The Jamaican food words, and the sentence that gets you fed

Ordering food in Patois is short and direct: you name the thing and the quantity, and Gi mi one a dat(gi mi wan a dat)— give me one of those will get you served at almost any counter on the island. The verb for eating is nyam(nyam)— eat, and it is the one food word every visitor should learn first, because it is the one with no English cousin to guess from. The rest of the vocabulary is dish names — ackee(aki), callaloo(kalaluu), bammy(bami), festival(festival) — and a short set of transaction phrases that change depending on whether you are standing at a counter, at a drum, or at a table with a menu. This page covers all three rooms, because the language is not the same in them.

The verb, and the words around the eating

nyam(nyam) comes from West African languages rather than from English, which is why it is unguessable and why it has stayed. It is the ordinary verb: Mi nyam already(mi nyam aredi)— I have already eaten. It is not slang and it is not coarse, though it can be used with relish in a way eat cannot.

Around it sits the body vocabulary. Hunger and fullness are stated through the belly rather than through the person, which is worth noticing because it is a pattern rather than an idiom.

Hunger, fullness and the eating itself

Patois	Written (Cassidy)	English	Word for word
Mi hungry	mi hongri	I am hungry	I hungry
Mi belly full	mi beli ful	I have had enough	I belly full
Mi waan food	mi waan fuud	I want something to eat	I want food
It sweet mi	it swiit mi	I loved it	it sweet me
Di food nice	di fuud nais	The food is good	the food nice

The fourth row is the one to keep. It sweet mi(it swiit mi) means the thing gave you pleasure, and it applies to a meal, a song or a piece of news. Said to whoever cooked, it lands better than any translation of delicious.

The dishes on a menu board

A Jamaican menu board is short, handwritten, and assumes you know what the words mean. These are the ones that appear most often.

Dishes you will meet on a board or a counter

Patois	Written (Cassidy)	English
ackee an saltfish	aki an saalfish	The national dish — salted cod with the cooked fruit of the ackee tree
callaloo	kalaluu	A leafy green, steamed, usually at breakfast
bammy	bami	A flat cassava bread, fried or steamed
festival	festival	A sweet fried dumpling, long and slightly crisp
escovitch fish	eskovich fish	Fried fish under vinegar, onion and hot pepper
rice an peas	rais an piiz	Rice cooked with beans and coconut milk
patty	pati	A filled pastry, eaten on the move
soup	suup	Saturday soup, thick, sold by the bag or the cup
bulla	bula	A dense round cake, often eaten with avocado or cheese

Two notes on that table. Peas means beans, not garden peas, so rice an peas is usually red kidney beans, and pigeon peas around Christmas. And soup is a substantial thing sold on particular days, not a starter — asking for soup on a Saturday in a small town is a very different order from asking for it in a dining room.

The ingredient names that catch people out

The trap is not pronunciation, it is that a familiar English word has been reassigned. Jamaican pear is an avocado, not the fruit an English speaker pictures. pepper(pepa) almost always means the small, extremely hot kind rather than the ground black sort. Provisions, or ground provisions in full, means the starchy roots and tubers, and asking for them will get you yam, dasheen and green banana rather than supplies. Sorrel is a drink, made from the red calyx of a hibiscus rather than from the salad leaf of the same name, and it appears at Christmas.

Names also move around. The same fruit or green can go by different words in different parishes, and not one of those words is a mistake — that is ordinary variation, and a seller who offers you the local name for something is being helpful rather than pedantic.

A cook shop, a jerk centre and a hotel dining room

These are three different rooms with three different registers, and using the wrong one is the actual mistake visitors make.

A cook shap(kuk shap) is a small kitchen serving a fixed set of dishes from steam trays, mostly at lunchtime, mostly to people who work nearby. You order at a counter, you say what you want and how much of it, and you get a box food(baks fuud) to take away. The exchange is fast and Patois runs through all of it. Reading the board at length while a queue builds behind you is the thing to avoid; decide first, then speak.

A jerk centre or a roadside jerk pan is a half-drum over pimento wood, and the transaction is even shorter. You name the meat and the quantity, it is chopped in front of you on a board, and sauce is a question you will be asked rather than one you have to raise. There is often no menu at all.

A hotel dining room runs in English, and that is not a failure of anywhere. Staff are trained to serve international guests, the menu is printed, and the register moves toward standard English on both sides of the table. If you want to hear and use Patois, the cook shop is the place; if you want something explained, ask a member of staff who is not in the middle of a service.

The shape of an order

Patois orders are direct in a way that reads as brusque in English and is not. There is no long polite preamble, and the softening is done by tone and by the question mark.

Ordering, in the words people actually use

Patois	Written (Cassidy)	English	Word for word
Wah yuh sell?	wa yu sel	What do you have today	what you sell
Mi wi tek di fish	mi wi tek di fish	I will have the fish	I will take the fish
Gi mi one a dat	gi mi wan a dat	Give me one of those	give me one of that
Mi nuh nyam meat	mi no nyam miit	I do not eat meat	I not eat meat
Nuh put nuh pepper pon it	no put no pepa pan it	No hot pepper on it, please	not put no pepper on it
Mek it hot	mek it hat	Make it spicy

The fifth row shows something English speakers find alarming and should not. Two negatives in one sentence do not cancel; they agree, and the sentence is more emphatic for it. This is ordinary Patois grammar rather than an error, and it is the fastest way to be certain your pepper instruction was understood.

The dietary line matters here too. Jamaica has a long-established vegetarian tradition, and a kitchen will not be surprised by the request. Say it plainly and early, before the box is filled.

Small or large, and what comes in the box

Almost everything is sold in two or three sizes, and the sizes are not printed. You will be asked, and the answer is short. A small box from a cook shop is a full lunch; a large one will defeat most appetites.

What arrives in the box is also worth expecting. A plate is rarely one item: the meat comes over rice an peas or over plain rice, with a little steamed vegetable and sometimes a slice of fried plantain, all in one container. Ordering three separate things because you assumed they were separate is how visitors end up with far too much food.

Size, quantity and what is on the plate

Patois	Written (Cassidy)	English	Word for word
Mi waan a small one	mi waan a smaal wan	I would like a small one	I want a small one
Gi mi di large	gi mi di laaj	The large one, please	give me the large
Likkle bit more rice	likl bit muor rais	A bit more rice	little bit more rice
Dat enough	dat inof	That is enough	that enough

Prices, change and the bargaining that happens at a market rather than a counter are a subject of their own, and they are covered in money and bargaining in Patois.

Afterwards, and the words that are worth more than the order

Saying the food was good is the part most visitors skip, and it is the part that changes the room. It sweet mi(it swiit mi) and Nuff respec(nof rispek)— much respect to whoever cooked will get you a longer conversation than any correct order will. The thanks, please and sorry guide covers that half properly.

Refusing is just as normal. Mi good(mi gud)— I am fine as I am declines an offer without any awkwardness, and it is the right answer to a second helping you cannot manage.

What not to do

Do not perform the accent while ordering. A visitor who says three words of Patois in a normal voice is welcome; a visitor who does an impression of a Jamaican while asking for chicken is doing something else, and everybody at the counter knows which one is happening.

Do not treat the vocabulary as a party trick either. These are food words in a working kitchen, and the person serving you has had a long morning. Use them the way you would use any other language you were learning: quietly, and mostly to be understood.

Getting from the airport to the cook shop has its own vocabulary, and that is on the airport, taxi and hotel page. Everything else worth saying is collected in our Jamaican Patois phrases list.