Gateway to World Englishes

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Jamaica

English came to Jamaica in the 17th century, when British colonists settled there and brought African slaves. It is the Island’s official language. However, the variety mostly spoken on Jamaica is Jamaican Creole English. Between Creole and British Standard English, there is no clear borderline, but rather a continuum. People rarely speak either of the “extremes”, but have command of a certain range of expression within this continuum.

Among the features of Jamaican English, there are the following: Jamaican English has a syllable-timed rhythm, i.e. there is no schwa in unstressed syllables. This leads to the prominent "rapping rhythm"; of this variety. Certain vowel distinctions are lost, so that cat, cot and caught sound the same. The dental fricative ("th") becomes an alveolar stop (/t/ or /d/). Furthermore, consonant clusters are simplified, and metathesis can take place (ask becomes aks). In addition to verbal inflection, Jamaican English makes use of a tense-mood-aspect system that is based on pre-verbal markers.

Grenada

There are forms of Jamaican English spoken by the Jamaican exile communities in Canada and London. Those varieties, however, are rather distinct from the "original" variety of Jamaica.

Official government site of Jamaica

CVM TV (TV)

Jamaica Observer (Newspaper)

Power 106FM (Radio)

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