Quite a few people I know are British-Jamaican. They all speak standard English when it's required of them but, in informal settings, a mixture of English and patois is the norm - unless someone gets heated about something and then it's full-on patois. I can usually follow most of it. I even use bits of patois myself on occasion, but only with people who know me well - its use in other situations can be problematic.
Anyway, I've been researching the spelling of Jamaican patois, which is no easy task since, unlike a number of French influenced creoles, there is no standardized spelling of SWCC. There have been attempts at standardization, but since Jamaican patois exists largely as a spoken language (most speakers read and write standard English) standardization isn't really a critical issue.
I won't bore you with alternate spellings of various creole words, except to say that the main argument seems to be over the use of "a" or "aa" in such words as "raas" and "gwaan". But something I came across in my wanderings does, I think, deserve to be shared.
In the 1990s, HUD (the US Department of Housing and Urban Development) issued a leaflet to tenants advising them of their rights, some 1,500 of those leaflets were printed in Jamaican patois.
Here's an extract:
"Yuh as a rezedent, ave di rights ahn di rispansibilities to elp mek yuh HUD-asisted owzing ah behta owme fi yuh ahn yuh fambily. Dis is a brochure distributed to yuh cawze Hud ah provide some fawm ahf asistance aur subsidy fi di whole apawtment buildin. As ah pawt ahfits dedication fi maintain di bes pawsible living enviornment fi all rezedents, yuh HUD field affice encourage ahn suppowts . . ."As far as I'm concerned, such a rendering is a fundamentally misguided (and extremely patronizing) attempt at effective communication. But make up your own mind, you can find the full story here.
