Patwa Partner

Learn to speak Jamaican Patois — not just words, but the sounds, the rhythm and the reasons. 21 pronunciation lessons with an animated mouth, 47 grammar lessons, 532 words with their JLU spelling, 47 pieces on Jamaican history and culture written in Patois, 24 proverbs translated and explained, and a journey through all 15 parishes.

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Start here

• Pronunciation — how to make every Patois sound
• Grammar — every lesson, in order
• The word list — 532 words, A to Z
• Jamaica, told in Patois — history, music, food, faith
• Jamaican proverbs, translated and explained
• The journey, parish by parish

Understand it first

Everything explanatory on this site is free to read and always will be. The course is the practice.

• How to learn Jamaican Patois · a route through the whole thing, in order
• How it sounds against English · twelve regular shifts, with examples
• Writing it down · the Cassidy-JLU spelling system in full
• The grammar · pronouns, tense, and the missing verb “to be”
• Patois, Patwa or Jamaican Creole? · what to call it, and whether it is a dialect
• What the pronunciation check measures · formants, pitch, and when it refuses to answer

Look something up

• Greetings · how to say hello, and how to leave
• Phrases people look up · the ones that turn up in a lyric or a message
• Numbers · counting, and where it drifts from English
• Days and time · tide, tumaro, yeside
• The twelve situations · granny on the phone, the barbershop, landing a yaad
• Questions people ask · short answers, including the unflattering ones

What makes it different

It runs with no server, your progress stays on your device, and every claim is checked against published work with the year each source describes. What it costs is here.

Most Patois material is a word list. This teaches articulation — where your tongue goes, what your lips do — with an interactive animation built from published descriptions of Jamaican Creole phonology. It is a diagram that moves, not an MRI trace, so it teaches you the direction and the contrast rather than exact millimetres. It is also written in Cassidy-JLU, the actual writing system for the language, explained as you go.