{"id":17806,"date":"2019-05-10T16:28:17","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T16:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=17806"},"modified":"2019-05-10T16:28:17","modified_gmt":"2019-05-10T16:28:17","slug":"patois","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=17806","title":{"rendered":"Patois"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the things we talked about last night at the French conversation group was patois<\/strong>, specifically Jamaican<\/a> (Jimiekn \/ Patwah).<\/p>\n

In French patois<\/strong> means<\/p>\n

“Syst\u00e8me linguistique essentiellement oral, utilis\u00e9 sur une aire r\u00e9duite et dans une communaut\u00e9 d\u00e9termin\u00e9e (g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement rurale), et per\u00e7u par ses utilisateurs comme inf\u00e9rieur \u00e0 la langue officielle.” [source<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

or<\/p>\n

“an essentially oral linguistic system, used in a small area and in a particular community (usually rural), and perceived by its users as inferior to the official language.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In English patois<\/strong> means “an unwritten regional dialect of a language, esp. of French, usually considered substandard; the jargon of particular group.” [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Another definition of patois<\/strong> from Wiktionary<\/a> is:<\/p>\n

1. A regional dialect of a language (especially French); usually considered substandard.
\n2. Any of various French or Occitan dialects spoken in France.
\n3. Creole French in the Caribbean (especially in Dominica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago and Haiti).
\n4. Jamaican Patois, a Jamaican Creole language primarily based on English and African languages but also has influences from Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi.
\n5. Jargon or cant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It comes from the Middle French patois<\/em> (local dialect), from the Old French patois<\/em> (incomprehensible speech, rude language), from the Old French patoier<\/em> (to gesticulate, handle clumsily, paw), from pate<\/em> (paw), from Vulgar Latin *patta<\/em> (paw, foot), from the Frankish *patta<\/em> (paw, sole of the foot), from the Proto-Germanic *pat-, *pa\u00fea-<\/em> (to walk, tread, go, step), of uncertain origin [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Patois was first used in written French in 1643 to refer to non-standard varities of French, and to regional languages such as Picard, Occitan, Franco-Proven\u00e7al and Catalan. Such varities and languages were assumed to be backward, countrified, and unlettered. Use of the word was banned by king Louis XIV in 1700.<\/p>\n

There is no standard linguistic definition of patois, and to a linguist it can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, or vernaculars [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Are there similar words in other languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the things we talked about last night at the French conversation group was patois, specifically Jamaican (Jimiekn \/ Patwah). In French patois means “Syst\u00e8me linguistique essentiellement oral, utilis\u00e9 sur une aire r\u00e9duite et dans une communaut\u00e9 d\u00e9termin\u00e9e (g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement rurale), et per\u00e7u par ses utilisateurs comme inf\u00e9rieur \u00e0 la langue officielle.” [source] or “an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,104,110,111,10,15,17,27,32,34,44,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catalan","category-english","category-frankish","category-french","category-language","category-latin","category-linguistics","category-middle-french","category-occitan","category-old-french","category-proto-germanic","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}