Unnu 'ear whe Oleness sey? Dawg nyam yu suppa.....

[Willi]

Dem soon start demanding TOEFL from Jamaicans!

[Mosiah]

Dem soon start demanding TOEFL from Jamaicans!

That's happening already! But that's because those silly Americans can't distinguish between perfect English and an accent.

They wanted me to do that when I first entered college in the USA. Yes, ME! Can you imagine! I told them HELL NO, and just to show off on them, I took a higher level English class that freshmen were not supposed to take and aced it! Best student in the class! And I was still very proficient in patois then too!

Chat bout!

[Willi]

Dem never know seh yuh bi-lingual??

Some of them eed fi tek di TOEfl demselves.

Now I see why yuh TOE sensitive. LoL

[Exile]

Andy???

[Bricktop]

Good for you...unfortunately the majority of Jamaicans are only fluent in patois...if you do not see that as a hinderance to upward mobility then mi nuh know...

[Gamma]

peeper ...... i don't hink ANYONE here (well at least not me) has EVER advocating NOT teaching english in schools and encouraging it ALL i have been saying is that patois should be formalised and also taught.

btw many persons from ENGLAND aspirate ...... in fact that is probably where wi get it from in patois.....

not even saying to teach classes in patois either ... SHEESH!

belgium has flemish, switzerland has swiss deutsch, spain has catalan ....

[Bricktop]

We seem to be able to communicate just fine in patois...not so much in English...what would formalising & teaching patois achieve?

[Gamma]

standardisation, a sense of identity. rastas were once looked down upon as dutty ganja smoking loafers who had no ambition. now bob is an international icon .... now rasta large .... no thanks to jamaica and jamaicans.

mi rhatid when mi si a new zealand mp who was a rasta addressing their parlaiment. why would jamaicans want to enter the winter olympics by pushing a bobsled?

we are seeking to carve out our OWN unique identity and patois is a part of that ... i could go on and aon and on

[Bricktop]

Great. We communicate extremely well in patois. It's a great tool for communicating locally. Now that we have mastered patois, let's move on to the international stage...

[Mosiah]

Andy???

Yuh nuh 'ear seh a mi drinking buddy from back in di day? Wi trying fi keep it dung now dat him gwine be PM.

[Historian]

Respect, Willi!

He is essentially correct.

The Swiss have Switzer Deutsch, but they learn Hoch Deutsch in school but speak SD colloquially.... plus they all have to learn the other 2 National languages in school.

Patois is our cultural language, but cant be more important than International English for us as a bruk pocket nation trying to find our way in the world. We also should adopt Spanish as a second language and push Cantonese/Mandarin as well.

Willi, much respect for your comment above!

This is what that I’ve been trying to show for the past several years since I started regular postings again on this forum.

I deliberately won’t say anything more on the topic at this time.

[Mosiah]

I can imagine how Andy cringe when him hear all BBC presenters talk bout "bigging-up" someone!

[Don1]

Good for you...unfortunately the majority of Jamaicans are only fluent in patois...if you do not see that as a hinderance to upward mobility then mi nuh know...

hindrance

always willing to help

[Willi]

Flemish IS the national language of most of Belgium! The Swiss do NOT teach Switzer Deutsch in school. The Catalans go the other way and virtually outlaw Castillian (Spanish).

Catalan is NOT a dialect, its is an older language than Castellano. Flemish is also older than the DUTCH breakaway dialect.

I dont think we either need to formalize or teach patois (that would weaken it...the caroline Coopers would try to dictate their foolishness and cause a needless fracturing). What we must do for patois is integrate it more into cultural events and programmmes.

[Willi]

Mo, cut out the fliipancy. We have a real problem in English communication.
Perhaps we dont personally, but nuff of our peeps are being held back. That is a crime, really!

And no, I dont agree with the full speech. i do agree with you about the side points, but the message is clear. We need to double down on English to engage the world.