Lesson 12 of 48 · Portland
Give cooking instructions with bare verbs and serial-verb chains: Tek di pot put i pon di fire
In the kitchen, Patois verbs come bare and they love to chain together. Rule one: commands use the bare verb — no 'please to', no -ing: Wash di chicken (wash the chicken). Tas'e di soup (taste the soup). Rule two: serial verbs — Patois strings verbs one after another where English needs 'to' or 'and': Tek di pot put i pon di fire mek i bwile (take the pot, put it on the fire and let it boil). Mek does the job of 'let' or 'make': Mek di wata bwile fus (let the water boil first). Rule three: the core kitchen verbs are nyam (eat), bwile (boil), fry, roas (roast), jerk (season and smoke-grill), dash een (add, throw in), tun (turn, stir). Examples to drill: (1) Tek di dutchy put i pon di fire. (2) Wash di rice an dash weh di wata (wash the rice and throw away the water). (3) Fry di plantain-dem till dem brown. (4) Jerk pork haffi cook slow pon pimento wood (jerk pork has to cook slowly on pimento wood). (5) Dash een likkle scotch bonnet, but tek time — i hot! (add a little scotch bonnet, but go easy — it is hot!). (6) Tun di dumplin-dem before dem bun (turn the dumplings before they burn). (7) No nyam i yet — i naa done cook (don't eat it yet — it isn't finished cooking). (8) Run go bring di salt come gi mi (run and bring me the salt). Notice run go bring come — four verbs in a row, perfect Patois. Common learner errors to recast: inserting 'to' (tek di pot to put — recast: tek di pot put i); -ing forms (di wata boiling — recast: di wata a bwile); 'let it boil' instead of mek i bwile. When the learner slips into English kitchen talk, recast the whole instruction as one verb chain and have them repeat it while miming the action.
| Patois | Cassidy-JLU | English |
|---|---|---|
| nyam | nyam | eat |
| bwile | bwail | boil |
| fry | frai | fry |
| jerk | jerk | season and smoke-grill |
| roas | ruos | roast |
| dash een | dash iin | throw in, add |
| tun | ton | turn, stir |
| dutchy | dochi | round-bottom cooking pot |
| bickle | bikl | food, victuals |
| festival | festival | sweet fried dumpling |
| bammy | bami | cassava flatbread |
| run-dung | ron-dong | food cooked down in coconut milk |
| janga | janga | river shrimp |
| belly full | beli ful | satisfied, full |
He calls the connective-free stringing of verbs one of the most striking features of the folk speech and cites chains of precisely this kitchen shape ('Bait pot, tek it ketch fish'; 'Let me kyar de basket come show you'), attributing the pattern to Niger-Congo.
The description of the grammar is checked against the published work above. The lesson, the examples and the wording are mine.
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