Part of the pronunciation section of Patwa Partner — how to physically make the sounds of Jamaican Patois.
Weh English seh name, bake, place wid a long A, Patois glide from an EE down into an EH: niem, biek, plies. Cassidy-JLU spell it ie — an dat spelling a literally di instruction fi yuh mouth, inna order.
🔤 Di symbol dem, explained
/ie/ — Two vowel run together inna one beat. Linguists call dat a diphthong (say it "DIF-thong") — one vowel sliding into another widout a break.
👅 Mek di sound
Start pon di vowel inna English see. Tongue high an forward, lips spread inna a likkle smile.
Keep di sound going an slide di tongue DOWN an back a likkle, into di vowel inna English bed.
One smooth motion, no stop, no bump between dem. ee → eh.
Di WEIGHT sit pon di second half. Di ee a just di runway — short. If yuh hold di ee long, it sound wrong.
Now put a consonant pon it: n-ie-m. niem.
🎞 Watch di mouthDi side view show yuh di tongue — di one ting yuh cyaan check inna a mirror. Di front view a di one yuh can. Tap any word inna di ladder below fi move di mouth pon dat word.
✋🏾 Feel check — do it nowSeh ee an hold it going. Now, widout stopping di sound, drop yuh jaw a likkle. Yuh just made di ie glide by accident. Do it three time till yuh can start it clean.
⚠️ Weh people slipGliding di WRONG way. English day go eh → ee (it end high). Patois ie go ee → eh (it end low). Going backward a di number one reason a word sound "almost right but off" — an it di hardest one fi hear inna yuh own mouth, so record yuhself.
🪜 Practice ladder
Step one — one word at a time. Tap ▶ fi hear it, den seh it back.
seh it
JLU
English
name
niem
name
bake
biek
bake
place
plies
place
take
tiek
take
make
miek
make
day
die
day
Step two — di phrase.
PhraseTiek yuh time — Take your time
Step three — di full sentence. Dis a di one fi record.
SentenceMi biek di bread same plies every die — I bake the bread in the same place every day
🎙 Seh it backRecord yuhself pon di sentence, den play di two back to back. Yuh own ear a di judge — dat a how di mouth learn.
🎚 Mout Check — look pon weh yuh just didYuh hear yuhself back up top. Dis show yuh di same ting inna two picture yuh ear cyaan draw: weh yuh tongue deh, an how even yuh beat dem run.
Sources
Frederic G. Cassidy, Jamaica Talk: Three Hundred Years of the English Language in Jamaica (1961), p. 36 [fieldwork 1952–59]
The key claim this page rests on: bait starts high and glides down, so it sounds nearer BE-et than the Standard diphthong. That is the direction the mouth player animates.
Frederic G. Cassidy, Jamaica Talk: Three Hundred Years of the English Language in Jamaica (1961), p. 43 [fieldwork 1952–59]
The exceptions are closed and worth learning as a list: make and take are always /mek/ and /tek/, and where and there reduce to /we/ and /de/.
The described rules come from the published work above. The teaching, the wording and the animation are mine.