Words R Us
- Jamaican Patois (jam)

Jamaican Patois (Patwah), called Jamaican Creole by linguists) is an English-based creole language with West African, Taíno, Irish, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, Hindustani, Portuguese, Chinese, and German influences, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican diaspora. It is spoken by the majority of Jamaicans as a native language. Words or slang from Jamaican Patois can be heard in other Caribbean countries, the United Kingdom, New York City and Miami in the United States, and Toronto, Canada. The majority of non-English words in Patois derive from the West African Akan language.

Patois developed in the 17th century when slaves from West and Central Africa were exposed to, learned, and nativized the vernacular and dialectal language spoken by the slaveholders: British English, Hiberno-English and Scots.

Jamaican Patois was popularized in the music of Bob Marley and other reggai artists. It has a close association with Rastafarianism. Rastafari, sometimes called Rastafarianism, is an Abrahamic religion that developed in Jamaica during the 1930s among impoverished and socially disenfranchised Afro-Jamaican communities. Its Afrocentric ideology was largely a reaction against Jamaica's then-dominant British colonial culture. It is classified as both a new religious movement and a social movement by scholars of religion. There is no central authority in control of the movement and much diversity exists among practitioners, who are known as Rastafari, Rastafarians, or Rastas.

The Joshua Project classifies Jamaicans as 81% Christian with the remainder of the people being Islamic, Hans Chinese, and Hindi, primarily immigrants to Jamaica. The Rastafari group makes up a small, unidentified number.

Sources: Wikipedia
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