Antillan Patois


 * Not to be confused with Antillean Creole, a French-based creole language spoken on neighbouring islands.

Antillan Patois (patwa) is the national spoken vernacular of Antilla, used as the everyday language of most of the population in all but the most formal, official and/or professional settings. An English-based creole language with significant lexical and moderate phonological and grammatical influences from West African (particularly Bantu) languages, Antillan Patois is also influenced to a lesser degree by French and Spanish. While functioning as the nation's national spoken language, it is not taught formally, with all schools and post-secondary institutions exclusively using the national variety of standardised formal English in instruction, with the fewest patois features. Mass media and entertainment uses different approaches depending on medium and context, with television and radio news broadcasts, documentaries and plays (especially tragedies) generally using more formal language, and TV shows, films and live entertainment (especially comedy) generally using more colloquial language.

While Antillans learn "standard" English in school, they learn patois informally via social interaction. As most children develop more or less acceptable speaking skills either prior to or during the first one or two years of elementary school, Antillans learn to speak and, by extension, think on a more genuine level using patois; despite for the most part developing equally proficient command of "standard" English, registers closer to patois remain for most Antillans the more familiar and thus comforting mode of communication, with the majority of adults displaying a clear preference for patois in leisure-centric, stress-avoiding contexts where expectation of objective success is low and for "standard" English in disciplined, demanding, high-pressure and pleasure-irrelevant contexts where expectation of objective success is high.

Antillans are thus able to smoothly code switch between the most colloquial vernacular registers, the most formal registers and the multiple varieties in between, typically doing so on a subconscious level in response to social context. While a phonetic writing system using Latin letters was informally developed over a century ago by Antillan poets, writers and academics, most Antillans write using the standard English spelling rules they were taught as children, regardless of the formality of the register in which they are writing. In the last two decades, however, the advent of highly informal and colloquial written communication (as in SMS, email and social media) has resulted in an unprecedented growth in popularity of phonetic spelling. It is also becoming increasingly common for certain public commutations to feature written "standard" English and phonetically spelled patois side-by-side.