“Unnu tek up a book from mawnin?! Yuh know wah, unnu come siddung and practice in unnu book.” Mummy said as she went to clean up her broken dolphin glass figurine. My brother and I were playing tag in the dining room and ended up bumping into Mummy’s China cabinet which held expensive ware and figurines, made by her Bajan glassmaker uncle. Under any circumstance, we are never allowed to touch that China cabinet or what it holds inside. She continued to scold us as we grabbed pencils and rubba (erasers). Being the natural rugrats we are, she didn’t have to tell us what to do, we already knew the drill. We sat in silence and traced over letters, connected words to pictures, sounded out vowels next to consonants and Lord knows what else.
“Mek me see weh yuh do so far.” Mummy said as she flipped to the beginning of my Grade K Reading Readiness Smart Alec book. She carefully scanned through each page interrogating me with random questions here and there to further my thinking. “Alright, gwaan guh play but look ‘ere, you cannot play in the dining room, yuh understand?” I aggressively nodded my head and ran to the living room.
Anytime my brothers and I would get in trouble, my mom would just make us practice Smart Alec books or read, which I thank her for. I was always ahead of my classmates and would be reading levels ahead than the average student. You can say I spoke “proper”. However, my Jamaican pronunciation for some words never sat right with my teachers. “Veh-jah-tebble”, my 6-year-old self spoke confidently. “Kasia, it’s vehj-tah-bull” That’s when I started to make conclusions in my head that there was a clear difference as to how my family speaks versus most Americans. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York with a Jamaican family and my Bajan grandma. At home, I was spoken to in Jamaican Patois (Patwah) and would speak it too, but from an early age I could switch back to standard English, based on who I was talking to.
That being said, I would only speak to my peers in Standard English, if they weren’t Jamaican of course, but things took a turn in 5th grade. My classmates and I were at the lunch table just talking and laughing when, abruptly, this boy said to me, “You talk like a white girl.” Puzzled, I was too speechless to reply so they all just resumed the conversation. That small 6-worded sentence was branded into my head the whole day. Thought about it doing homework, thought about it while eating, thought about it while flossing. It made me feel so indifferent and because I was confused, it was a problem that remained unsolved. I never understood what he meant until middle school. This is when I finally started picking up on New York slang.
“Oh nah, you’re dumb weird bro.” One kid said to another. My brain made a mental note that “dumb” is used as a quantitative adjective. “I’m not gon lie, you’re deadass pushing it.” Hmm okay this means that the other person is going a bit too far. “I’m mad happy right now son.” Ooo a challenge.. oh okay they use “mad” as a quantitative adjective too. It was this dynamic of me listening to my peers talk and translating it into standard English in my head, basically just building my vocabulary. Around my 7th grade year, I was already asking the ock for a turkey roll with everything on it.
Overall, I believe my mother had the biggest influence on the way I write, speak and talk. She made sure my nose stayed in a book while also keeping me in touch with our native tongue. The next biggest influence are my peers who definitely kept me up-to-date with the latest teen or New York slang. All of this fluidity seems pretty cool right? Well it didn’t feel like it to me at first. My three different dialects showed me how there were three, or more, different versions of me. It made me feel like an outcast. Everyone had some sense of my belongingness, but me being a Jamaican-American, it was difficult to depict who exactly I was. I always felt like I had to pick one group to belong to. Of course mi like mi jerk chicken wid bammy, but I also like deli sandwiches. Although I do love my sturdy ass timbs, mi just cyan imagine myself without mi Clark’s dem. I would talk to my other friends with immigrant parents, or who were immigrants, about it and they could always relate. They understand our duality in culture, language, social status, you name it. Being older now with a bit more knowledge, I now see the power of my versatility in social groups. I can relate to Jamaicans, Americans and of course, New Yorkers. A lot of people cannot say the same, so I take pride in it. To be different and express all versions of myself.
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