Reflection on Dialect Assignment

This experience, learning about Jamaican English, was more challenging than I expected. As we mentioned during our presentation, Patois is much more common than Jamaican Standard English. However, the information we could find was very interesting: the similarities between Jamaican English, AAVE, and many other dialects are so common. I realized that my own everyday vernacular is not that different; like many dialects, I tend to "drop" final consonants from words (i.e. 'pas' for 'past'). 

One of the things that I hadn't really thought about before studying the rules of a different dialect is how different languages specifically influence a dialect. Not only vocabulary gets infused, but rules of grammar are also incorporated.

This project has given me a new appreciation of different dialects of English. It has shown more clearly why one is not superior than another. I also really enjoyed getting more history about why and how different dialects came to be.

I also just might have to get a copy of "Da Jesus Book" to read...my interest was very piqued!