Jamaican Patois

Jamaican Patois (; locally rendered Jumiekan Patwah or Patwa and called Jamaican Creole by linguists) is an Caribbean English-based creole language with substantial admixture from predominantly West African languages, and some forms of Arawak, Spanish, French and other languages, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican diaspora. Words or slang from Jamaican Patois can be heard in other Caribbean countries, the United Kingdom (especially in London, where it has heavily influenced Multicultural London English), New York City and Miami in the United States, and Toronto, Canada. It is spoken by most Jamaicans as their first language.

Patois developed in the 17th century when enslaved people from West and Central Africa were exposed to, learned, and nativised the vernacular and dialectal languages 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, a term also used as a lower-case noun as a multi-use description of pidgins, creoles, dialects, and vernaculars worldwide. Creoles, including Jamaican Patois, are often stigmatised as low-prestige languages even when spoken as the mother tongue by most 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-Jamaicans in South Florida, New York City, Hartford, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., coastal Latin America, the Cayman Islands, Toronto, London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Nottingham. The Cayman Islands in particular have a large Jamaican Patois-speaking community, with 16.4% of the population using it.