Jamaican Patois - Orthography

Orthography

Because Jamaican Patois is a non-standard language, there is no standard or official way of writing it. For example, the word "there" can be written de, deh, or dere, and the word "three" is most commonly spelled tree, but it can be spelled tri or trii to distinguish it from the noun tree. Often, Standard English spellings are used even when words are pronounced differently. Other times, a spelling has become widespread even though it is neither phonetic nor standard (e.g. pickney = child. In this case the spelling pikni would be more phonetic). However, due to increased use on the Internet (such as in E-mail) in recent years, a user-driven process of partial standardization has been taking place.