Features
As in most English-based Caribbean creoles, the interdentals /θ/ and /ð/ have merged with other consonants (in this case, /t/ and /d/, respectively). Unlike most other Caribbean creoles, Bajan is rhotic. Bajan has a strong tendency to realize word-final /t/ as a glottal stop . Thus the Bajan pronunciation of start, contrasts sharply with the pronunciation of other Caribbean speakers, or or .
The word for you (plural) is wuna, similar to Jamaican unnu / unna or Bahamian yinna. Unlike Standard English, Bajan tends towards using a zero copula.
Questions are usually pronounced as a statement with a raised intonation; usually on the last word; to indicate that it is a question e.g. Wunna win de cricket? means "Did you (pl.) win the cricket match?"; dah you own? means "Is that yours?"
Habitual actions are usually indicated by the word does and done, for example I does guh church punna Sunduh means "I go to church on Sundays", or I done guh church pon Sunduh "I went to church on Sunday". It is quite common for this to be shortened to I's guh church pun Sunduh.
Verbs in Bajan are not conjugated for tense, which is inferred from time words e.g. I eat all de food yestuhday = "I ate all of the food yesterday", where the word yesterday indicates that the action happened in the past.
The word gine is usually used to mark the future tense e.g. I gine eat = "I am going to eat".
Ain't (frequently shortened to ain') is used as a negative marker e.g. "I didn't do that" becomes I ain' do dat/dah. It is not uncommon for the I and the ain' to be pronounced in Bajan as "Ah'n" i.e. "Ah'n do dah" or "Ah'n able".
Read more about this topic: Bajan Creole
Famous quotes containing the word features:
““It looks as if
Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with overeagerness
To see what people found so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the windowpane.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times—the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie—seem attractive by comparison.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)