Instead, these have an /a/: million = milian (IPA mɪljan) separation = separieshan (IPA sɛpaɹiɛʃan). Then there are “ -ion” words like nation, organization, and million, which one might expect to have an /-o/ type sound in the last syllable. In fact, the broad Patois realization is Jumieka (IPA ʤʊmiɛka), with a clear / u/ for the “Ja-.”** One might expect that the “a” in the first syllable would correspond to an /a/ sound.

Take, for example, the name of the country itself, Jamaica. Where Americans and Brits uses a schwa sound, Patois assigns these unstressed syllables to an a, e, i, o or u sound depending on the context.* And it’s not predictable from standard English spelling which of these is assigned to which vowel. Such syllables get less emphasis in most accents of English.īut as with many creoles, Jamaican Patois has a more interesting array of such vowel sounds than Standard English does. Also termed “unstressed” or (with a slightly different meaning) “reduced,” these are vowels such as the “a” in afraid, the “a” in comm a, or the “e” in pock et. Jamaican Patois is too broad a topic for one blog post, so I’ll focus on an aspect of the language I find particularly interesting: weak vowels. So it offers insight into both the origin of creole languages and the features of Early Modern English.Ī few months back, I posted this “Jamaican Patois Night Before Christmas,” an excellent introduction to what this unique language sounds like. The language derives from African languages and various dialects of the British Isles spoken in the 17th-Century. I’ve recently become fascinated with Jamaican Patois, the creole language spoken on the island of the same name.

Jamaican pidgin