Majority favour patois as an official language of Jamaica

[Anthea Fraser Gupta]

The article continues:

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One thousand men and women between the ages of 18 and 80 plus years,
from rural and urban centres across Jamaica were surveyed.

When asked whether or not Jamaican (patois) was a language 80 per cent
of respondents agreed. A further, 69 per cent felt it should be made an
official language of Jamaica alongside English and 71 per cent of the
population would like to have bilingual schools.

According to the Language Unit, "79 per cent of Jamaicans polled
declared themselves speakers of both Jamaican and English, thereby
recognising the bilingual nature of the language situation in the
country". There was little variation in responses across all age groups.


Only 10.9 per cent and 10.5 per cent respectively of the entire
population polled declared themselves to be speakers of English only or
Jamaican only. Slightly more women (11.8 per cent) than men (10.0 per
cent) declared themselves to be speakers of English only.

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Bilingualism is the dominant desire here (replacing a concept of
'bidialectalism'. But there's a long way to go. When you look at
websites, blogs and chatrooms from Jamaica what you see is
interpenetration of English and patwa in informal discourse, and
dominance of English in everything faintly formal. There are very few
uses of Patwa outside the spoken, the literary, and the very informal.

Anthea

*     *     *     *     *
Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)
School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT
<www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg>
NB: Reply to a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk
*     *     *     *     *
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu 
> [mailto:owner-lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu] On Behalf Of 
> Joseph Farquharson
> Sent: 03 November 2005 15:39
> To: Language Policy-List
> Subject: Majority favour patois as an official language of Jamaica
> 
> 
>  Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja
> published: Wednesday | November 2, 2005
> 
> Petrina Francis, Education Reporter
> 
> A MAJORITY of Jamaicans think parliamentarians should
> deliver their speeches in Gordon House in the local
> dialect, patois in order to communicate better with
> the public.
> 
> This is according to an islandwide survey, which was
> conducted recently by the Jamaica Language Unit at The 
> University of the West Indies, Mona.
> 
> According to the findings of the survey, "people who
> understand English will understand patwa (patois) but
> not vice versa",....
> 
> 
> More at 
> http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20051102/news/news7.html
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> CURRENT MAILING ADDRESS
> 
> Joseph T. Farquharson, BA Hon. (UWI), M.Phil. (Cantab.) 
> Department of Linguistics                                           
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
> Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig,
> Germany
> 
> tel ++49- (0) 341-3550-326
> fax ++49- (0) 341-3550-333
> e-mail: farquharson at eva.mpg.de
> URL: http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/staff/farquharson/index.htm
>        
> AFFILIATION
> 
> Ph.D. candidate
> Department of Language, Linguistics & Philosophy
> University of the West Indies
> Mona campus, Kingston 7
> Jamaica
> 
> tel 1-876-970-2950
> fax 1-876-970-2949
> e-mail: joseph.farquharson at uwimona.edu.jm
> 
> 
> 		
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