A Patois Revival: Jamaica Weighs Language Change as Ties to Britain Fray

Walk into any government office, courtroom or classroom in Jamaica, and you’ll be expected to speak the official language, English.

But venture into the street, tune into a radio talk show, or flip through the pages of Di Jamiekan Nyuu Testiment, or step into someone’s home or scroll through the feeds of Jamaican influencers, and another language dominates: the astonishingly vibrant Patois.

Long stigmatized with second-class status and often mis-characterized as a poorly structured form of English, Patois has its own distinct grammar and pronunciation. Linguists say Patois, which is also called Patwa, Creole or, simply, Jamaican, is about as different from English as English is from German. It features a dizzying array of words borrowed from African, European and Asian languages.

Now, as Jamaica moves ahead with plans to cut ties to the British monarchy — a shift that would remove King Charles III as its head of state and make the Commonwealth’s largest country in the Caribbean into a republic — momentum is building to make Patois Jamaica’s official language, on par with English.

“If there was ever a time to definitively change the status of Jamaican Creole, it is now,” said Oneil Madden, a linguist at Jamaica’s Northern Caribbean University.

But the question of linguistic sovereignty has Jamaica’s top political leaders staking out positions. And the intensifying debate touches on issues of national identity, class divisions and the legacies of slavery in what was once one of Britain’s most prized overseas possessions.