Why Jamaica Should Be Done With Patois (Creole)

Jamaica, a small island situated in the Caribbean sea just south of Cuba. It has a population of over 2 million people, with most of them knowing how to or speak the broken slave master language called patois. The aboriginals of this small islands, the Indians lived a good life before the thug called Christopher Columbus stumbled upon the island paradise. They lived a peaceful and happy life, they fished, they farmed, they cooked and enjoyed a natural and good way of living. They did not speak a broken language, they did not speak a weak language. They spoke a common and powerful language. They spoke the Taino. But if you do a search on the Taino language, you will see that it is smeared by "His-Story" as being a poorly constructed language. Putting a mental acceptance into the mind of readers that the language needed to be replaced. But the pale faces did not understand nature, they did not understand spirituality and how the Arawaks never needed a poorly constructed language like Spanish to communicate effectively. The Arawaks communicated not only with each other, but with the spirit of the earth. The communicated in the language given to them by the creator himself.

Columbus stumbled upon Jamaica and saw how gullible the natives were. They were people who had trust and lived good among themselves . When an Arawak spoke, his words were written in the stars. The Spanish came with deceiving and conniving words. Their words were of annihilation and slavery. When news went back to Spain about the paradise Jamaica, pretty soon the island was swarmed with pale faces. They had no regard for the Native language and forced the language of Spanish upon the people. Columbus received instructions to cleanse the island for the Spanish. They enslaved many native people. They did as they wanted with the women and mutilated and killed the men. The Spaniards had no regard for the natives and eventually wiped out most of the native people from Jamaica. With the introduction of slaves from Africa, the wicked Europeans continued with their atrocities. They imported black people as slaves, gave them Christianity and destroyed their language. By this time, they began to name many places on the island Spanish names. They refused to acknowledged the Black man's original name and gave them Spanish names as well. The slaves natural language was forbidden to use. The slaves learned patches of the European language as it was never taught to the black laborers. But this hold on Jamaica was short lived as the English also wanted a piece of the island gem to continue the atrocities.

So the English fought the Spanish and won Jamaica. Jamaica became an English colony from 1655. The English saw it fit to also introduce their language to the slaves and to be done with slaves speaking African and Spanish. This was quite confusing to the slaves as they were not taught the language, but primarily given snippets of it during commands. The slaves had nothing, they had no true home, their children were birth into slavery and thus owned by the slave master. The language they were given were not even theirs. And on top of that, their names had also to be changed to reflect English plantation owners. So slaves given name such as Pablo, would now be Paul. The slaves last name was also that of the plantation owners last names. This is why the Black people in Jamaica today have names such as James, Williams, Jefferson, Griffiths, Johnson, Brown, and just about any other European name possible. Up to this very day, the people are owned by Europeans because we still bare the slave masters names.

When the people of Jamaica got independence in 1962, majority of the people were uneducated and did not speak a true language. Patois was the common tongue among the people. Many children attended little or got no schooling during this period. All they had was their simple country lives and a broken cursed language.

There are many people in Jamaica who believe the broken slave master language should even be taught in schools. It has even been chiseled in Jamaican folklore by the the adorable Miss Lou. But leaning patois in school is a complete waste of teachers time and resources. Now, lets think logically about this for a few minutes. Nothing in this entire world is taught in Patois aka Creole. Even the subjects taught in Jamaica is taught in English, English is taught in English, Math is taught in English, likewise chemistry, law and everything else. Many primary school children have difficulty in comprehension of English statements when taking tests simply because they use too much of the Patois dialect. If from inception, a complete language was taught to the children, many comprehension task would prove to be very simple.

Patois did not come to Jamaica because some happy people came here and gave us magnificent technology and taught us the secret of the Universe and the people decided to learn a new language, then left. No, it was pushed upon us forcefully. It was marked by the blood of our forefathers who died viciously by the hands of the Europeans. It is a gimmicks way of comprehension and should only be placed in museum as part of what Jamaica was, not what Jamaica is. It is a language of limited real expression. It is a language that possesses no love, no deep feeling or strong character. Patois is powerless.