Quote Originally Posted by gregandkelly63 View Post
I would love to speak patwa and understand it better. What I don't understand is a few people on these boards that post in broken English like they are a Jamaican and having trouble with the English language.

I often read their posts and wonder what in the world are they trying to say. They type as if they are speaking patwa and almost every time they are American. As a matter of fact, when I talk with my Jamaican friend online they never talk like that.

Many of the posts are filled with commas and the return key is hit several times during the message usually making a very narrow and long message.

I have learned to pass over these posts without reading them and I just shake my head wondering what they are trying to prove.
I feel your pain [sigh},,,,,

Actually, when I see their thread headings it just gives me more time to read others.

Almost everywhere I have traveled in the world, people like it when you at least try to speak their language even when you do a poor job of it but writing out a phonetic dialect like Patois is a little different. The majority of the attempts at patwa on this board are a poor example of the patwa that is written for instance on Facebook by the youth of Jamaica. Most of that is very difficult to figure out with all the colloquialisms and "short speak". On here it is like; "nuh" = no and "caan" = can etc. but the syntax of the sentence is rarely equivalent to the way a Jamaican speaks the same idea.

Does make you wonder what they are trying to prove, doesn't it?

Peace and Guidance