Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post provides an excerpt from a 2009 New Yorker magazine article entitled "Roundtable: Haitian Music, Part 2: “What Does Revolution Sound Like?”.
The content of this post is presented for historical, folkloric, cultural and educational purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
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EXCERPT: HAITIAN MUSIC, PART 2: "WHAT DOES REVOLUTION SOUND LIKE"
From https://www.newyorker.com/culture/sasha-frere-jones/roundtable-haitian-
music-part-2-what-does-revolution-sound-like
Roundtable: Haitian Music, Part 2: “What Does Revolution Sound Like?”
By Sasha Frere-Jones July 9, 2009
"Three months ago, I posted a roundtable discussion of Haitian music among several remarkable scholars and writers. Happily, they have returned to discuss revolution, “rara,” and other intersections of Haitian politics, daily life, and music. Take it away. (If any participant is unfamiliar to you, refer to the original post.)
Laurent Dubois:
I often think of Haitian music as a kind of remarkable archive, one that keeps traces of the process of deportation, slavery, and revolution that created the nation. The slave trade to the colony of Saint-Domingue in the late eighteenth century brought forty thousand people a year from different parts of Africa, and these different groups met up on plantations and in towns, exchanging ideas, confronting their new situation, and creating new music, religion, and language. And they did so in the midst of a thriving cultural life in the towns of Saint-Domingue (and later—after the revolution—in Haiti). All the significant port towns had theatres with several performances every week, and in the largest, Le Cap, a theatre performed the works of Moliÿre and Voltaire, and several plays written locally in the Creole language, which brought together African and French grammar and vocabulary. Some of the revolutionaries who won independence for Haiti in 1804 were big fans of this eighteenth-century music and theatre—the music for Emperor Dessalines’s coronation was drawn from Rousseau’s blockbuster opera, “Le Devin du Village”—and they reopened the theatres after the revolution, performing the old plays with all-black casts. This was a swirling and complicated cultural world, and it produced a remarkable musical tradition.
But part of what also comes through in much Haitian music is a kind of response to the question “What does revolution sound like?”
Elizabeth McAlister:
Laurent, what a great question; it lets us imagine the political soundscape of public spaces. We may have a clue about the soundtrack for some moments of the Haitian revolution: the French army marched to battle with bands—corps de musiques—featuring snare drums and trumpets, which would follow the commands of the drum major to communicate through the chaos of the battlefield. So this is the music of warfare. Even more interesting, though, as you say, is the music of revolution: maroon armies were also said to move through space while surrounding themselves with big musical sound. A maroon leader in the Port-au-Prince region named Halou, headed an army of two thousand maroons, whose leader “marched preceded by the music of drums, lambis [conch shells], trumpets and sorcerers…”
That seems very possibly a historical source for the parading festival called “rara” (which happens to be the subject of my first book). Rara still lends itself to the feeling of rebellion. During rara season, which is during Lent, musicians and followers sort themselves into what they consider small “battalions” out on musical maneuvers. Nowadays they move about neighborhoods and villages, “taking territories” by dominating musically, competing in aesthetic battles to see which bands can attract the most fans. It feels exhilarating to go out with them and dance for miles through public space in the relative cool of the Haitian night, dancing behind waves of drummers, horn players, percussionists, and singers, with children and market women trailing behind, selling sweets from baskets on their heads. They usually sing religious songs to the spirits in the morning, and stop to pay their respects to their people in the cemeteries. Then, by late afternoon, they’ll “call out” local corruption, singing what little they can about politics in cryptic, poetic songs, often recycled for generations to fit the present crisis (and unfortunately there’s usually a crisis).
Hearing a rara band as it approaches for miles through the mountains is quite thrilling—it must have been electrifying to hear the rebel-army bands during the Haitian revolution. Rara creates a sonic signifier of Haitianness like no other, because of the distinctive bamboo horns that are played by hocketing (one player on one note, with everyone playing on rhythm to get a melody going). You can get a feel for parading rara music on this Web site. The track called “Instrumental Isolations” gives the feeling of a rara band passing by, and the video “Musicians in an Artibonite Rara Walking” presents something similar.
Rara parades are catching on in the Haitian diaspora, too; they’ve been used in celebrations as well as protests in Miami, New York, and Boston. Recently, a rara band from Brooklyn called DjaRara played on the Mall after Obama’s inauguration.
Rara is so unbelievably rich that I could go on forever, so I’d better sign off.
[...]
Ned Sublette:
In trying to understand the music of Haiti, I find myself taking a transnational approach, because, as I keep arguing, the Haitian revolution was a generative explosion for the popular music of the hemisphere. It sent populations up and down the Atlantic coast and the Antilles—and ultimately to New Orleans, where many families from Saint-Domingue were reunited. There are places today where you can connect the dots by listening. Let me, then, make some connections.
To Elizabeth’s evocation of the trumpet and snare drum of the colonial military bands (which ultimately became the basis of the jazz instrumentation in New Orleans), I would add the vocal legacy of the military drill, which evolved into the gruff vocal style of dancehall reggae. The adoption of this vocal style throughout the Antilles echoes the universality of the quadrille in the same territories two centuries ago, when a commandeur barked out the dance steps.
The sound of revolution could easily have the same rhythm it had two centuries ago; it could be heard as recently as January in the street music from the underreported general strike that began in Guadeloupe and spread to Martinique. The rhythm that the L.K.P. (Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon, or Collective Against Exploitation) demonstrators are parading to is what was known in different times and places as the habanera, tango, and bamboula. In musical terms, dotted quarter, eighth, quarter, quarter: BOOMP, da DOM DOM. It’s a versatile but very specific rhythm, diffused across a wide geographic area. The scholar Robert Farris Thompson identifies it as the Kongo mbila a makinu, “the call to the dance,” and it was known in Arabic music. It’s the Antillean beat, bouncing around for three hundred years or more. It was the right-hand rhythm of Dominguan-descended Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s “Bamboula” in 1848; it’s the invariable underlying rhythm of reggaetón; and it’s the rhythm underpinning the Guadeloupean demonstrators. Another version of the same L.K.P. anthem, “Gwadloup sé tan nou” (“Guadeloupe is ours”) demonstrates a politicized use of the dancehall/reggaetón style, by now firmly entrenched as the timbre and rhythm of a pan-Antillean sensibility.
There’s also a lexical component to the sound of revolution. There have to be ways to transmit secrets in order to accomplish a revolution, no? The chronicler M.L.E. Moreau de St. Méry gives in a footnote (!) the untranslated text of an anthem from Saint-Domingue—a text corroborated elsewhere, and, more remarkably, which Moreau was able to transcribe without knowing the language (not French, and, very interestingly, not Creole either, but Kikongo), possibly from having heard it repeated many times:
Eh! eh! Bomba, hen! hen! Canga bafio té Canga moune dé lé Canga do ki la Canga li
The anthem translates roughly as:
Eh! eh! Secret, hen! hen! Tie up the abusers Tie up the whites Tie (them) up (with) the action spirit Tie them up
When I think of revolution and music, my first thought is this text.
They had a secret, all right. They were singing out loud what they were going to do. Hey, hey, secret! It was no secret if you understood the song: Bomba! (“Bomba” is a word with a complex of meanings; the art historian and linguist Bárbaro Martínez Ruiz tells me it means “secret.”) Had Moreau de St. Méry known the meaning of the lyrics he transcribed, he could perhaps have seen better the revolution that was coming in 1791.
It’s not a coincidence that bomba is the name of the folkloric Afro-Puerto Rican musical form. I was unaware until recently that this song, which we find in Moreau de St. Méry’s eighteenth-century book, continues to be sung. It has been collected in present-day Puerto Rico by the musicologist Alex Lasalle, leader of the New York-based bomba group Alma Moyó. It’s a bámbula (which in New Orleans was known as bamboula). I would not be surprised to find it somewhere in Cuba. One thing’s for sure: this song was almost certainly sung at Congo Square in New Orleans in the eighteen-teens. This in turn cracks open a mystery: what one component—and not an unimportant one—of Congo Square sounded like. The fabled bamboula is still alive, in the Dominguan diaspora.
Sometimes, as in Haiti, revolution entails dancing. Makandal was recognized and apprehended at a dance. In various parts of the Antilles there are choreographic societies that go to great lengths to perform a memory of the moment of truth of more than two hundred years ago: the last days of plantation slavery in the French Caribbean.
[...]
The unintelligibility of much of hip-hop and reggaetón to outsiders, as well as its relentless code-switching, is another way of getting at that bomba, in the sense of a sung-out secret. One of the remarkable things about the dancehall/reggaetón sound becoming a pan-Antillean and Caribbean style is that through timbre and rhythm it crosses the language divide that keeps adjacent territories from talking to each other now that their African languages have largely, though by no means entirely, vanished.
[...]
Ned Sublette:
“When I was a kid, it struck me that the rara was always demanding respect, both with its loudness and active recruitment as it went along.”
Edwidge, you could be describing a second line in New Orleans, which I am convinced owes much to the rara. Last year around Easter I had the remarkable experience of going on a gagá (the Dominican equivalent of rara) out in the country in the Dominican Republic on Jueves Santo (Holy Thursday) and then going on a second line in New Orleans the following Sunday. Despite all the differences of specifics and style, it felt so similar.
For a different stab at Laurent’s question that involves a uniquely Haitian style of music, I think immediately of the first two albums by Boukman Eksperyans—who Madison brought up in our first discussion—which come out of a tradition of direct political engagement in music (mizik angaje): “Vodou Adjaye” (released in the bicentennial year of the religious leader Boukman’s uprising at Bwa Kayiman, generally considered the start of the Haitian revolution) and “Kalfou Danjere” (Dangerous Crossroads, released after General Raoul Cedras’s September 30, 1991 coup against Aristide; the title song was the subversive hit of Haitian carnival in 1992).
These albums came out on Chris Blackwell’s Mango label in the heyday of “world music” and received international attention; they’re classics, as I’m sure everyone on this panel can attest. Listening to them is like jamming your finger into a wall socket. Drawing on the energy of rara, this style of music called mizik rasin (roots) was built on culturally oriented, politically charged lyrics, choral chants, trance-inducing vodou drumming over a drum-machine pulse, and psychedelic lead guitar. (Those who want to explore further should pick up Gage Averill’s essential “A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti.”) There’s still nothing like the music generated by the rasin bands in that early-nineties moment of dangerous crossroads in Haiti—Boukan Ginen, RAM, Zobop, Kanpech, to name some that I recall from that time.
If I want to forgo the pop-music instrumentation and just go into the drum, which is where I most like to be, I go to Azor. Mizik rasin continues today, of course, and now has to confront a vision of Haiti’s future of sweatshop labor and importation of food.
Laurent Dubois:
I’m glad Ned brought us to Guadeloupe, and to the ongoing link between song and revolution, since it’s on that island that I’ve most often had the pleasure of participating in the pan-Caribbean tradition of street music we’ve been talking about. In Guadeloupe the two most famous groups, representing the two sides of the island, are Akiyo and Voukoum, each of them linked in important ways to the politics of protest and cultural revival. Their processions are led by a line of marchers striking long whips against the streets, which sends out a sharp, stunning crack (as you can see Voukoum doing here). Like the whips that are part of many Vodou ceremonies in Haiti, they are both a potent reminder of slavery and also a curious appropriation of slavery’s ultimate symbol for a radically different purpose, that of calling down the lwa or of opening the way for the music.
Their costumes, which parallel those found in New Orleans, Haiti, and Trinidad, tell the story of slavery: participants are sometimes dressed as “Congos” just arrived from Africa, covered in dark black grease, or else dressed as maroons, runaway slaves, as Akiyo is in a January 2009 procession. Akiyo’s anthem retells the history of abolition, declaring that it was not truly the French abolitionist Victor Schoelcher who freed the slaves, but rather the maroons who fought for liberty for generations. (One of the sponsors of the group over the past years has been the now-retired soccer star Lilian Thuram, long a pillar of the French national football team, who was born and grew up in Anse-Bertrand, Guadeloupe.) They evoke these histories in order to call for new kinds of marronage—running away from the plantations—in the present. What is powerful about these groups is that they really highlight the complicated politics of culture, and culture of politics, in the French Antilles.
The nationalist movements that developed there starting in the nineteen-sixties never rallied large majorities in favor of independence from France. But if political nationalism never really took hold, a kind of cultural nationalism that came out of the independence movements most definitely did, changing the way many Martinicans and Guadeloupeans think of themselves, and propelling the creation of groups like Akiyo and Voukoum. This movement, in turn, surrounded and in some ways sustained union activism and other political protest on the island, helping to lay the foundation for the strike that took place in Guadeloupe earlier this year.
As was the case two hundred years ago in Haiti, music and revolution are tightly intertwined, which makes sense, since one of the main tasks of Caribbean music has always been imagining the unimaginable.
I was in Haiti and then in Guadeloupe in late May and saw much of what we have been discussing in motion. In Haiti, on May 18th, Flag Day, there were many people out doing rara, bringing that tradition further into the national celebration. I saw one group led by a man with a large Bob Marley flag. And in Guadeloupe I was able to attend several events organized by the L.K.P., the coalition of groups that organized the strikes earlier this year. Raymond Gama, a historian who is a spokesman for the L.K.P., explained to me that though it was unclear what the next steps of the movement should be, or even what the specific goals should be for Guadeloupe, they felt that their victory was in mobilizing people, in showing them what might be possible in the future if they continue. We were at a nighttime dance driven by gwo-ka drumming, and with an illuminated grin he announced: “Nous sommes déjà demain!”—“We are already tomorrow!”
[...]
Garnette Cadogan:
What does revolution sound like? This begs for a long answer, but consider this shortcut: Bob Marley and, with apologies to Carl Wilson, not Celine Dion. (Some people may smack the wag in me and suggest, with good reason, that the sound of revolution is Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, the Beatles—to name a few. True enough, but Laurent, if I haven’t misunderstood you, you are not so much asking about revolution—dramatic, wide-reaching change—as you are reaching back to Revolution—political revolt that ushers in a new social order.) What, then, does that signal moment in the past—the Haitian revolution—sound like in the funky potpourri of rhythms that is contemporary Haitian music?
Thankfully, Haitian musicians possess a canny pop sensibility: they see no trade-off between being political heralds and pleasing a crowd. They tie their messages of resistance to catchy riffs and vibrant rhythms, producing ambidextrous music that presses the consciousness while shaking the hips and feet. Their songs may be infused with the memory of the revolution, they may make renewed challenges to power, they may weigh in on the heavy matters of the moment—but Haitian musicians never forget that they are entertainers. (This, in part, explains why some rara songs and parades are so ribald.) The music is infectious not merely because of catchy rhythms but also because satire (“pwen,” anyone?) does the heavy lifting, saving musicians—more often than not—from the snare of preachiness. (This is not only good musical sense—it’s common sense: explicit criticism of corrupt powers in Haiti has often invited a beating or worse.) With word, movement, and—uh-huh—sound all in coördinated service, the sound of revolution turns out to be as playful as it is weighty.
Boukman Eksperyans, whose very name advertises their aesthetic—Boukman was a Vodou priest and slave who helped incite the 1791 rebellion that started the Haitian revolution; eskperyans (“experience”) is a nod to Jimi Hendrix —is an excellent example of pop wed to protest.
On Vodou Adjeye, one of the albums Ned praises, traditional Haitian music (Vodou drums) and modern rock (guitar riffs) interweave beneath protest. (On “Wet Chenn” (“Remove the Chains”) they insist, “Get angry, break the chains”; “Ke’-m Pa Sote,” a song credited with precipitating the military junta’s downfall in 1990, wears its resistance in its title: “I Am Not Afraid.”)
But the sound of revolution is much more than the sum of Afro-Caribbean rhythms and political criticism. In Haiti, it also involves coming to terms with Countee Cullen’s question, “What is Africa to me?” In Haitian music, one’s relationship to Africa is central to the “sound of revolution,” and so the celebration of the Afro-Haitian vernacular—language (Creole), tradition (Vodou; kombit dance), religion (Vodou)—is paramount.
It’s no surprise, then, that Vodou Adjeye opens with “Se Kreyol Nou Ye” (“We’re Creole”), which criticizes Haitians who “would rather speak French, English, or Spanish rather than Creole.” The musicians declare “We’re Creole—we’ll never be ashamed of it” … “we’re people of the Kongo, let’s not be ashamed of it” and the galloping Vodou rhythms convince you they mean it. And in “Nou Pap Sa Bliye” (“We Won’t Forget This”) they come to the defense of Vodou: “They’re saying that it’s werewolf music/But we know that it’s a lie.” But so what if you don’t understand Creole?
The warm voices, bright guitar riffs, jittery synthesizer lines, and propulsive drumming will dissolve your regret. (I’m reminded of the many people who happily dance to Bob Marley’s lament “No Woman No Cry” and his protest “Get Up, Stand Up.” A welcome incongruity, if ever there was one. Music scholar Lynn Abbott once made an observation about Marley’s music that aptly applies to much Haitian music: “It reminds me of the Cajun Two-Step [dance style] that chugs merrily along while the guy is singing, ‘I’m condemned to walk down the big lonesome road for the rest of my days.’ ”) Yes, perhaps the revolution—or should I say Revolution?—will get lost in translation, but the sound of joyful defiance, that open secret, will prance right through.”…
-snip-
Some portions of this article were reformatted to enhance reading.
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Showing posts with label Caribbean music and dance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Caribbean music and dance. Show all posts
Friday, July 13, 2018
Friday, November 29, 2013
Caribbean Patois In A YouTube Video Viewer Comment Thread
Edited by Azizi Powell
This post is provides a list of seventeen clean [non-vulgar] Caribbean Patois [pronounced "patwa"] words or phrases that are found in the viewer comment thread for a video interview of Calypsonian Mighty Sparrow. That video which is found below also includes a film clip of Mighty Sparrow's performance of his hit song "Jean & Dinah".
Examples of comments that include those featured words & phrases are listed in this post along with what I think are the meanings of the words & phrases as used in the context of those comments. I've also included what I think is the standard American English "translation" for some of those selected comments.
Those examples also includes Patois grammatical constructs, although no editorial comments about that grammar is included.
MY COMMENT ABOUT YOUTUBE VIDEO VIEWER COMMENT THREADS IN GENERAL
Many YouTube comment threads include profanity, explicit sexual language, and other content that may be inappropriate. None of that content is included in the examples that are featured in this post.
Although I'm mindful that many YouTube viewer comment threads include profanity, racist comments, and other content that is very problematic, I find other comments in YouTube video comment threads to be interesting and/or informative. I also believe that some YouTube comments are worthy of archiving in & of themselves as documentation of the use of particular forms of vernacular language.
MY COMMENT ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR YOUTUBE COMMENT THREAD
I believe that this comment thread about a Mighty Sparrow video includes older and newer forms of Caribbean Patois. For example, I believe that "pickney" [meaning "child" is an example of an old Caribbean Patois word and "soundbwoy" ["soundboy"] is an example of a new Caribbean Patois word.
These selected comments also contain examples of internet/texting writing such as the abbreviated words "ppl" [people] and "tnt" [Trinidad], and the acronyms "lol" and "lmao". Other examples of internet/text writing that are found in some of these featured comments are the lack of or very capitalization and punctuation which resulted in run on sentences and words with added vowels (indicating enthuiasm or intensity, for example "tuneeeeee".)
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DISCLAIMER
I don't consider myself an etymologist, but I am interested in the origin, meaning, and uses of words & phrases. I'm not from the Caribbean -although my maternal grandfather was from Tobago & my maternal grandmother was from Barbados.
The definitions that I've included in this post come from online sites such as http://niceup.com/patois.html "Rasta/Patois Dictionary" and http://www.bigdrumnation.org/dictionary_link.htm and from other online sites. An excerpt from one of those websites is included as an Addendum to this post.
Some of these definitions and sentence "translations" are my GUESSES about what the featured words & phrases mean in the context of those featured comments.
I'm publishing this post in the hope that people from the Caribbean will take the opportunity presented in YouTube music video viewer comment threads and elsewhere on the internet to help inform those of us who aren’t from that region about the meanings of these & other Caribbean words & phrases. Furthermore, I'm publishing this post in the hope that some readers will respond to the questions that came to me about certain words & phrases as a result of reading that video's viewer comment thread.
The opinions given in these comment represent the opinions of their authors and may not be the same opinions that I hold.
Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/11/mighty-sparrow-yankees-gone-jean-dinah.html for a post that includes two sound files, information, and comments about Mighty Sparrow and his now classic Calypso "Yankee Gone" (better known as "Jean And Dinah".
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All copyrights remain with their owners.
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FEATURED VIDEO: Mighty Sparrow - Jean & Dinah
IsDePanInMe, Uploaded on Nov 17, 2007
The King tells the story of how the song developed and performs this vintage street classic from his bad boy days.
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EXAMPLES OF CARIBBEAN PATOIS FROM THIS FEATURED VIDEO
From the Mighty Sparrow "Jean & Dinah" video viewer comment thread http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gso_y-Bqybc
1. BADMAN [noun] = a gangster, but also an adjective, when used in the context of the comment given below, something that is illegal, criminal
Comment:
Vynnette Frederick, 2009
“Is this the real story coming from Sparrow...I heard from someone who was there when he performed the song for the first time that the song belonged to someone else who happened to be in jail with sparrow at the time who was jailed for badman ting at the time...and the song was being sung inside and because sparrow was the first one to get out of the jail, he sang the song...jean and dinah were real prostitutes....is this correct?”
-snip-
This same comment is used for the entry for "ting" [thing] that is given below.
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2. BAM BAM [verb] in the context of the comment below means to have sex or [noun] meaning prostitute
Comment:
tunafish135, 2009
"tell dem they moder bam bam, real chupidy!"
-snip-
moder = mother
I believe that the standard American English form of this sentence is "Telling them that their mothers are prostitutes is an act of real stupidity."
-snip-
"Bam Bam riddim" is a popular dancehall Reggae rhythm. Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2012/11/dancehall-reggae-bam-bam-riddim.html for a pancocojams post that provides examples of that riddim. In the context of that usage "bam bam" is an adjective that may mean something like "sensual" or "sexual".
It may be coincidental that the word "bam bam" as it relates to sex sound likes the American rhyming saying "Wham* bam. Thank you mam'" which means a "quickie" sexual experience.
*or "Slam" bam. Thank you mam".
In the Addendum below, a Nigerian commenter shared that "bam bam" is one of many dual words in Jamaican Patois that originated from the Nigerian Yoruba language. That commenter indicated that in Yoruba "bam bam" means "complete".
Undoubtedly, a different meaning was given to that word in Jamaican Patois, although ideally the sex act can be considered completing people.
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3. BOY [noun]
a. I think that this word is used similarly to how African Americans use “man” or “dude” or "people"
Comment:
trinisocajunkie, 2009
"1 of de greatest calypsos off all time boy
**
b. vernacular phrase “you know” [? I'm really unsure about this meaning.]
Comment:
Shivanandan Maharaj, 2012
“it have some seriously confused people here boy weyyyy sah
-snip-
“It” here means this video’s viewer comment thread.
-snip-
What does "weyyyy sah" mean? Does it mean something like "Yes indeed? (Yes sir)?
"Bwoy" is a contemporary way of saying "boy". Read more about compound forms of that word in the entry "soundbwoy" giveen below.
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4. DA [definitive article = the]
Comment:
Father Divin3, 2010
[in reply to njreyes]
"you are so dumb....kiso/calypso n soca is da beat of the entre W.I. and all man derived from africa you clown...Sparrow was GReenz born n bred then trini raised and tuned him...if you knew anything at all trini n grenada are adjacent thats why the mix up is so common..but hey njreyes MR.TNT if you feel you bad so goto to trini wit yuh gold chain on n bracelte and lemme see you make it out da airport alive....GReenz Stand UP TRini HOld WE Hand...One People One Nation"
-snip-
I'm curious about the word "GReenz" for "a person from Grenada". Is this word used colloquially as "Trini" is used to mean "a person for Trinidad [and I think also from Tobabo, but I'm not sure about that.]
Also, I'm interested in the use of the word "tuned", which in the context of that comment I believe means "schooled (taught, inculcated) in music (forms and aesthetics). I know that the word "tune" is widely used in the Caribbean, but is the word "tuned" also colloquially used or was it just made up by this commenter?
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5. DE [definite article] = the
Comment:
trinisocajunkie, 2009
"1 of de greatest calypsos off all time boy"
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6. DEH [adverb] = "there"*
Comment:
upnorthsoundbwoy, 2009
"he born deh but he go a trinidad from he a small pickney how he go get grenada accent?"
-snip-
This same comment is also used as an example of a comment in that discussion thread for the word "pickney".
Read the Addendum below about the meaning of "deh" in Nigerian English Pidgin and Jamaican Patois.
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7. DEM [pronoun] a. them; those, they're
Comment:
tunafish135, 2009
"your the one that wants to check history and work out after africa where most of you trini peps come out well the real black ones like trevor mac d. grenada has got your rootstha dont include dem indian and dem creole one dem."
-snip-
I think that "dem indian and dem creole one dem" means the Indians [them Indians], the Creoles [the Creeoles], everyone of them.
And I think the Standard American English form of that comment is:
"You’re the one that needs to study your history and realize that the Trinidadian people who contributed the most to that nation-the people who are the core of the nation- are those who are unmixed Black people like Trevor Mac d. Grenada has the same roots as Trinidad but that nation doesn’t include as many people who are Indian or Creoles [people who are racially mixed] as Trinidad does."
Is that "translation" correct?
**
Comment:
scoobaye, 2011
[expletive deleted]....I hear yuh badjohn....is a sad state...and we artiste dem so talented....i was in berlin 2010 and they had carnival dey....kmc performed and do rel damage..."
-snip-
I think that the Standard American "translation" of this comment is:
"I understand what you are saying badjohn... It's a sad state of affairs... And our artists are so talented...I was in Berlin [Germany] and they had a carnival day [event.] Kmc performed and he [or they] did really well...."
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8. DIS [definite article] = this
Comment:
Xenakaii, 2010
“boy dis one my faves...ven tho i ain understnd wha he meant as a child hahaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
-snip-
“Faves” =favorites. I wonder if this is a a newer form of Patois that is influenced by Hip Hop African American Vernacular English
The elongated word "ha ha" is an example of internet/text writing.
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9. FEELS TO GET SMART WITH ME [phrase]
Meaning = wants to challenge what I've said
Comment:
TriniIntel, 2010
“In regards to my comment, just in case anyone feels to get smart with me, I mean that if there was no Trinidad, then the Sparrow everyone knows and loves would not have come to be. It is entirely possible that he could have gone somewhere else as a youth and become great at another style of music.”
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10. KAISO [noun] = calypso
Comment:
kitabwalli, 2012
"Thanks so much. The kaiso is easy to find but this commentary is great."
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11.PICKNEY [noun] = child
Comment:
Upnorthsoundbwoy, 2009
"he born deh but he go a trinidad from he a small pickney how he go get grenada accent?"
-snip-
"Pickney" developed from the same root word as "pickaninny" in USA. However, "pickney," doesn’t have the same derogatory connotations in the Caribbean as it does in the United States.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickaninny
"Pickaninny (also picaninny or piccaninny) is a term in English which refers to children of black descent or a racial caricature thereof. It is a pidgin word form, which may be derived from the Portuguese pequenino[1] (an affectionate term derived from pequeno, "little")...At one time the word may have been used as a term of affection, but it is now considered derogatory."
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12. SOUNDBWOY [noun] = sound boy
From http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?
"Term [soundboy] originated in jamaican reggae/dancehall scene.
During a soundclash, the opposing soundsystems will often refer to their competitor as a soundboy. Which basically means a sound which is young in scene, has no experience, lacks skills, or just plays bad music. The term is most often used just to show disrespect to the opposing sound.
Soundboy run away, when the champion a play.
-by fyah June 17, 2010
-snip-
screen name in this video's viewer comment thread:
Upnorthsoundbwoy
-snip-
I think that some people [perhaps the person who chose this screen name] believe that "soundboy" is the equivalent of Reggae music DJ.
"Bwoy" is a contemporary way of spelling "boy". That same spelling for "boy" is found in Hip Hop African American Vernacular English. I don't know if that spelling originated in the Caribbean and then found its way to Hip Hop culture or vice versa.
"Rudeboy"("Rudebwoy") is another Jamaican compound word that includes the word "bwoy". Here's an entry from http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rudeboy about that word:
"1. An avid listener of ska music, especially that of "traditional" and "2-tone" waves of ska.
2. A "gangster" (not to be confused with a "gangstah") usually dressed in a suit and "gangster hat" or bowler; a trouble maker of the 1960's-1980's. (often British "gangsters").
3. The original definition, Jamaican gangsters, boys who caused trouble and were known as "rude" because of their attitudes.
1. Check out that rudeboy skank to the ska music!
2. Wow that rudeboy has some really slick gangster clothes, I want a hat like that!
3. That rudeboy down the street was just arrested again!"
-Aquacadet Matt February 07, 2004
-snip-
I wonder if the "rude" in "rudeboy" originally came from its British English verncaular meaning where "rude" songs or rhymes mean "bawdy" (nasty, salacious) songs or rhymes. Could this meaning have come from the fact taht those types of songs & rhymes were troubling to "polite" society because of their salacious content? Then "troubling" was expanded to "causing trouble", i.e. "gangsters"?
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13. TING [noun] = thing
Read the comment example found under "Badman".
-snip-
I'm respectfully curious about why it appears that many people from the Caribbean have difficulty pronouncing "th". I've found yet found any commentary about that online. Would anyone care to respond to this question?
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14. TRINI [noun] = people from Trinidad and Tobago
Comment [and screen name]
TriniIntel, 2010
"All of you folks need to look up Bomber's United Stated of the West Indies. Or listen to Rudder's Rally 'round the West Indies. As if it's not bad enough that we have to deal with folks outside the islands bad talking us. No no. We feel to compound the problem by bad talking each other. Just compromise. No Grenada, no Sparrow because he wouldn't have been born. No Trinidad, no Sparrow because he wouldn't have had the Trini influences. Simple as that. Gosh."
**
Lafarzia, 2008
"yes its true.... I never notice our accent until I moved to Canada and really heard our Trini accent. well if you like this one, u might like kitchener and look up "curry tabanca".. very very old tune, but it was huge back then!!!"
-snip-
Here's a comment from that viewer comment thread that includes an even newer contemporary referent for people from Trinidad & Tobago:
njreyes, 2009
"we are not people that come from one nation... learn your region properly... the caribbean is not an african nation & is not made up only of people with ancestors from africa... trinidad is the home of kiso/soca but it is a caribbean style & a caribbean flavor... we are not africans or indian or whatever else... we are Trinbagonians (Trinidad & Tobago people) multi cultural mixed people"
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15. TUNE [noun] = song [both the words & the melody]
Comment
adonialova, 2009
“i luv dis old tune bringin back memories”
**
Gramazone, 2008
"Hear [expletive deleted] tuneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
-snip-
The addition of multiple vowels connotes enthusiasm. [The commenter really likes this tune].
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16. YUH [pronoun] = you
scoobaye, 2011
"@Badjohn007 yuh don know and it really sad when yuh think bout it...Ah now listening some tunes from the 80`s and dem was styles....plus yuh have them older tunes from the 60`s and 70`s."
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17. WE [pronoun] = our
Comment
scoobaye, 2011
"[expletive deleted]....I hear yuh badjohn....i like hearing bout the history ah we music man,....i doh understand we trinis"
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ADDENDUM
From http://www.nairaland.com/1061872/thread-fi-jamaican-patois "A Thread Fi Jamaican Patois! - Culture - Nairaland" Rudebwoy(m): 6:41pm On Sep 30, 2012
"The presence of repetitious phrases in Jamaican Creole such as "su-su" (gossip) and "pyaa-pyaa" (sickly) mirror the presence of such phrases in West African languages such as "bam-bam", which means "complete" in the Yoruba language. Repetitious phrases are also present in Nigerian Pidgin, such as, "koro-koro", meaning "clear vision", "yama-yama", meaning "disgusting", and "doti-doti", meaning "garbage".
Furthermore, the use of the words of West African origin in Jamaican Patois, such as "boasie" (meaning proud, a word that comes from the Yoruba word "bosi" also meaning "proud" and "Unu" - Jamaican Patois or "Wuna" - West African Pidgin (meaning "you people", a word that comes from the Igbo word "unu" also meaning "you people" display some of the interesting similarities between the English pidgins and creoles of West Africa and the English pidgins and creoles of the West Indies, as does the presence of words and phrases that are identical in the languages on both sides of the Atlantic, such as "Me a go tell dem" (I'm going to tell them) and "make we" (let us). Use of the word "deh" or "dey" is found in both Jamaican Patois and Nigerian Pidgin English, and is used in place of the English word "is" or "are". The phrase "We dey foh London" would be understood by both a speaker of Patois and a speaker of Nigerian Pidgin to mean "We are in London". Other similarities, such as "pikin" (Nigerian Pidgin for "child" and "pikney" (or "pikiny", Jamaican Patois for "child" and "chook" (Nigerian Pidgin for "poke" or "stab" which corresponds with the Jamaican Patois word "jook", further demonstrate the linguistic relationship."
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RELATED LINK
http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/09/how-words-chune-choon-tune-are-used-in.html
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Thanks to The Mighty Sparrow of this video and thanks to all those who I have quoted in this post.
Thanks for visiting pancocojams.
Visitor comments are welcome.
This post is provides a list of seventeen clean [non-vulgar] Caribbean Patois [pronounced "patwa"] words or phrases that are found in the viewer comment thread for a video interview of Calypsonian Mighty Sparrow. That video which is found below also includes a film clip of Mighty Sparrow's performance of his hit song "Jean & Dinah".
Examples of comments that include those featured words & phrases are listed in this post along with what I think are the meanings of the words & phrases as used in the context of those comments. I've also included what I think is the standard American English "translation" for some of those selected comments.
Those examples also includes Patois grammatical constructs, although no editorial comments about that grammar is included.
MY COMMENT ABOUT YOUTUBE VIDEO VIEWER COMMENT THREADS IN GENERAL
Many YouTube comment threads include profanity, explicit sexual language, and other content that may be inappropriate. None of that content is included in the examples that are featured in this post.
Although I'm mindful that many YouTube viewer comment threads include profanity, racist comments, and other content that is very problematic, I find other comments in YouTube video comment threads to be interesting and/or informative. I also believe that some YouTube comments are worthy of archiving in & of themselves as documentation of the use of particular forms of vernacular language.
MY COMMENT ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR YOUTUBE COMMENT THREAD
I believe that this comment thread about a Mighty Sparrow video includes older and newer forms of Caribbean Patois. For example, I believe that "pickney" [meaning "child" is an example of an old Caribbean Patois word and "soundbwoy" ["soundboy"] is an example of a new Caribbean Patois word.
These selected comments also contain examples of internet/texting writing such as the abbreviated words "ppl" [people] and "tnt" [Trinidad], and the acronyms "lol" and "lmao". Other examples of internet/text writing that are found in some of these featured comments are the lack of or very capitalization and punctuation which resulted in run on sentences and words with added vowels (indicating enthuiasm or intensity, for example "tuneeeeee".)
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DISCLAIMER
I don't consider myself an etymologist, but I am interested in the origin, meaning, and uses of words & phrases. I'm not from the Caribbean -although my maternal grandfather was from Tobago & my maternal grandmother was from Barbados.
The definitions that I've included in this post come from online sites such as http://niceup.com/patois.html "Rasta/Patois Dictionary" and http://www.bigdrumnation.org/dictionary_link.htm and from other online sites. An excerpt from one of those websites is included as an Addendum to this post.
Some of these definitions and sentence "translations" are my GUESSES about what the featured words & phrases mean in the context of those featured comments.
I'm publishing this post in the hope that people from the Caribbean will take the opportunity presented in YouTube music video viewer comment threads and elsewhere on the internet to help inform those of us who aren’t from that region about the meanings of these & other Caribbean words & phrases. Furthermore, I'm publishing this post in the hope that some readers will respond to the questions that came to me about certain words & phrases as a result of reading that video's viewer comment thread.
The opinions given in these comment represent the opinions of their authors and may not be the same opinions that I hold.
Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/11/mighty-sparrow-yankees-gone-jean-dinah.html for a post that includes two sound files, information, and comments about Mighty Sparrow and his now classic Calypso "Yankee Gone" (better known as "Jean And Dinah".
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All copyrights remain with their owners.
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FEATURED VIDEO: Mighty Sparrow - Jean & Dinah
IsDePanInMe, Uploaded on Nov 17, 2007
The King tells the story of how the song developed and performs this vintage street classic from his bad boy days.
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EXAMPLES OF CARIBBEAN PATOIS FROM THIS FEATURED VIDEO
From the Mighty Sparrow "Jean & Dinah" video viewer comment thread http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gso_y-Bqybc
1. BADMAN [noun] = a gangster, but also an adjective, when used in the context of the comment given below, something that is illegal, criminal
Comment:
Vynnette Frederick, 2009
“Is this the real story coming from Sparrow...I heard from someone who was there when he performed the song for the first time that the song belonged to someone else who happened to be in jail with sparrow at the time who was jailed for badman ting at the time...and the song was being sung inside and because sparrow was the first one to get out of the jail, he sang the song...jean and dinah were real prostitutes....is this correct?”
-snip-
This same comment is used for the entry for "ting" [thing] that is given below.
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2. BAM BAM [verb] in the context of the comment below means to have sex or [noun] meaning prostitute
Comment:
tunafish135, 2009
"tell dem they moder bam bam, real chupidy!"
-snip-
moder = mother
I believe that the standard American English form of this sentence is "Telling them that their mothers are prostitutes is an act of real stupidity."
-snip-
"Bam Bam riddim" is a popular dancehall Reggae rhythm. Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2012/11/dancehall-reggae-bam-bam-riddim.html for a pancocojams post that provides examples of that riddim. In the context of that usage "bam bam" is an adjective that may mean something like "sensual" or "sexual".
It may be coincidental that the word "bam bam" as it relates to sex sound likes the American rhyming saying "Wham* bam. Thank you mam'" which means a "quickie" sexual experience.
*or "Slam" bam. Thank you mam".
In the Addendum below, a Nigerian commenter shared that "bam bam" is one of many dual words in Jamaican Patois that originated from the Nigerian Yoruba language. That commenter indicated that in Yoruba "bam bam" means "complete".
Undoubtedly, a different meaning was given to that word in Jamaican Patois, although ideally the sex act can be considered completing people.
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3. BOY [noun]
a. I think that this word is used similarly to how African Americans use “man” or “dude” or "people"
Comment:
trinisocajunkie, 2009
"1 of de greatest calypsos off all time boy
**
b. vernacular phrase “you know” [? I'm really unsure about this meaning.]
Comment:
Shivanandan Maharaj, 2012
“it have some seriously confused people here boy weyyyy sah
-snip-
“It” here means this video’s viewer comment thread.
-snip-
What does "weyyyy sah" mean? Does it mean something like "Yes indeed? (Yes sir)?
"Bwoy" is a contemporary way of saying "boy". Read more about compound forms of that word in the entry "soundbwoy" giveen below.
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4. DA [definitive article = the]
Comment:
Father Divin3, 2010
[in reply to njreyes]
"you are so dumb....kiso/calypso n soca is da beat of the entre W.I. and all man derived from africa you clown...Sparrow was GReenz born n bred then trini raised and tuned him...if you knew anything at all trini n grenada are adjacent thats why the mix up is so common..but hey njreyes MR.TNT if you feel you bad so goto to trini wit yuh gold chain on n bracelte and lemme see you make it out da airport alive....GReenz Stand UP TRini HOld WE Hand...One People One Nation"
-snip-
I'm curious about the word "GReenz" for "a person from Grenada". Is this word used colloquially as "Trini" is used to mean "a person for Trinidad [and I think also from Tobabo, but I'm not sure about that.]
Also, I'm interested in the use of the word "tuned", which in the context of that comment I believe means "schooled (taught, inculcated) in music (forms and aesthetics). I know that the word "tune" is widely used in the Caribbean, but is the word "tuned" also colloquially used or was it just made up by this commenter?
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5. DE [definite article] = the
Comment:
trinisocajunkie, 2009
"1 of de greatest calypsos off all time boy"
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6. DEH [adverb] = "there"*
Comment:
upnorthsoundbwoy, 2009
"he born deh but he go a trinidad from he a small pickney how he go get grenada accent?"
-snip-
This same comment is also used as an example of a comment in that discussion thread for the word "pickney".
Read the Addendum below about the meaning of "deh" in Nigerian English Pidgin and Jamaican Patois.
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7. DEM [pronoun] a. them; those, they're
Comment:
tunafish135, 2009
"your the one that wants to check history and work out after africa where most of you trini peps come out well the real black ones like trevor mac d. grenada has got your rootstha dont include dem indian and dem creole one dem."
-snip-
I think that "dem indian and dem creole one dem" means the Indians [them Indians], the Creoles [the Creeoles], everyone of them.
And I think the Standard American English form of that comment is:
"You’re the one that needs to study your history and realize that the Trinidadian people who contributed the most to that nation-the people who are the core of the nation- are those who are unmixed Black people like Trevor Mac d. Grenada has the same roots as Trinidad but that nation doesn’t include as many people who are Indian or Creoles [people who are racially mixed] as Trinidad does."
Is that "translation" correct?
**
Comment:
scoobaye, 2011
[expletive deleted]....I hear yuh badjohn....is a sad state...and we artiste dem so talented....i was in berlin 2010 and they had carnival dey....kmc performed and do rel damage..."
-snip-
I think that the Standard American "translation" of this comment is:
"I understand what you are saying badjohn... It's a sad state of affairs... And our artists are so talented...I was in Berlin [Germany] and they had a carnival day [event.] Kmc performed and he [or they] did really well...."
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8. DIS [definite article] = this
Comment:
Xenakaii, 2010
“boy dis one my faves...ven tho i ain understnd wha he meant as a child hahaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
-snip-
“Faves” =favorites. I wonder if this is a a newer form of Patois that is influenced by Hip Hop African American Vernacular English
The elongated word "ha ha" is an example of internet/text writing.
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9. FEELS TO GET SMART WITH ME [phrase]
Meaning = wants to challenge what I've said
Comment:
TriniIntel, 2010
“In regards to my comment, just in case anyone feels to get smart with me, I mean that if there was no Trinidad, then the Sparrow everyone knows and loves would not have come to be. It is entirely possible that he could have gone somewhere else as a youth and become great at another style of music.”
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10. KAISO [noun] = calypso
Comment:
kitabwalli, 2012
"Thanks so much. The kaiso is easy to find but this commentary is great."
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11.PICKNEY [noun] = child
Comment:
Upnorthsoundbwoy, 2009
"he born deh but he go a trinidad from he a small pickney how he go get grenada accent?"
-snip-
"Pickney" developed from the same root word as "pickaninny" in USA. However, "pickney," doesn’t have the same derogatory connotations in the Caribbean as it does in the United States.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickaninny
"Pickaninny (also picaninny or piccaninny) is a term in English which refers to children of black descent or a racial caricature thereof. It is a pidgin word form, which may be derived from the Portuguese pequenino[1] (an affectionate term derived from pequeno, "little")...At one time the word may have been used as a term of affection, but it is now considered derogatory."
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12. SOUNDBWOY [noun] = sound boy
From http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?
"Term [soundboy] originated in jamaican reggae/dancehall scene.
During a soundclash, the opposing soundsystems will often refer to their competitor as a soundboy. Which basically means a sound which is young in scene, has no experience, lacks skills, or just plays bad music. The term is most often used just to show disrespect to the opposing sound.
Soundboy run away, when the champion a play.
-by fyah June 17, 2010
-snip-
screen name in this video's viewer comment thread:
Upnorthsoundbwoy
-snip-
I think that some people [perhaps the person who chose this screen name] believe that "soundboy" is the equivalent of Reggae music DJ.
"Bwoy" is a contemporary way of spelling "boy". That same spelling for "boy" is found in Hip Hop African American Vernacular English. I don't know if that spelling originated in the Caribbean and then found its way to Hip Hop culture or vice versa.
"Rudeboy"("Rudebwoy") is another Jamaican compound word that includes the word "bwoy". Here's an entry from http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rudeboy about that word:
"1. An avid listener of ska music, especially that of "traditional" and "2-tone" waves of ska.
2. A "gangster" (not to be confused with a "gangstah") usually dressed in a suit and "gangster hat" or bowler; a trouble maker of the 1960's-1980's. (often British "gangsters").
3. The original definition, Jamaican gangsters, boys who caused trouble and were known as "rude" because of their attitudes.
1. Check out that rudeboy skank to the ska music!
2. Wow that rudeboy has some really slick gangster clothes, I want a hat like that!
3. That rudeboy down the street was just arrested again!"
-Aquacadet Matt February 07, 2004
-snip-
I wonder if the "rude" in "rudeboy" originally came from its British English verncaular meaning where "rude" songs or rhymes mean "bawdy" (nasty, salacious) songs or rhymes. Could this meaning have come from the fact taht those types of songs & rhymes were troubling to "polite" society because of their salacious content? Then "troubling" was expanded to "causing trouble", i.e. "gangsters"?
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13. TING [noun] = thing
Read the comment example found under "Badman".
-snip-
I'm respectfully curious about why it appears that many people from the Caribbean have difficulty pronouncing "th". I've found yet found any commentary about that online. Would anyone care to respond to this question?
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14. TRINI [noun] = people from Trinidad and Tobago
Comment [and screen name]
TriniIntel, 2010
"All of you folks need to look up Bomber's United Stated of the West Indies. Or listen to Rudder's Rally 'round the West Indies. As if it's not bad enough that we have to deal with folks outside the islands bad talking us. No no. We feel to compound the problem by bad talking each other. Just compromise. No Grenada, no Sparrow because he wouldn't have been born. No Trinidad, no Sparrow because he wouldn't have had the Trini influences. Simple as that. Gosh."
**
Lafarzia, 2008
"yes its true.... I never notice our accent until I moved to Canada and really heard our Trini accent. well if you like this one, u might like kitchener and look up "curry tabanca".. very very old tune, but it was huge back then!!!"
-snip-
Here's a comment from that viewer comment thread that includes an even newer contemporary referent for people from Trinidad & Tobago:
njreyes, 2009
"we are not people that come from one nation... learn your region properly... the caribbean is not an african nation & is not made up only of people with ancestors from africa... trinidad is the home of kiso/soca but it is a caribbean style & a caribbean flavor... we are not africans or indian or whatever else... we are Trinbagonians (Trinidad & Tobago people) multi cultural mixed people"
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15. TUNE [noun] = song [both the words & the melody]
Comment
adonialova, 2009
“i luv dis old tune bringin back memories”
**
Gramazone, 2008
"Hear [expletive deleted] tuneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
-snip-
The addition of multiple vowels connotes enthusiasm. [The commenter really likes this tune].
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16. YUH [pronoun] = you
scoobaye, 2011
"@Badjohn007 yuh don know and it really sad when yuh think bout it...Ah now listening some tunes from the 80`s and dem was styles....plus yuh have them older tunes from the 60`s and 70`s."
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17. WE [pronoun] = our
Comment
scoobaye, 2011
"[expletive deleted]....I hear yuh badjohn....i like hearing bout the history ah we music man,....i doh understand we trinis"
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ADDENDUM
From http://www.nairaland.com/1061872/thread-fi-jamaican-patois "A Thread Fi Jamaican Patois! - Culture - Nairaland" Rudebwoy(m): 6:41pm On Sep 30, 2012
"The presence of repetitious phrases in Jamaican Creole such as "su-su" (gossip) and "pyaa-pyaa" (sickly) mirror the presence of such phrases in West African languages such as "bam-bam", which means "complete" in the Yoruba language. Repetitious phrases are also present in Nigerian Pidgin, such as, "koro-koro", meaning "clear vision", "yama-yama", meaning "disgusting", and "doti-doti", meaning "garbage".
Furthermore, the use of the words of West African origin in Jamaican Patois, such as "boasie" (meaning proud, a word that comes from the Yoruba word "bosi" also meaning "proud" and "Unu" - Jamaican Patois or "Wuna" - West African Pidgin (meaning "you people", a word that comes from the Igbo word "unu" also meaning "you people" display some of the interesting similarities between the English pidgins and creoles of West Africa and the English pidgins and creoles of the West Indies, as does the presence of words and phrases that are identical in the languages on both sides of the Atlantic, such as "Me a go tell dem" (I'm going to tell them) and "make we" (let us). Use of the word "deh" or "dey" is found in both Jamaican Patois and Nigerian Pidgin English, and is used in place of the English word "is" or "are". The phrase "We dey foh London" would be understood by both a speaker of Patois and a speaker of Nigerian Pidgin to mean "We are in London". Other similarities, such as "pikin" (Nigerian Pidgin for "child" and "pikney" (or "pikiny", Jamaican Patois for "child" and "chook" (Nigerian Pidgin for "poke" or "stab" which corresponds with the Jamaican Patois word "jook", further demonstrate the linguistic relationship."
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RELATED LINK
http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/09/how-words-chune-choon-tune-are-used-in.html
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Thanks to The Mighty Sparrow of this video and thanks to all those who I have quoted in this post.
Thanks for visiting pancocojams.
Visitor comments are welcome.
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