Morris Cargill and his Bukra Talk

Below is a subsection of the late Morris Cargill's July 15, 1999 Gleaner Column entry entitled "Bad News."  He entitled this section of his column "Slave talk." I am unaware of the percentage of Jamaicans who would embrace Cargil's correlation between a Jamaican's inability to master English and indiscipline.  Not a few, however, would agree with the late "intellectual" that Jamaican Creole is substandard English. May the Lord be pleased to use our translation project to eradicate these misconceptions of Jamaican Creole (and its speakers). 


"I prefer to describe what we call our patois as either slave talk or yahoolish, for that is what it really is. 

When I was going around the other West Indian islands during the Federation I was greatly impressed by two important things. When Grantley Adams made his speeches in the Federal House he often spoke with a thick Barbadian accent. But beneath that accent his speeches were well structured, and were in excellent English. I soon found that to be true of all the Barbadians I met. Never mind the accent. Whatever they said was firmly based upon well structured English.

The Trinidadians had a different but softer accent, yet they too spoke excellent English. When one phoned a private home both the maid and the mistress spoke the same excellent English with the same charming lilting accent.

The situation in Barbados and Trinidad differs greatly from the situation in Jamaica for our patois is nothing more than hopelessly broken English, unstructured and incapable of dealing with abstract concepts, without tense or number.

Although a few Jackasses, some of whom are at the University, keep on claiming that Patois is some kind of language, it is nothing more than an undisciplined and unstructured kind of chattering. An undisciplined and disorderly way of speaking makes for an undisciplined and disorderly mind. Of course the converse is also true. A disorderly and undisciplined mind also brings about a disorderly and undisciplined way of talking.

One doesn't know which comes first but I don't think it matters. Every writer complains about the lack of discipline in Jamaica but it doesn't seem to occur to many that that indiscipline is expressed by, and probably results from, the undisciplined way so many talk. We should watch our language and stop calling slave talk some sort of cultural heritage. It is nothing of the sort. It is simply mental sloppiness. Barbados and Trinidad both have a useful lesson to teach us. It may well be the reason why both those countries are so very much more successful than we are."


Post by Bertram Gayle - Project Co-ordinator

A Bad Theologian but a Good Advocate

Not so long ago, 12th April, 10, the Gleaner published a letter written by a Seventh-Day Adventist pastor in response to a column Carolyn Cooper had written in the said paper. Rev'd McFarlane response was primarily targeted at Ms Carolyn's theology, particularly his understanding of what she said about the relationship between the living and the dead. What is of primary interest to us today however is the Rev's final paragraph. He wrote:

"Like Carolyn though, I place high esteem on the Jamaican language. We are quick to accept foreign languages and dialects as authentic but are reserved in accepting our own. Patois is what identifies us as being uniquely Jamaican, and I think we should speak it with confidence anywhere we are in the world, even when we get to heaven."

On Vulgarity & the Jamaican Bible

Our Translation Consultant, Ron Ross, posted the following respone to our post "Mieri Briid?" We thought we'd post it here, seeing many persons may have passed over the "commen" link.

"Vulgarity can be and is expressed in any of the world's 6000 + languages. But it is important to remember that what is vulgar is the use to which a language is being put by individual speakers and NOT the language itself. Jamaican Creole --up until now—has been limited to certain domains in Jamaican society (dub poetry, dance hall music, most informal and intimate conversations, etc.). In some of those domains, vulgarity is doubtless more common than in others, such as academic discourse, education, the press, serious literature and sermons, domains which in Jamaica have traditionally belonged to English. This can give the impression that Creole is used more frequently to express vulgarity.

But now Creole is acquiring a new domain, that of Scripture, and I have no doubt that Jamaica's heart language will be found worthy of the task. And soon Jamaicans will hear the Bible in a new way, not in the language they learn in school, but in the one they learn at home, in the one that binds them in their Jamaicanness, the one that reminds them that they share a common history of agony and victory, the one they use in those warmer, less academic moments. And they will hear the Bible as they never have before."