants 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 Affrication

0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 /N/ -> /n/

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Clear /l/

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 V <-> B ½ ½ ½ ½ 0 0 0 0 1 1 Cluster Rdct. ½ ½ ½ ½ 0 0 0 0 1 1 Cnsnt omiss.

1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 Even Rhythm Prosody

1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 Irrglr Stress ½ ½ 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 Rising Intnt

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The chart of St Pauls speakers (Fig.12) clearly demonstrates the gap between the original Jamaican Creole and the newly emerging variety of the Caribbeanbased British Creole. This gap can produce a wide range of varieties within a speech community. Some people are able to use both Jamaican Creole and local variety of British English. It is the case of socalled codeswitching between Creole and British English – the native language of the immigrant community is maintained but performed only in private conversations within group of insiders for informal communication, for internal purposes only. Chantal claimed she uses Patwa only when she talks to some Jamaican friends, when she is ‘messing around’. Similarly, Marquis asked me in the beginning of the interview whether he should talk to me as ‘an English person or a Jamaican person’ and then described his normal speech as ‘inbetween’. However, the vast majority of Britishborn Caribbeans is using English as their first language. Competence in proper English is essential. Children are rarely encouraged by their parents to speak Creole and are advised to concentrate instead on mastering Standard English varieties in order to maximize their success in entrance exams in access to postcompulsory education, increasing their chances of getting desirable and wellpaid jobs. Most second and third generation Caribbeans are bilingual or multilingual; they acquire Creole during their adolescence by socializing in peer groups. Ability to speak Creole depends on the degree of integration of the speaker into the Jamaican community and importance which he attributes to his or her cultural heritage and social identity. Some members of the youngest Caribbean generation make use of Patwa simply as a slang between friends but the result of their communication is not Jamaican Creole, it is a social construct of what they stereotypically perceive to be Jamaican Creole. It is a Creolewannabe speech incorporating only limited number of Creole elements, a product of systematic adaption of a speaker’s first language to produce speech forms which pretend to be Creole but which would not pass for being Creole back in the Caribbean. A speaker’s competence in Creole is shaped by a combination of several forming factors – generational distance of a speaker in relation to the generation of direct immigrants and the degree of language acquisition (bilingual from birth, acquisition before adulthood, late adaption), the other important factor is integrity into local community. Some members of Caribbean communities (although coming from the

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second or third generation) have competence of speaking Jamaican Creole similar or even comparable to speakers actually born in Jamaica while the other speakers of the same generation show only passive knowledge of a limited range of Creolisms passed down by their parents or adopted from peer groups during adulthood. The last thing to be mentioned considering the linguistic variation of British AfroCaribbeans is the fact that age has no clear relationship to generation of immigration. Caribbean workingclass migrants come and go, as Marquis proclaimed: “(British) People are always sending for (Jamaican) people to come here and (they) try to make some money to come home and live their life comfortably.”

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Summary

The present study gives an insight into Jamaican Creole, the English variety spoken on island of Jamaica, discussing its phonology and also briefly summarizing its history. The main objective, however, is a linguistic research of its contemporary variety spoken in the United Kingdom, which is known as British Creole. British Creole is a common language for ethnic communities of people of Caribbean background living in the United Kingdom. The contemporary speakers of British Creole are the first, second and third generation of Caribbean migrants. British Creole has developed over time to a mixture of original Jamaican Creole and various local forms of British

English. The main focus of the fieldwork and research was to discover the phonological nature of the contemporary British Creole varieties (phonemic inventories, phoneme distribution, phoneme realizations and suprasegmental phonology). The findings proved the assumption of gradual ‘watering down’ of the original language and simultaneously accommodating to British language setting. The longer the original Creole is exposed to a local variety of British English, the less of the original Creole’s phonemic authenticity is preserved. The first generation Caribbeans who were born in Jamaica and spent there at least their early childhood preserve most phonological features of the original Creole.

They also share more positive attitudes toward the language and Jamaican identity and culture in general. Children and descendants of the first generation Jamaicans have become more integrated into British society and speech communities – childhood seems to be the critical period for language acquirement. For the second and third generations of Caribbean descendants a local English dialect is their primary vernacular and Creole serves various different social purposes (ingroup slang, social exclusion, identity marker).

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Resumé

Tato práce nabízí nahlédnutí do jamajské kreole – varianty anglického jazyka, kterým se mluví na ostrově Jamajka. Předložena je fonologická analýza jazyka, ale také krátké shrnutí jeho historického vývoje. Hlavním cílem práce je však lingvistický rozbor britské varianty jamajské kreole, která je označována jako britská kreole. Britská kreole je společným jazykem pro skupiny britského obyvatelstva s karibským původem.

Současní uživatelé britské kreole jsou první, druhou a třetí generací původních karibských přistěhovalců. Britská kreole se postupem času vyvinula do podoby směsi původního jamajského jazyka a rozličných místních dialektů britské angličtiny.

Hlavním cílem terénního průzkumu a teoretického studia bylo vystižení fonologického popisu současné britské kreole (jejího fonemického inventáře, distribuce fonémů, jejich realizace a suprasegmentální fonologie). Výsledek potvrdil prvotní předpoklad postupného ‘ředění’ originálního jazyka za současného přizpůsobování se britskému jazykovému prostředí. Ztráta fonologické původnosti jazyka je přímo úměrná době expozice původního kreolského jazyka místním variantám anglického jazyka. První generace Jamajčanů, kteří se narodili ještě na ostrově a strávili zde aspoň rané dětství, si zachovává ve své řečí nejvíc znaků původní kreole a jejich postoje vůči jazyku a jamajské kultuře obecně jsou mnohem silnější. Jejich děti a vnoučata se již integrovali do britské společnosti a přizpůsobili se jí i jazykem – dětství je zde zřejmě klíčovým momentem. Pro druhou a třetí generaci Jamajčanů se již stal místní britský dialekt mateřským jazykem a původní karibský jazyk používají výhradně pro sociální účely

(užívají ho jako slang uzavřené skupiny, jako nástroj společenské exkluze, nebo jako určovací znak vlastní identity).

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CD Tracklist 11

The FULL ARCHIVE OF THIS THESIS INCLUDING ALL RECORDINGS is on the web. The link is: http://nyvlt.kvalitne.cz/jamaica.exe (selfextracting zip file 70Mb )

11 The full script of tracks no.1115, taken out of a fictional Jamaican dub radio KJah 103 with DJ Horace 'the Pacifist' Walsh is to be found on the web. The link is: http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/466217grandtheftautoiii/faqs/45205

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