Home Albanian Patois Fe Real Arabic Brazilian Kai Imani Gandy and Allan P. Evering Chinese Columbian Introduction Cuban Dominican (1) According to the 1990 Census of Population and Dominican (2) Housing, only three out of five New Yorkers claim to use Ecuadorian English at home. This statistic is due to the fact that there is a Ethiopian large number of ethnic communities in New York. New York Filipino is home to 439,4000 Jamaican immigrants, making New Greek York the state with the largest population of Jamaican Haitian immigrants. One of the largest communities of Jamaican- Hasidim Americans in New York is situated in Queens and has 93,153 Indian Jamaican-Americans. In this paper, we will give you an Indo-Guyanese account of what we have learned about the history of Irish Jamaicans in America, the history of Jamaican Patois, the Italian accent of Jamaican Patois, conflicting views of Jamaican Jamaican Patois, Jamaican Patois in early childhood education, effects Japanese of Jamaican Patois on education, intercultural Korean (1) communication, stores and restaurants, Jamaican Korean (2) publications, and the Haitian presence in the Queens Village Mexican community. Pakistani Polish History of Jamaicans in America Puerto Rican When Columbus "discovered" Jamaica in 1494, there Peruvian were indigenous people residing in Jamaica known as the Romanian Arawaks. The Arawaks were a peaceful people who Russian migrated from Venezuela at two separate points in history. Salvadorian Senegalese The first migration was in 650AD and the second was in Trinidadian 900AD. Columbus heard the natives call the land Turkish "Xaymaca", so he decided to call the land "Jamaica". There Ukrainian was an influx of Spanish-Europeans in 1510. They settled in Vietnamese present-day Spanishtown in Jamaica. In 1655, Jamaica was West Indian captured by the British who turned to large-scale importation of Africans to be used on sugar plantations. In 1838, slaves were emancipated and plantation owners began to pay wages to its workers. In the years following World War II, United States and United Kingdom were in need of reconstruction and expansion of their economy. Many Jamaicans saw this as an opportunity to come to the U.S.A. and the U.K. for a more prosperous living. Consequently, the years following 1944 saw a tremendous migration of Jamaican immigrants who came to aide reconstruction. These immigrants settled in areas such as New York and London. Today, there are large and well-established Jamaican communities in these areas. History of Patois When the British began the large scale importation of Africans to be used as slaves in 1655, plantation owners and slaves used a Lingua Franca to communicate with each other. A Lingua Franca is a language used to facilitate communication between two people that do not have a common language. As the contact between the plantation owners, who spoke English, and the slaves, who used various African dialects, was sustained, the Lingua Franca developed into a pidgin language. The pidgin was based on the languages of the plantation owners and the slaves, but had a much smaller vocabulary than any one of the languages. The children of the plantation owners maintained the English language. The children of the slaves, however, considered the pidgin to be their native language. As the pidgin became more advanced with respect to grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, it developed into a Creole, which we now refer to as Jamaican Patois. Not all Jamaicans use Patois. It is the dominant dialect among the poor in Jamaica, but it is not exclusive to them. Many middle-class and upper-class Jamaicans use Patois in social settings as opposed to the standard English they use in the workplace. A Lesson on the Accent of Jamaican Patois Jamaicans often drop the h's (thus 'ouse' instead of house) and add them in unexpected places (e.g., 'hemphasize'). Many don't pronounce 'th' and also drop the 'h'; so you hear t'ree for three and t'anks for thanks. The is usually pronounced as de and them as dem. They also sometimes drop the w, as in ooman (woman). Conflicting Views of Jamaican Patois There is an ongoing debate in Jamaica over the use of the Jamaican dialect. There are people who strongly support the formalization of its use in Jamaican society and there are those who strongly oppose it. However, in the Jamaican community in New York, it is only acceptable to speak Jamaican Patois among others who also speak the language. The general feeling about Patois is that it is a "poor man's language". It is considered to be so because Standard English grammar rules are not followed, giving the speaker the appearance of being uneducated. It does, however, serve as a good way for Jamaicans to relate to each other in informal settings. A boundary is something used to express one's membership in a specific ethnic group. Jamaican Patois serves as a boundary for the Jamaican-American community. Those that use a deep Jamaican Patois, the Patois that most strongly deviates from Standard English, are obviously thought to be Jamaican immigrants. Those who are born in the United States, but are of Jamaican heritage usually do not acquire the ability to master Jamaican Patois. Jamaican Patois is lost in first generation Americans because immigrant parents usually do not encourage its use and it is not taught, or even allowed, in American schools. Jamaican Patois in Early Childhood Education Many first-generation Jamaican-Americans are born into a household in which one or both of the parents speak Jamaican Patois. So, in the early stage of childhood development, the child will develop an ear for listening to Jamaican Patois and may emulate his/her parents in an attempt to speak Jamaican Patois as well. In the primary schools in Queens Village, Jamaican-American students would never be taught how to speak Jamaican Patois, and would thus never be taught in a bilingual (Standard English/Jamaican Patois) environment. In fact, by the time the child enters elementary school, teachers begin to "correct" any traces of Jamaican Patois in the child's speech pattern. We sat in on one of the Kindergarten classes at St. Joachim and Anne Elementary School to observe the speech patterns of children of Jamaican descent. There were four children in the class whose speech patterns suggested that they were Jamaican. Three of them spoke an English dialect that was much closer to Standard English than Jamaican Patois. Ethan, the fourth child, was an immigrant, himself, who spoke in a dialect that was much closer to Jamaican Patois than Standard English. It was clear that Jamaican Patois was his native tongue, but because he had attended St. Joachim and Anne Elementary for pre-Kindergarten as well, there had already been steps taken to "fix" his speech. He did not have a problem interacting with his classmates, so his teacher did not seem to be concerned with his accent; but from time to time, he would use words that did not belong to the English language and his teacher would correct him. For instance, the class was talking about fears when Ethan said that he was afraid of duppies. The class giggled a little because they did not understand what he was saying. When he described his fear more in-depth, the teacher realized that he was talking about ghosts. She corrected him and he began to replace the Jamaican word duppy with the English word ghost. Effects of Jamaican Patois on Education Many of the young Jamaican-Americans in this community are appreciative of the sense of culture they received growing up, but we spoke to two college-aged Jamaican-American students who felt that growing up in a Jamaican Patois-speaking household hindered their success on the verbal section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test. One of them claimed that growing up in a house where his parents would say things like, "Unu mus stop di rompin!!" instead of "Settle down!!" hurt his vocabulary because many of the words he was expected to know for the test were never used in his house. Intercultural Communication Jamaican Patois is a language that is heavily based on English. So, anyone who has the ability to speak Jamaican Patois should also be able to understand Standard English with ease. Thus, it is not necessary to have a translator for translation from Standard English to Jamaican Patois. On the contrary, Jamaican Patois can be anywhere from mildly to completely incomprehensible to speakers of Standard English for two reasons: 1.) The accent used when speaking Jamaican Patois is very different from the accent used when speaking Standard English; and 2.) There are words used when speaking Jamaican Patois that are not taken from the English language. Still, there is not a need for a translator to facilitate the speaker of Standard English in understanding the speaker of Jamaican Patois because the majority of Jamaican-Americans (born in the United States and Jamaica) are taught to speak Standard English from an early age. If the situation arises in which a speaker of Jamaican Patois and a speaker of Standard English are communicating, the speaker of Jamaican Patois will "turn on" his/her Standard English- speaking ability in order to have a successful conversation. Because it is believed that speakers of Jamaican Patois can carry on successful conversations in English, the government does not feel that it is necessary to make special provisions for Jamaican Patois-speaking people. Likewise, people providing any type of service (such as a nurse) would never need to hire anyone to interpret for them. If the Jamaican Patois-speaking party is the patient, it is assumed that he/she could turn down his/her Jamaican accent to accommodate the nurse.