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91-505: Patois developed in the 17th century when enslaved people from West and Central Africa were exposed to, learned, and nativized the vernacular and dialectal language spoken by the slaveholders and overseers: British English , Hiberno-English and Scots . Jamaican Creole exists in gradations between more conservative creole forms that are not significantly mutually intelligible with English, and forms virtually identical to Standard English . Jamaicans refer to their language as Patois ,

182-614: A lingua franca , used to facilitate communication across a large area. However, vernaculars usually carry covert prestige among their native speakers, in showcasing group identity or sub-culture affiliation. As a border case, a nonstandard dialect may even have its own written form, though it could then be assumed that the orthography is unstable, inconsistent, or unsanctioned by powerful institutions, like that of government or education. The most salient instance of nonstandard dialects in writing would likely be nonstandard phonemic spelling of reported speech in literature or poetry (e.g.,

273-465: A creole continuum (or a linguistic continuum ): the variety of the language closest to the lexifier language (the acrolect ) cannot be distinguished systematically from intermediate varieties (collectively referred to as the mesolect ) or even from the most divergent rural varieties (collectively referred to as the basilect ). This situation came about with contact between speakers of a number of Niger–Congo languages and various dialects of English,

364-594: A lingua franca until the 17th century, when grammarians began to debate the creation of an ideal language. Before 1550 as a conventional date, "supraregional compromises" were used in printed works, such as the one published by Valentin Ickelsamer ( Ein Teutsche Grammatica ) 1534. Books published in one of these artificial variants began to increase in frequency, replacing the Latin then in use. After 1550

455-990: A liturgical language , a specialized use of a former lingua franca . For example, until the 1960s, the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church was generally celebrated in Latin rather than in vernaculars. The Coptic Church still holds liturgies in Coptic , not Arabic. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church holds liturgies in Ge'ez , but parts of the Mass are read in Amharic . Similarly, in Hindu culture, traditionally religious or scholarly works were written in Sanskrit (long after its use as

546-542: A Jamaican woman ( Lois Kelly Miller ). In addition, early Jamaican films like The Harder They Come (1972), Rockers (1978), and many of the films produced by Palm Pictures in the mid-1990s (e.g. Dancehall Queen and Third World Cop ) have most of their dialogue in Jamaican Patois; some of these films have even been subtitled in English. It was also used in the second season of Marvel's Luke Cage but

637-492: A Romance language was a book written in manuscript form by Leon Battista Alberti between 1437 and 1441 and entitled Grammatica della lingua toscana , "Grammar of the Tuscan Language". In it Alberti sought to demonstrate that the vernacular – here Tuscan, known today as modern Italian – was every bit as structured as Latin. He did so by mapping vernacular structures onto Latin. The book was never printed until 1908. It

728-476: A continuum exists between speakers of a creole language and a related standard language. There are no discrete boundaries between the different varieties, and the situation in which such a continuum exists involves considerable social stratification. The following table (from Bell 1976 ) shows the 18 different ways of rendering the phrase I gave him one in Guyanese English : The continuum shown has

819-410: A conversational form; Ferguson had in mind a literary language. For example, a lecture is delivered in a different variety than ordinary conversation. Ferguson's own example was classical and spoken Arabic, but the analogy between Vulgar Latin and Classical Latin is of the same type. Excluding the upper-class and lower-class register aspects of the two variants, Classical Latin was a literary language;

910-546: A few different languages; some examples of languages and regional accents (and/or dialects) within Great Britain include Scotland ( Scottish Gaelic ), Northumbria , Yorkshire , Wales ( Welsh ), the Isle of Man ( Manx ), Devon , and Cornwall ( Cornish ). Being the language of a maritime power, English was (of necessity) formed from elements of many different languages. Standardisation has been an ongoing issue. Even in

1001-655: A general plea for mother-tongue education in England: The first part of the elementary , published in 1582, by Richard Mulcaster . In 1586, William Bullokar wrote the first English grammar to be written in English, the Pamphlet for Grammar . This was followed by Bref Grammar , in that same year. Previously he had written the Booke at Large for the Amendment of Orthography for English Speech (1580), but his orthography

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1092-436: A joint publication, in 1584 by De Eglantier and the rhetoric society of Amsterdam; this was to be the first comprehensive Dutch grammar, Twe-spraack vande Nederduitsche letterkunst/ ófte Vant spellen ende eyghenscap des Nederduitschen taals . Hendrick Laurenszoon Spieghel was a major contributor, with others contributing as well. Modern English is considered to have begun at a conventional date of about 1550, most notably at

1183-515: A language as coherent, complex, and complete systems—even nonstandard varieties. A dialect or language variety that is a vernacular may not have historically benefited from the institutional support or sanction that a standard dialect has. According to another definition, a vernacular is a language that has not developed a standard variety , undergone codification , or established a literary tradition. Vernacular may vary from overtly prestigious speech varieties in different ways, in that

1274-594: A linguistic phenomenon termed diglossia ("split tongue", on the model of the genetic anomaly ). In it, the language is bifurcated: the speaker learns two forms of the language and ordinarily uses one but under special circumstances uses the other. The one most frequently used is the low (L) variant, equivalent to the vernacular, while the special variant is the high (H). The concept was introduced to linguistics by Charles A. Ferguson (1959), but Ferguson explicitly excluded variants as divergent as dialects or different languages or as similar as styles or registers. It must not be

1365-854: A move would undermine efforts at promoting the use of English. The Patois New Testament was launched in Britain (where the Jamaican diaspora is significant) in October 2012 as " Di Jamiekan Nyuu Testiment ", and with print and audio versions in Jamaica in December 2012. The system of spelling used in Di Jamiekan Nyuu Testiment is the phonetic Cassidy Writing system adopted by the Jamaica Language Unit of

1456-485: A particular language variety that does not hold a widespread high-status perception, and sometimes even carries social stigma , is also called a vernacular , vernacular dialect , nonstandard dialect , etc. and is typically its speakers' native variety . Regardless of any such stigma, all nonstandard dialects are full-fledged varieties of language with their own consistent grammatical structure, sound system , body of vocabulary, etc. Like any native language variety,

1547-466: A past-only habitual category marked by /juusta/ as in /weɹ wi juusta liv iz not az kual az iiɹ/ ('where we used to live is not as cold as here'). For the present tense, an uninflected verb combining with an iterative adverb marks habitual meaning as in /tam aawez nua wen kieti tel pan im/ ('Tom always knows when Katy tells/has told about him'). As in other Caribbean Creoles (that is, Guyanese Creole and San Andrés-Providencia Creole ; Sranan Tongo

1638-511: A phonetical and morphological overview of Spanish for nonnative speakers. The Grammar Books of the Master-poets ( Welsh : Gramadegau'r Penceirddiaid ) are considered to have been composed in the early fourteenth century, and are present in manuscripts from soon after. These tractates draw on the traditions of the Latin grammars of Donatus and Priscianus and also on the teaching of the professional Welsh poets. The tradition of grammars of

1729-409: A slave born in the house rather than abroad. The figurative meaning was broadened from the diminutive extended words vernaculus, vernacula . Varro , the classical Latin grammarian, used the term vocabula vernacula , "termes de la langue nationale" or "vocabulary of the national language" as opposed to foreign words. In general linguistics , a vernacular is contrasted with a lingua franca ,

1820-588: A spoken language) or in Tamil in Tamil country. Sanskrit was a lingua franca among the non-Indo-European languages of the Indian subcontinent and became more of one as the spoken languages, or prakrits , began to diverge from it in different regions. With the rise of the bhakti movement from the 12th century onwards, religious works were created in other languages: Hindi , Kannada , Telugu and many others. For example,

1911-453: A strong influence of Standard American English onto the speech of Black Americans so that a continuum exists today with Standard English as the acrolect and varieties closest to the original creole as the basilect. In Jamaica , a continuum exists between Jamaican English and Jamaican Patois . In Haiti, the acrolect is Haitian French and the basilect has been standardized as Haitian Creole . Meanwhile, in southern Africa, Afrikaans

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2002-687: A term also used as a lower-case noun as a catch-all description of pidgins , creoles, dialects , and vernaculars worldwide. Creoles, including Jamaican Patois, are often stigmatized as low- prestige languages even when spoken as the mother tongue by the majority of the local population. Jamaican pronunciation and vocabulary are significantly different from English despite heavy use of English words or derivatives. Significant Jamaican Patois-speaking communities exist among Jamaican expatriates and non Jamaican in South Florida , New York City , Hartford , Washington, D.C. , Nicaragua , Costa Rica ,

2093-745: A third-party language in which persons speaking different vernaculars not understood by each other may communicate. For instance, in Western Europe until the 17th century, most scholarly works had been written in Latin , which was serving as a lingua franca. Works written in Romance languages are said to be in the vernacular. The Divina Commedia , the Cantar de Mio Cid , and The Song of Roland are examples of early vernacular literature in Italian, Spanish, and French, respectively. In Europe, Latin

2184-645: A vernacular has an internally coherent system of grammar . It may be associated with a particular set of vocabulary , and spoken using a variety of accents , styles , and registers . As American linguist John McWhorter describes about a number of dialects spoken in the American South in earlier U.S. history, including older African-American Vernacular English , "the often nonstandard speech of Southern white planters , nonstandard British dialects of indentured servants, and West Indian patois , [...] were non standard but not sub standard." In other words,

2275-421: Is a dialect continuum of varieties of a creole language between those most and least similar to the superstrate language (that is, a closely related language whose speakers assert or asserted dominance of some sort). Due to social, political, and economic factors, a creole language can decreolize towards one of the languages from which it is descended, aligning its morphology , phonology , and syntax to

2366-455: Is a general but far from uniform consensus among the leading scholars about what should or should not be said in standard English; but for every rule, examples from famous English writers can be found that break it. Uniformity of spoken English never existed and does not exist now, but usages do exist, which must be learnt by the speakers, and do not conform to prescriptive rules. Usages have been documented not by prescriptive grammars, which on

2457-486: Is a grammar of the Irish language which is thought to date back as far as the 7th century: the earliest surviving manuscripts are 12th-century. Italian appears before standardization as the lingua Italica of Isidore and the lingua vulgaris of subsequent medieval writers. Documents of mixed Latin and Italian are known from the 12th century, which appears to be the start of writing in Italian. The first known grammar of

2548-413: Is also considered a profanity. A rich body of literature has developed in Jamaican Patois. Notable among early authors and works are Thomas MacDermot 's All Jamaica Library and Claude McKay 's Songs of Jamaica (1909), and, more recently, dub poets Linton Kwesi Johnson and Mikey Smith . Subsequently, the life-work of Louise Bennett or Miss Lou (1919–2006) is particularly notable for her use of

2639-478: Is crucial to determining its intended sense. In variation theory, pioneered by William Labov , language is a large set of styles or registers from which the speaker selects according to the social setting of the moment. The vernacular is "the least self-conscious style of people in a relaxed conversation", or "the most basic style"; that is, casual varieties used spontaneously rather than self-consciously, informal talk used in intimate situations. In other contexts

2730-401: Is excluded) /fi/ has a number of functions, including: The pronominal system of Standard English has a four-way distinction of person , number , gender and case . Some varieties of Jamaican Patois do not have the gender or case distinction, but all varieties distinguish between the second person singular and plural (you). This is akin to Spanish in that both have two distinct forms of

2821-549: The Cayman Islands , and Panama , as well as Toronto , London , Birmingham , Manchester , and Nottingham . The Cayman Islands in particular have a very large Jamaican Patois-speaking community, with 16.4% of the population conversing in the language. A mutually intelligible variety is found in San Andrés y Providencia Islands, Colombia, brought to the island by descendants of Jamaican Maroons (escaped slaves) in

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2912-738: The Hetruscane and Mesapian , whereof though there be some Records yet extant; yet there are none alive that can understand them: The Oscan , the Sabin and Tusculan, are thought to be but Dialects to these. Here, vernacular, mother language and dialect are in use in a modern sense. According to Merriam-Webster , "vernacular" was brought into the English language as early as 1601 from the Latin vernaculus ("native") which had been in figurative use in Classical Latin as "national" and "domestic", having originally been derived from verna ,

3003-646: The Igbo language . Red eboe describes a fair-skinned black person because of the reported account of fair skin among the Igbo in the mid-1700s. De meaning to be (at a location) comes from Yoruba . From the Ashanti-Akan, comes the term Obeah which means witchcraft, from the Ashanti Twi word Ɔbayi which also means "witchcraft". Words from Hindi include ganja (marijuana). Pickney or pickiney meaning child, taken from an earlier form ( piccaninny )

3094-683: The Ramayana , one of Hinduism's sacred epics in Sanskrit, had vernacular versions such as Ranganadha Ramayanam composed in Telugu by Gona Buddha Reddy in the 15th century; and Ramacharitamanasa , a Awadhi version of the Ramayana by the 16th-century poet Tulsidas . These circumstances are a contrast between a vernacular and language variant used by the same speakers. According to one school of linguistic thought, all such variants are examples of

3185-701: The Southern Netherlands came under the dominion of Spain, then of Austria (1713) and of France (1794). The Congress of Vienna created the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 from which southern Netherlands (being Catholic) seceded in 1830 to form the Kingdom of Belgium , which was confirmed in 1839 by the Treaty of London . As a result of this political instability no standard Dutch

3276-805: The Welsh Language developed from these through the Middle Ages and to the Renaissance. A dictionary is to be distinguished from a glossary . Although numerous glossaries publishing vernacular words had long been in existence, such as the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville , which listed many Spanish words, the first vernacular dictionaries emerged together with vernacular grammars. Glossaries in Dutch began about 1470 AD leading eventually to two Dutch dictionaries : Shortly after (1579)

3367-512: The " rederijkerskamers " (learned, literary societies founded throughout Flanders and Holland from the 1420s onward) attempted to impose a Latin structure on Dutch, on the presumption that Latin grammar had a "universal character". However, in 1559, John III van de Werve, Lord of Hovorst published his grammar Den schat der Duytsscher Talen in Dutch; Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert ( Eenen nieuwen ABC of Materi-boeck ) followed five years after, in 1564. The Latinizing tendency changed course, with

3458-558: The 1516 Regole grammaticali della volgar lingua of Giovanni Francesco Fortunio and the 1525 Prose della vulgar lingua of Pietro Bembo . In those works the authors strove to establish a dialect that would qualify for becoming the Italian national language. The first grammar in a vernacular language in western Europe was published in Toulouse in 1327. Known as the Leys d'amor and written by Guilhèm Molinièr, an advocate of Toulouse, it

3549-492: The 15th century, concurrent with the rise of Castile as an international power. The first Spanish grammar by Antonio de Nebrija ( Tratado de gramática sobre la lengua Castellana , 1492) was divided into parts for native and nonnative speakers, pursuing a different purpose in each. Books 1–4 describe the Spanish language grammatically, in order to facilitate the study of Latin for its Spanish-speaking readers. Book 5 contains

3640-476: The 1710s, due to the military power of Louis XIV of France . Certain languages have both a classical form and various vernacular forms, with two widely used examples being Arabic and Chinese: see Varieties of Arabic and Chinese language . In the 1920s, due to the May Fourth Movement , Classical Chinese was replaced by written vernacular Chinese . The vernacular is also often contrasted with

3731-772: The 18th century. Mesolectal forms are similar to very basilectal Belizean Kriol . Jamaican Patois exists mainly as a spoken language and is also heavily used for musical purposes, especially in reggae and dancehall as well as other genres. Although standard British English is used for most writing in Jamaica, Jamaican Patois has gained ground as a literary language for almost a hundred years. Claude McKay published his book of Jamaican poems Songs of Jamaica in 1912. Patois and English are frequently used for stylistic contrast ( codeswitching ) in new forms of Internet writing. Accounts of basilectal Jamaican Patois (that is, its most divergent rural varieties) suggest around 21 phonemic consonants with an additional phoneme ( /h/ ) in

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3822-654: The 1960s, the status of Jamaican Patois rose as a number of respected linguistic studies were published, by Frederic Cassidy (1961, 1967), Bailey (1966) and others. Subsequently, it has gradually become mainstream to codemix or write complete pieces in Jamaican Patois; proponents include Kamau Brathwaite , who also analyses the position of Creole poetry in his History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry (1984). However, Standard English remains

3913-478: The Anglo-Norman domains in both northwestern France and Britain, English scholars retained an interest in the fate of French as well as of English. Some of the numerous 16th-century surviving grammars are: The development of a standard German was impeded by political disunity and strong local traditions until the invention of printing made possible a " High German -based book language". This literary language

4004-417: The English to be ). Their function also differs from those of English. According to Bailey (1966), the progressive category is marked by /a~da~de/ . Alleyne (1980) claims that /a~da/ marks the progressive and that the habitual aspect is unmarked but by its accompaniment with words such as "always", "usually", etc. (i.e. is absent as a grammatical category). Mufwene (1984) and Gibson and Levy (1984) propose

4095-775: The Father of the Forest (2015), British-Trinidadian author Wayne Gerard Trotman presents dialogue in Trinidadian Creole , Jamaican Patois, and French while employing Standard English for narrative prose. Jamaican Patois is also presented in some films and other media, such as for example the character Tia Dalma 's speech from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest , and a few scenes in Meet Joe Black in which Brad Pitt 's character converses with

4186-516: The Latin did spread all over that Country; the Calabrian , and Apulian spoke Greek, whereof some Relics are to be found to this day ; but it was an adventitious, no Mother-Language to them: 'tis confess'd that Latium it self, and all the Territories about Rome, had the Latin for its maternal and common first vernacular Tongue; but Tuscany and Liguria had others quite discrepant, viz.

4277-666: The University of the West Indies, and while most Jamaicans use the informal "Miss Lou" writing system, the Cassidy Writing system is an effort at standardizing Patois in its written form. Vernacular Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken form of language, particularly when perceived as having lower social status or less prestige than standard language , which is more codified , institutionally promoted, literary , or formal. More narrowly,

4368-580: The Western dialect. There are between nine and sixteen vowels . Some vowels are capable of nasalization and others can be lengthened. Examples of palatalization include: Voiced stops are implosive whenever in the onset of prominent syllables (especially word-initially) so that /biit/ ('beat') is pronounced [ɓiːt] and /ɡuud/ ('good') as [ɠuːd] . Before a syllabic /l/ , the contrast between alveolar and velar consonants has been historically neutralized with alveolar consonants becoming velar so that

4459-619: The accents were described as "awful" by Jamaican Americans. In December 2011, it was reported that the Bible was being translated into Jamaican Patois. The Gospel of Luke has already appeared as Jiizas: di Buk We Luuk Rait bout Im . While the Rev. Courtney Stewart, managing the translation as General Secretary of the West Indies Bible Society, believes this will help elevate the status of Jamaican Patois, others think that such

4550-418: The acrolect form as [aɪ ɡeɪv hɪm wʌn] (which is identical with Standard English ) while the basilect form is [mɪ ɡiː æm wan] . Due to code-switching, most speakers have a command of a range in the continuum and, depending on social position, occupation, etc. can implement the different levels with various levels of skill. If a society is so stratified as to have little to no contact between groups who speak

4641-447: The adjective "nonstandard" should not be taken to mean that these various dialects were intrinsically incorrect, less logical, or otherwise inferior, only that they were not the socially perceived norm or mainstream considered prestigious or appropriate for public speech; however, nonstandard dialects are indeed often stigmatized as such, due to socially-induced post-hoc rationalization. Again, however, linguistics regards all varieties of

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4732-478: The age of modern communications and mass media, according to one study, "… although the Received Pronunciation of Standard English has been heard constantly on radio and then television for over 60 years, only 3 to 5% of the population of Britain actually speaks RP … new brands of English have been springing up even in recent times ...." What the vernacular would be in this case is a moot point: "…

4823-473: The case of the English language , while it has become common thought to assume that nonstandard varieties should not be taught, there has been evidence to prove that teaching nonstandard dialects in the classroom can encourage some children to learn English. The first known usage of the word "vernacular" in English is not recent. In 1688, James Howell wrote: Concerning Italy, doubtless there were divers before

4914-427: The concept still further by proposing that multiple H exist in society from which the users can select for various purposes. The definition of an H is intermediate between Ferguson's and Fishman's. Realizing the inappropriateness of the term diglossia (only two) to his concept, he proposes the term broad diglossia. Within sociolinguistics , the term "vernacular" has been applied to several concepts. Context, therefore,

5005-448: The continuum) to refer to the phenomenon of code-switching used by some users of creole languages who also have some fluency in the standard language upon which the contact language is based. University of Chicago linguist Salikoko Mufwene explains the phenomenon of creole languages as "basilectalization" away from a standard, often European, language among a mixed European and non-European population. In certain speech communities ,

5096-472: The creole and those who speak the superstrate (dominant) language, a situation of diglossia occurs, rather than a continuum. Assigning separate and distinct functions for the two varieties will have the same effect. This is the case in Haiti with Haitian Creole and French . Use of the terms acrolect , mesolect and basilect attempts to avoid the value judgement inherent in earlier terminology, by which

5187-675: The end of the Great Vowel Shift . It was created by the infusion of Old French into Old English , after the Norman conquest of 1066 AD, and of Latin at the instigation of the clerical administration. While present-day English speakers may be able to read Middle English authors (such as Geoffrey Chaucer ), Old English is much more difficult. Middle English is known for its alternative spellings and pronunciations. The British Isles, although geographically limited, have always supported populations of widely-varied dialects, as well as

5278-506: The language spoken by the ruling classes in a capital city was defined as the "correct" or "pure" form while that spoken by the lower classes and inhabitants of outlying provinces was "a dialect" characterised as "incorrect", "impure" or "debased". It has been suggested ( Rickford 1977 ; Dillard 1972 ) that African American Vernacular English is a decreolized form of a slave creole. After emancipation, African-Americans' recognition and exercise of increased opportunities for interaction created

5369-465: The language, with the aim of supporting non-English-speaking Jamaicans according to their constitutional guarantees of equal rights, as services of the state are normally provided in English, which a significant portion of the population cannot speak fluently. The vast majority of such persons are speakers of Jamaican Patois. It was argued that failure to provide services of the state in a language in such general use or discriminatory treatment by officers of

5460-482: The latter of which were all perceived as prestigious and whose use carried socio-economic benefits. The span of a speaker's command of the continuum generally corresponds to social context. The tense/aspect system of Jamaican Patois is fundamentally unlike that of English. There are no morphologically marked past participles ; instead, two different participle words exist: en and a . These are not verbs , but rather invariant particles that cannot stand alone (like

5551-500: The local standard of the dominant language but to different degrees depending on a speaker's status. William Stewart , in 1965, proposed the terms acrolect , the highest or most prestigious variety on the continuum, and basilect , the lowest or least prestigious variety, as sociolinguistic labels for the upper and lower boundaries, respectively, of a post-creole speech continuum. In the early 1970s Derek Bickerton popularized these terms (as well as mesolect for intermediate points in

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5642-403: The massive dictionary of Samuel Johnson . French (as Old French ) emerged as a Gallo-Romance language from Colloquial Latin during late antiquity . The written language is known from at least as early as the 9th century. That language contained many forms still identifiable as Latin. Interest in standardizing French began in the 16th century. Because of the Norman conquest of England and

5733-584: The midlands. Chaucer wrote in an early East Midland style; John Wycliffe translated the New Testament into it, and William Caxton , the first English printer, wrote in it. Caxton is considered the first modern English author. The first printed book in England was Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , published by Caxton in 1476. The first English grammars were written in Latin , with some in French , after

5824-844: The more prestigious literary medium in Jamaican literature . Canadian-Caribbean science-fiction novelist Nalo Hopkinson often writes in Trinidadian and sometimes Jamaican Patois. Jean D'Costa penned a series of popular children's novels, including Sprat Morrison (1972; 1990), Escape to Last Man Peak (1976), and Voice in the Wind (1978), which draw liberally from Jamaican Patois for dialogue, while presenting narrative prose in Standard English. Marlon James employs Patois in his novels including A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014). In his science fiction novel Kaya Abaniah and

5915-440: The people spoke Vulgar Latin as a vernacular. Joshua Fishman redefined the concept in 1964 to include everything Ferguson had excluded. Fishman allowed both different languages and dialects and also different styles and registers as the H variants. The essential contrast between them was that they be "functionally differentiated"; that is, H must be used for special purposes, such as a liturgical or sacred language. Fasold expanded

6006-563: The publications of Jamaican poet Linton Kwesi Johnson ) where it is sometimes described as eye dialect . Nonstandard dialects have been used in classic literature throughout history. One famous example of this is Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . This classic piece of literature, commonly taught in schools in the U.S., includes dialogue from various characters in their own native vernaculars (including representations of Older Southern American English and African-American English ), which are not written in standard English. In

6097-489: The rich colorful patois, despite being shunned by traditional literary groups. "The Jamaican Poetry League excluded her from its meetings, and editors failed to include her in anthologies." Nonetheless, she argued forcefully for the recognition of Jamaican as a full language, with the same pedigree as the dialect from which Standard English had sprung: Dah language weh yuh proud a, Weh yuh honour an respec – Po Mas Charlie, yuh no know se Dat it spring from dialec! After

6188-509: The sense of "he told me that..." = /im tel mi se/ ), taken from Ashanti Twi , and duppy meaning ghost , taken from the Twi word dupon ('cotton tree root'), because of the African belief of malicious spirits originating in the roots of trees (in Jamaica and Ghana, particularly the cotton tree known in both places as "Odom"). The pronoun /unu/ , used for the plural form of you , is taken from

6279-406: The speaker does conscious work to select the appropriate variations. The one they can use without this effort is the first form of speech acquired. In another theory, the vernacular language is opposed to the standard language . The non-standard varieties thus defined are dialects, which are to be identified as complexes of factors: "social class, region, ethnicity, situation, and so forth". Both

6370-521: The spread of the French national language into German-speaking territories assisted by the efforts of the French Academy. With so many linguists moving in the same direction, a standard German ( hochdeutsche Schriftsprache ) did evolve without the assistance of a language academy. Its precise origin, the major constituents of its features, remains uncertainly known and debatable. Latin prevailed as

6461-453: The standard and non-standard languages have dialects, but in contrast to the standard language, the non-standard language has "socially disfavored" structures. The standard language is primarily written (in traditional print media), whereas the non-standard language is spoken. An example of a vernacular dialect is African American Vernacular English . A vernacular is not a real language but is "an abstract set of norms". Vernaculars acquired

6552-540: The standardisation of English has been in progress for many centuries." Modern English came into being as the standard Middle English (i.e., as the preferred dialect of the monarch, court and administration). That dialect was of the East Midland, which had spread to London , where the king resided and from which he ruled. It contained Danish forms not often used in the north or south, as the Danes had settled heavily in

6643-964: The state based on the inability of a citizen to use English violates the rights of citizens. The proposal was made that freedom from discrimination on the ground of language be inserted into the Charter of Rights. They standardized the Jamaican alphabet as follows: Nasal vowels are written with -hn , as in kyaahn (can't) and iihn (isn't it?) h is written according to local pronunciation, so that hen (hen) and en (end) are distinguished in writing for speakers of western Jamaican, but not for those of central Jamaican. Jamaican Patois contains many loanwords , most of which are African in origin, primarily from Twi (a dialect of Akan ). Many loanwords come from English, but some are also borrowed from Spanish , Portuguese , Hindi , Arawak and African languages , as well as Scottish and Irish dialects. Examples from African languages include /se/ meaning that (in

6734-403: The status of official languages through metalinguistic publications. Between 1437 and 1586, the first reference grammars of Italian , Spanish , French , Dutch , German and English were written, though not always immediately published. It is to be understood that the first precursors of those languages preceded their standardization by up to several hundred years. In the 16th century,

6825-721: The supraregional ideal broadened to a universal intent to create a national language from Early New High German by deliberately ignoring regional forms of speech, which practice was considered to be a form of purification parallel to the ideal of purifying religion in Protestantism . In 1617, the Fruitbearing Society , a language club, was formed in Weimar in imitation of the Accademia della Crusca in Italy. It

6916-409: The verb "to be" – ser and estar – in which ser is equative and estar is locative. Other languages, such as Portuguese and Italian, make a similar distinction (see also: Romance Copula ) . Patois has long been written with various respellings compared to English so that, for example, the word "there" might be written ⟨de⟩ , ⟨deh⟩ , or ⟨dere⟩ , and

7007-424: The vernacular can be a distinct stylistic register , a regional dialect , a sociolect , or an independent language. Vernacular is a term for a type of speech variety , generally used to refer to a local language or dialect, as distinct from what is seen as a standard language. The vernacular is contrasted with higher-prestige forms of language, such as national , literary , liturgical or scientific idiom, or

7098-534: The vernacular was Galileo , writing in Italian c.  1600 , though some of his works remained in Latin. A later example is Isaac Newton , whose 1687 Principia was in Latin, but whose 1704 Opticks was in English. Latin continues to be used in certain fields of science, notably binomial nomenclature in biology, while other fields such as mathematics use vernacular; see scientific nomenclature for details. In diplomacy, French displaced Latin in Europe in

7189-468: The whole are less comprehensible to the general public, but by comprehensive dictionaries, often termed unabridged, which attempt to list all usages of words and the phrases in which they occur as well as the date of first use and the etymology where possible. These typically require many volumes, and yet not more so than the unabridged dictionaries of many languages. Post-creole speech continuum A post-creole continuum (or simply creole continuum )

7280-547: The word "three" as ⟨tree⟩ , ⟨tri⟩ , or ⟨trii⟩ . Standard English spelling is often used and a nonstandard spelling sometimes becomes widespread even though it is neither phonetic nor standard (e.g. ⟨pickney⟩ for /pikni/ , 'child'). In 2002, the Jamaican Language Unit was set up at the University of the West Indies at Mona to begin standardizing

7371-522: The word for 'bottle' is /bakl̩/ and the word for 'idle' is /aiɡl̩/ . Jamaican Patois exhibits two types of vowel harmony ; peripheral vowel harmony, wherein only sequences of peripheral vowels (that is, /i/ , /u/ , and /a/ ) can occur within a syllable; and back harmony, wherein /i/ and /u/ cannot occur within a syllable together (that is, /uu/ and /ii/ are allowed but * /ui/ and * /iu/ are not). These two phenomena account for three long vowels and four diphthongs : Jamaican Patois features

7462-532: Was defined (even though much in demand and recommended as an ideal) until after World War II . Currently the Dutch Language Union , an international treaty organization founded in 1980, supports a standard Dutch in the Netherlands, while Afrikaans is regulated by Die Taalkommissie founded in 1909. Standard English remains a quasi-fictional ideal, despite the numerous private organizations publishing prescriptive rules for it. No language academy

7553-527: Was ever established or espoused by any government past or present in the English-speaking world. In practice the British monarchy and its administrations established an ideal of what good English should be considered to be, and this in turn was based on the teachings of the major universities, such as Cambridge University and Oxford University , which relied on the scholars whom they hired. There

7644-612: Was not generally accepted and was soon supplanted, thus his grammar shared a similar fate. Other grammars in English followed rapidly; Paul Greaves' Grammatica Anglicana (1594), Alexander Hume 's Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britain Tongue (1617), and many others. Over the succeeding decades, many literary figures turned a hand to grammar in English; Alexander Gill , Ben Jonson , Joshua Poole, John Wallis , Jeremiah Wharton, James Howell , Thomas Lye, Christopher Cooper , William Lily , John Colet and more, all leading to

7735-583: Was not generally known, but it was known, as an inventory of the library of Lorenzo de'Medici lists it under the title Regule lingue florentine ("Rules of the Florentine language"). The only known manuscript copy, however, is included in the codex , Reginense Latino 1370, located at Rome in the Vatican library . It is therefore called the Grammatichetta vaticana. More influential perhaps were

7826-592: Was not identical to any specific variety of German. The first grammar evolved from pedagogical works that also tried to create a uniform standard from the many regional dialects for various reasons. Religious leaders wished to create a sacred language for Protestantism that would be parallel to the use of Latin for the Roman Catholic Church . Various administrations wished to create a civil service, or chancery, language that would be useful in more than one locality. And finally, nationalists wished to counter

7917-466: Was one of many such clubs; however, none became a national academy. In 1618–1619 Johannes Kromayer wrote the first all-German grammar. In 1641 Justin Georg Schottel in teutsche Sprachkunst presented the standard language as an artificial one. By the time of his work of 1663, ausführliche Arbeit von der teutschen Haubt-Sprache , the standard language was well established. Auraicept na n-Éces

8008-581: Was published in order to codify the use of the Occitan language in poetry competitions organized by the company of the Gai Saber in both grammar and rhetorical ways. Chronologically, Spanish (more accurately, lengua castellana ) has a development similar to that of Italian. There was some vocabulary in Isidore of Seville, with traces afterward, writing from about the 12th century; standardisation began in

8099-666: Was ultimately borrowed from the Portuguese pequenino (the diminutive of pequeno , small) or Spanish pequeño ('small'). There are many words referring to popular produce, food items, and Jamaican cuisine — ackee , callaloo , guinep , bammy , roti , dal , kamranga . Jamaican Patois has its own rich variety of swearwords . One of the strongest is bloodclaat (along with related forms raasclaat , bomboclaat , pussyclaat and others)—compare with bloody in Australian English and British English , which

8190-506: Was used at Tridentine Mass until the Second Vatican Council of 1965. Certain groups, notably Traditionalist Catholics , continue to practice Latin Mass . In Eastern Orthodox Church , four Gospels translated to vernacular Ukrainian language in 1561 are known as Peresopnytsia Gospel . In India, the 12th century Bhakti movement led to the translation of Sanskrit texts to the vernacular. In science, an early user of

8281-1378: Was used widely instead of vernacular languages in varying forms until c.  1701 , in its latter stage as Neo-Latin . In religion, Protestantism was a driving force in the use of the vernacular in Christian Europe, the Bible having been translated from Latin into vernacular languages with such works as the Bible in Dutch: published in 1526 by Jacob van Liesvelt ; Bible in French: published in 1528 by Jacques Lefevre d'Étaples (or Faber Stapulensis); German Luther Bible in 1534 ( New Testament 1522); Bible in Spanish: published in Basel in 1569 by Casiodoro de Reina (Biblia del Oso); Bible in Czech: Bible of Kralice, printed between 1579 and 1593; Bible in English: King James Bible , published in 1611; Bible in Slovene, published in 1584 by Jurij Dalmatin. In Catholicism , vernacular bibles were later provided, but Latin

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