CARIMAC Times 2016: The JREAM Edition Journalists Reviving Awareness of what Matters | Page 119

The Faculty of Humanities and Education at
the University of the West Indies, Mona
Photo by Tori Haber

A creole language is understood as the product
of the intermingling of two or more languages,
usually involving traditional European languages
such as English, French and Spanish. The byproduct language or dialect as it is commonly
called, has elements of those European languages,
and constitutes the ‘mother tongue’ of the place
in which it was created.
Jamaican Creole was created in a context within
which Africans taken from their homeland to
the Caribbean [formerly the New World] were
forbidden to speak in their native tongue. They
were bombarded with the language of the slave

and colonial masters but could not master it.
Therefore, a ‘bastardised’ or broken form of
English came to be.
However, Carolyn Cooper, professor of literary
and cultural studies at the UWI, Mona Campus,
said the way in which the English Language came
to be in the Caribbean — through colonialism
— in her estimation, is not the most important
point of analysis in seeking to understand the
attitudes of males in favour of Jamaican Creole.
“I don’t know that we need to go as far back as
slavery or even colonialism … In the Jamaican

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