Bajan Creole


Bajan, or Barbadian Creole, is an English-based creole language with African and British influences spoken on the Caribbean island of Barbados. Bajan is primarily a spoken language, meaning that in general, standard English is used in print, in the media, in the judicial system, in government, and in day-to-day business, while Bajan is reserved for less formal situations, in music, or in social commentary. Ethnologue estimates that Barbados has around 1,000 people who use English as their main language and 286,000 people who use Bajan as their main language.

Languages

Bajan is the Caribbean creole with grammar that most resembles Standard English. There is academic debate on whether its creole features are due to an earlier pidgin state or to some other reason, such as contact with neighboring English-based creole languages. In one historical model, Bajan arose when captive West Africans were forcibly transported to the island, enslaved and forced to speak English, though learned imperfectly. Bajan later became a means of communicating without always being understood by the slave holders.
Due to emigration to the Province of Carolina, Bajan has influenced American English and the Gullah language spoken in the Carolinas. Regionally, Bajan has ties to Belizean and Guyanese Creoles.
Unlike Jamaica, Guyana or Trinidad, Barbados was the destination of few enslaved African-born captives after 1800. Thus, African Barbadians became "Bajanized" relatively early on in the island's history. This tended to make them less resistant to local culture, with its Anglicised language, religion and customs.
Bajan is a primarily spoken language with no standardised written form. Due to the lack of standardisation, spelling may vary widely from person to person. There is much dialectal variation throughout the island. Barbadians practicing Rastafari on the island also tend to speak more with a Jamaican accent than full Bajan. Bajan words and sentences presented below are largely spelled as they are pronounced. New terminology, expressions, jargon, and idioms are regularly added to the dialect by social commentary sung during the annual Crop Over festival.

Features

As in most English-based Caribbean creoles, the interdentals and have merged with other consonants. Unlike most other Caribbean creoles, Bajan is fully rhotic, and if anything more rhotic than North American Standard English. Bajan also has a strong tendency to realize syllable-final as a glottal stop. Thus the Bajan pronunciation of start,, contrasts sharply with the pronunciation of other Caribbean speakers, or or.

Pronouns

Pronouns in Bajan creole don't diverge too far from Standard English, but there are differences. As with other similar creoles, Bajan does not differentiate subject and object pronouns, nor possessive pronouns, except in the case of the first person singular. Another difference is the word for the plural you, which is wunna, similar to the Jamaican word unnu / unna or Bahamian yinna. Here is a list of pronouns in Bajan creole:
The word "yuh" is interchangeably pronounced or.

Questions

The structure of questions in Bajan creole varies from that of Standard English, as it is generally the same format as regular statements. Questions seeking yes or no answers are usually pronounced as a statement with only a raised intonation to differentiate, usually on the last word. For example, Wunna win de cricket? means "Did you win the cricket match?"; dahs yours? means "Is that yours?"
On the other hand, questions asking for information, i.e. who, what, when, where, why or how, usually begin with a 'question word/phrase', saying what is being asked for, followed by a partial, or incomplete statement. For example, "Wha he waun?" means "What does he want?" or "He wants what?". Some question words, however, don't exist, or are seldom used in Bajan creole, including when, where and why, and are achieved by making questions beginning with "wha". For example, "Wha time you see he?" means "When did you see him?", and "Wha part de Chefette?" means "Where is the Chefette?". In addition, “why” questions can be achieved by asking “how come”. For example, “How come you get hey so late?”.

Tenses

The tense/aspect system of Bajan is fundamentally unlike that of English. In Bajan, verbs are seldom conjugated, and only have a few forms, lacking forms to express tense or distinguish between singular and plural. In particular, there are no morphological marked past tense forms corresponding to English "-ed", "-t" or other past tense forms.
Continuous Tenses
Showing Tense
Negative

Proverbs

Some of the common Bajan proverbs are listed below.
ProverbsMeaning
De higha de monkey climb, de more he show he tailThe more you show off the more you show your faults.
Gol' teet doan suit hog mout Fancy things don't suit those that aren't accustomed to them.
Cat luck ain' dog luckWhat one person may get away with may cause problems for another.
Wuh ain' miss you, ain' pass youJust because you got away with something so far does not mean that it won't catch up with you later.
Ef greedy wait hot wud coolPatience will be rewarded.
A eyeful en' a bellyfulSeeing is one thing, having it in your possession is another thing.

African words in Bajan

Although most words in Bajan Creole are English in origin, many words are borrowed from West Africa languages. The largest portion contributed to Bajan is from the Igbo language.
;wunna: You all from the Igbo word unu, which means You.
;obeah: From Igbo Obia, 'doctoring, mysticism, or oracle'.
;Bim: From Igbo bé mụ́, 'my place, people, kindred', common nickname for Barbados
;de, deh: From Igbo dị̀, 'present in'
;eye-water: calque from ányá mmírí, tears
;duppy: From Twi Adope.
;Cou-cou: Part of the local national dish, but comes from "Fou Fou" in Africa.
;nyam: Means to eat ravenously or greedily, as in "Don't yamm the food like that boy!" – In Manjaku and in Pulaar it means to chew ; it also means chew in Luo.
;jook/juk: From the Fula word jukka 'poke, spur'
;soso: From the Igbo language word soso 'only'
;hard-head: From ísí íké,, 'obstinate