tripod.com
An Annotated Bibliography of Rastafarian Speech
Rasta Talk

• The Origin of Jamaican Creole
• The Origin and Nature of Rasta Talk
• Bibliography
• Web-Based Dictionaries
• Primary Material: Rasta Talk
• General
• Velma Pollard
• Peter Tosh
• Secondary Material
• Jamaican Speech and Culture
• Reggae
• African-American Speech and Culture
• Slang and Maledicta
• Millenarianism
• Other
• Other Books on Rastafarianism

The Origin of Jamaican Creole

The speech of Jamaican Rastafarians is a variant of Jamaican Creole (JC). JC is an English-based creole that is a product of colonialism. The Spaniards were the first to colonize Jamaica, but had little direct influence upon development of JC. When British colonialists ousted them, the Spaniards’ African slaves escaped into the mountains where they retained much of their African culture and some of their African languages. The British brought more slaves from Africa, but were unable to recapture the escapees, known as Maroons, and so instead maintained a negotiated peace settlement with them. The Maroons reinforced the African influences in JC that the African slaves of the British brought. Maroons also influenced (though not always directly) various Afrocentric political and religious movements, including the Rastafarians. Maroon retention of African culture has generally been seen as positive by these movements despite the Maroons’ agreement with the British to return all newly escaped slaves. Other aspects of the Caribbean milieu (e.g., French, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Hindi and Amerindian languages) have also influenced JC. The most recent language additions to JC are primarily from the Rastafarians (Roberts, 1988: 43), who besides adding a few Amharic words, have made many linguistic innovations.

The Origin and Nature of Rasta Talk
...

zhurnal.ru
Rastafarian patois - English/Russian glossary

Patrick, Peter
Urban Jamaican Creole: Variation in the Mesolect
(Varieties of English Around the World)