creole_caribbean · Jamaica
Jamaica (Patois / Jamaican Creole, Kingston)
Jamaica · Kingston (basilectal-mesolectal)
Jamaican Patois (Patwa) is a full, systematic creole language, not 'broken English' -- most of its vocabulary is English-derived, but its grammar is not: preverbal tense-mood-aspect particles ('a' for the progressive, 'did'/'en' for the past, 'a go'/'wi' for the future) replace English-style verb conjugation, the same structural pattern this app's Haitian Kreyòl and Cape Verdean Kriolu presets already model for their own lexifier languages (Cassidy & Le Page 1980, Dictionary of Jamaican English). This preset models Kingston urban speech toward the basilectal (most creole-grammar-heavy) end of Jamaica's creole continuum, in deliberate contrast with this app's existing 'jm-jamaican' preset, which models the acrolectal English end -- the two are related but genuinely different presets, not duplicates. TH becomes a stop, shared with Jamaican English (thing -> ting, this -> dis), and coda consonant clusters simplify, a well-documented Caribbean creole pattern (best -> bes'). This app's engine cannot yet mechanically render two of Patois's most audible features -- TH-stopping and the documented FACE->[ie]/GOAT->[uo] diphthongs (bakes -> 'bieks', boat -> 'buot') -- because the transformer rules for both are gated to `language='en'` presets specifically, and this preset is correctly tagged `language='mixed'` instead (Patois is an autonomous creole, not an English dialect). Both are documented here in the blurb rather than silently omitted; the app's rendered audio for this preset will not yet capture them.
Live example
Transformed live against this preset's phonetic matrix.
Hear it
A/B where you're starting from against this accent, for the same sentence. That first clip is your own accent when you've said how you speak, and your language's reference variety when you haven't — the player says which.
Compare — Where you're starting from vs. the accent you're building
Active features
Every phonetic parameter that deviates from this schema’s diffing anchor, with a plain-English gloss.
| Feature | Value | Meaning | Drill |
|---|---|---|---|
| Languagelanguage | mixed | Drill | |
| Mixed Languagesmixed_languages | — | Drill | |
| S Treatments_treatment | standard | Drill | |
| D Intervocalicd_intervocalic | standard | Drill | |
| D Finald_final | standard | Drill | |
| R Infinitiver_infinitive | standard | Drill | |
| N Final Velarizationn_final_velarization | No | Drill | |
| Vowel Reductionvowel_reduction | crisp_open | Drill | |
| Creole Tense Markingcreole_tense_marking | Yes | Drill |