Counting, asking a price and haggling in Patois

Jamaican Patois numbers are the English numbers said with Patois sounds: one(wan)— one, two(tuu)— two, tree(chrii)— three, and so on up. Counting is the part you do not have to relearn. Everything around the number is where the work is — how a price gets asked, what the words for cheap and expensive actually are, and which situations in Jamaica treat a price as an opening position rather than a fact.

How the count sounds

The one that surprises people is three. In Patois an English tr at the start of a word is regularly said as chr, so three sounds like chree — and it is usually written tree, exactly like the English word for the plant, so only the pronunciation spelling in the second column tells the two apart. The same shift makes true sound like chroo, and its voiced counterpart turns an English dr into jr.

Counting in Patois, with the pronunciation spelling

Patois	Written (Cassidy)	English
one	wan	One
two	tuu	Two
tree	chrii	Three
five	faiv	Five
six	siks	Six
eight	iet	Eight
nine	nain	Nine
ten	ten	Ten
twenty	twenti	Twenty

Four and seven are missing from that table on purpose. The words themselves are the English ones; it is the sound that varies. Both have more than one everyday realisation, and printing a single pronunciation spelling for either would tell you something firmer than the truth. Listen for those two rather than reading them.

Asking what something costs

The workhorse question is Hommuch?(aamoch)— how much, and on its own, with a hand on the thing, it is a complete and perfectly polite sentence. Lengthening it is easy: fi(fi)— for, to is the preposition that does the job English does with for.

Asking a price, four ways

Patois	Written (Cassidy)	English	Word for word
Hommuch?	aamoch	How much is it?
Hommuch fi dis?	aamoch fi dis	How much for this?
Hommuch fi di one deh?	aamoch fi di wan de	How much for that one?	how much for the one there
Wah yuh a charge?	wa yu a chaaj	What are you charging?

Notice the third row. Patois can point at a thing with deh, meaning there, placed after the noun phrase, where English would put that in front of it. It is why so many market exchanges run on one finger and three words.

Cheap, dear, and the trap in the middle

Cheap(chiip)— cheap means what you expect. The one that catches English speakers is Dear(dier)— expensive, which is the ordinary, unmarked word for expensive — not an old-fashioned or affectionate one. Dat too dear is a complaint about a price and nothing else, and it is worth learning as a whole phrase rather than as three words.

What sits between the two words is not a third word but a judgement — whether this price is reasonable for you. Prices for produce and for craft goods are not fixed the way a printed label is fixed, and a vendor who quotes a stranger more than a neighbour is usually doing arithmetic about who can afford what rather than trying to cheat anybody.

The words for money itself

Money(moni)— money is the general term and it needs no adjustment. Jamaica uses dollars, so the currency word is the one you already know, and a large round figure is often given as a grand rather than in thousands. What you should ask for by name is change(chienj)— change — small money and small notes — because that single word solves a problem visitors run into constantly, which is holding a large note and standing in front of somebody who cannot break it.

Carry small money deliberately. A route taxi, a stall and a cook shop all run on it, and if the answer to yuh have change? is no, the transaction is over. More of the vocabulary you need in those settings is in how to order food and in the Patois for taxis, hotels and the airport.

Quantities, and how a price is quoted

A quoted price is almost always shortened. Ask about something that costs five hundred dollars and the answer you get is likely to be five, with the currency and the hundreds left off because both are obvious to everyone but you. A figure that sounds implausibly small is nearly always missing its zeroes rather than being a bargain, so if you are unsure, repeat the number back as a full one and let the vendor agree with it.

Quantities work the same economical way. Produce is sold in units that are not all metric — bananas by the hand, ground provisions in a heap priced as a group, other things weighed on a hanging scale and quoted by the pound. Ask the price of the unit rather than the price of a weight you had in mind, because the unit is what the vendor is thinking in, and a question that fits their arithmetic gets a faster and friendlier answer than one that does not.

Where a price moves and where it does not

This is the part that gets travellers into trouble, and it is not subtle once you know it.

Prices move at a craft market, at a produce stall, with a vendor selling from a barrow or a tray, and with any driver you are hiring for a trip of your own choosing rather than a set route. Prices do not move in a supermarket, a pharmacy, a restaurant, a chain shop, a hotel, or anywhere a printed receipt is coming — and a shared route taxi running a fixed line has a customary fare that everybody already knows, so that is a number to ask for rather than argue with. Trying to negotiate in the second group is not shrewd; it reads as an insult to somebody on a wage who has no authority over the number anyway.

Bargaining without being the person everyone remembers

The etiquette matters more than the technique. Greet the vendor before you look at anything, and address them the way anyone else would — you will hear Auntie and Miss doing a great deal of work here, which is one reason the family words used between people who are not related are worth knowing. Then ask the price, and let a beat pass before you answer it.

Yuh kyan do betta?(yu kyan du beta)— can you do better opens the negotiation without any aggression in it, and it is far more common than a flat refusal of the first price. One counter-offer is normal. Three is a performance. Take the counter seriously enough to name a number you would genuinely pay, rather than an insulting one you expect to be argued up from, and be ready to accept the second figure you are given. If you walk away, walk away pleasantly and do not come back an hour later expecting the lower number to still be available.

The thing worth asking for at the end is brawta(braata)— a small extra thrown in with a purchase — the additional handful a vendor adds once the deal is done. Asking for it well is a much better skill than grinding somebody down.

Closing it

Mi wi tek it(mi wi tek it)— I will take it ends the conversation cleanly. Then count your change where the vendor can see you doing it, unhurriedly. That is normal behaviour, not suspicion, and it is what everybody at the stall is doing too. More of the everyday vocabulary these exchanges are built from is collected in our Jamaican Patois words list.