The Patois worth using at the airport, in a taxi and at the desk

The Patois worth having at an airport, in a taxi and at a hotel desk is small: a time-of-day greeting, a thank you, two questions at a taxi window and one way of asking where something is. Everybody you will deal with in Jamaican tourism works in English all day, so this page is not about being understood — you will be understood if you say nothing but English for a fortnight. It is about the difference between being spoken to as a visitor and being spoken with, which is a real difference, and which a handful of phrases used at the right moment will get you.

What a few words of Patois are actually for

English is Jamaica's official language, used in law, in schooling and in every printed sign you will read. Patois is what people speak to each other. In a hotel, a shop or a taxi you will be addressed in English by default, and that is a professional courtesy rather than an assumption about you.

What changes when you answer in Patois is not comprehension. It is that you have signalled you are paying attention to where you are. Three words, said normally, do more than three sentences said as a performance — and the rest of this guide is mostly about that distinction, because it is where visitors go wrong.

Arrival, and the first hour

Immigration and customs are conducted in English and should be. Answer the officer's questions plainly; this is the one interaction on the trip where being clever with the language is a bad idea.

Once you are through, the language loosens immediately. The porters, the taxi rank, the phone-card seller and the person selling patties all work in Patois with each other and will meet you halfway. Expect to be offered help with your bags before you have decided whether you want it. A friendly refusal is completely ordinary and carries no offence. So is accepting and tipping for it.

The first exchanges after you land

Patois	Written (Cassidy)	English	Word for word
Gud mawnin	gud maanin	Good morning
Gud evenin	gud iivnin	Good evening — used from mid-afternoon
Wah gwaan?	wa gwaan	What is happening — a greeting between peers	what going-on
Mi deh yah	mi de ya	I am here, I am fine	I there here
Everyting criss	evriting kris	Everything is fine

The greeting you choose says a lot about how you have read the room, and there is a whole page on greetings by time of day and by who you are talking to. The short version for arrivals: the time-of-day greeting is never wrong, and the informal one is for people around your own age who have already used it on you.

The route taxi and the charter taxi

This is the distinction that costs money, and almost no visitor arrives knowing it.

A route taxi runs a fixed route, like a bus with no timetable. It fills up, it goes, it stops where people ask, and the fare is a small fixed amount per person that everybody on board already knows. The marker to look for is the red licence plate that every licensed public passenger vehicle carries. You flag one down, say where you are going, and if it is on the route the driver nods.

A charter taxi takes you and only you, wherever you want, at a price agreed before the doors close. Hotel taxis and airport taxis are charters. They are legitimate and often the right choice with luggage or after dark, and they cost several times the route fare.

The confusion is expensive in one direction only. If you get into a charter believing it is a route taxi, you will be surprised at the end. Ask which it is before you sit down, and settle the fare before you move.

At the taxi window

Patois	Written (Cassidy)	English	Word for word
Yuh a go a town?	yu a guo a toun	Are you going into town	you are go to town
A route taxi dis?	a ruut taksi dis	Is this a route taxi	is route taxi this
Mi a go a di beach	mi a guo a di biich	I am going to the beach	I am go to the beach
Stop deh so	stap de so	Stop just there	stop there so
Small up yuhself	smaal op yuself	Make a bit of room

That last one is not something you will say to a driver. It is what somebody already on the back seat says when one more passenger needs to fit. Hearing it is normal. Being asked it is normal. Shuffling over and saying nothing at all is also perfectly normal.

Fares, notes, change and what a price should sound like are covered in money and bargaining in Patois, which is the page to read before you get in.

Asking where something is

Two forms do most of the work here, and both are worth memorising exactly.

Which paat?(wich paat)— where, which part is the question. Ova deh so(uova de so)— over there is most of the answer you will get, usually with a hand or a chin pointing. The word so(so) on the end of a location is doing something English has no single word for: it fixes the place, roughly, as that spot right there.

Finding a place

Patois	Written (Cassidy)	English	Word for word
Which paat di bus stop deh?	wich paat di bos stap de	Where is the bus stop	which part the bus stop there
Yuh know weh it deh?	yu nuo we it de	Do you know where it is	you know where it there
Mi nuh know weh mi deh	mi no nuo we mi de	I do not know where I am	I not know where I there
It far?	it faar	Is it far
Mi wi walk	mi wi waak	I will walk	I will walk

Notice that not one of those sentences uses is. Location is carried by deh(de)— be located at, which is a verb in its own right rather than a missing one, and an adjective like far(faar) needs no verb in front of it at all. Once you have heard that three times you stop listening for the is.

The answers are worth a note of their own. Directions in Jamaica are given by landmark and by relation rather than by street name and distance: past the school, by the big cotton tree, next to where the market used to be. That is a system, not vagueness, and it assumes shared knowledge of the place. When you do not have that knowledge, say so and ask which landmark you will pass first. People rebuild the directions around something you can actually recognise, and will often walk you as far as the corner rather than explain it twice.

The bus, and the coaster

Public transport outside the taxi network is buses in Kingston and Montego Bay, and minibuses — coasters — on the routes between towns. Coasters leave when full rather than at a time, which is the single fact that reframes the whole system: nobody is late, because nothing was scheduled.

A conductor collects the fare on board and will tell you where to get off if you say where you are going when you board. Say it once, clearly, in English if you prefer. The useful Patois here is Stop deh so(stap de so) from the taxi table, and the ordinary courtesy of greeting the people you sit down beside, which is expected in a way it is not on a London bus.

Checking in, and the people who work there

Hotel front desks run in English, because that is the working language of the job. The Patois that is welcome here is small and social rather than functional: a greeting, a thank you, a reply to a question about your day. Trying to conduct an actual booking problem in Patois is not charming, it is an obstacle for somebody who is at work.

Around the front desk and the property

Patois	Written (Cassidy)	English	Word for word
Tank yuh	tangk yu	Thank you
Nuff respec	nof rispek	Much respect
Mi soon come	mi suun kom	I will be back shortly — not immediately
Likkle more	likl muor	See you later	little more
Walk gud	waak gud	Take care, go safely	walk good

Mi soon come(mi suun kom) deserves a warning. It does not mean immediately. It means the speaker intends to return, on a timescale nobody has committed to. If a person says it to you, they are coming back; if you say it, you have promised the same loose thing, so do not use it to mean five minutes.

The phrases that change the temperature

If you learn nothing else, learn these four and use them sparingly: the time-of-day greeting when you enter anywhere, Tank yuh(tangk yu) when you leave, Walk gud(waak gud) to somebody heading off, and Respec(rispek) to somebody who has done something well. All four are ordinary. None of them is a trick.

Greeting on entry is the one that matters most and the one most visitors skip. Walking into a small shop without saying anything is read as rudeness, not efficiency.

What not to do

This is the part a phrase list cannot do for you, and it is the part that decides how the week goes.

Volume. Say it at the volume you would say anything else. Patois said loudly and slowly at somebody who speaks English better than you speak Patois is not communication.

Frequency. A few words, at the right moments, read as respect. A running commentary reads as an impression. The line is crossed sooner than people think, and nobody will tell you when you have crossed it — they will simply switch to English and stay there.

Deploying it at somebody who did not invite it. Register is a two-way negotiation. Somebody who addresses you in English has chosen English, and answering in the deepest Patois you have overrides a choice they made. Follow the other person: if they loosen, loosen with them.

The costume. Do not put on an accent. Do not use irie— fine, all is well as a general-purpose word for everything, and do not tack the drawled sentence-tag you have heard in films onto the end of your sentences — that tag is an advertising artefact rather than Jamaican speech, and using it announces where your idea of the language came from. Say the words in your own voice; that is the version people respond to.

Correcting anybody. Jamaican speech runs from deep creole to something very close to English, and every speaker moves along that range constantly depending on who they are with. What you hear from a driver, a chef and a receptionist will differ, and none of them is speaking it wrongly. You are the learner in every one of those conversations.

Once you have the greetings and the getting-around sorted, the next thing you will do is eat, and that has its own vocabulary in ordering food in Jamaica. The wider collection is on our Jamaican Patois phrases page.