An example of West African grammar in Jamaican patois is the way verbs are formed in the past tense. Instead of using a suffix like “ed,” as in “walked,” a patois speaker puts a word before a verb, ...

What's worse than a bad movie? If you ask linguist Joseph Farquharson, he might say a movie that makes a caricature of the distinct patois of Jamaican accents. When asked to be an advisor on the new ...

What is Jamaica’s true “official language”? Does it have two? Should it acquire a “second language” and if so, what should it be? These questions have had Jamaican commentators tied up in knots for ...

As a Torontonian, it’s not unusual to see white guys shake hands while greeting each other with a, wa gwaan? I wouldn’t say I particularly enjoy witnessing this — actually, it can feel quite painful — ...