Understanding Jamaican Patois

L. Emilie Adams wrote a book to help children from Patois speaking backgrounds understand traditional English. This book developed over many years to become an introductory guide to the Jamaican dialect of English.

This book tackles this task by explaining some of the basic mechanics of Jamaican Grammar. These mechanics provide the reader with an introduction to the grammatical structure of Jamaican patois.

A chapter of phrases is included for the reader to get hands on practice for how to apply the grammatical rules of Jamaican patois. Following this is a chapter outlining some useful vocabulary.

The book ends with a story transcribed into patois, using two phonetically-based transcription systems.