Watchtower SlangJamaican Patois: Gods son came fe mash up the world😂

by Diogenesister 30 Replies latest social humour

• 

  slimboyfat

  I think you’re confusing Standard Scottish English with Scots like Doric and Lallan which to my knowledge have a limited written language.

  You accuse me of confusion but say nothing about your blunder in lumping Irish along with Klingon. WT literature is already in Irish and has been for a long time. So why did you include it in your list?

  In fact there’s plenty written in Doric, which is a variety of Scots, including Bible translation. The relation of English and Scots has been compared with Norwegian in relation to Danish, except that the differences are perhaps greater between Scots and English than between Norwegian and Danish. Many works of literature have been and continue to be published in Scots, including scholarly Bible translations (Watchtower cites one of these in their reference Bible). I have a copy of the New Testament in Scots by William Lorrimer who was a scholar of Greek and translated from the original language.

  WTBTS will have to invent new words in a language that isn’t yours to explain an idea that is culturally foreign - or - more likely, introduce loanwords instead of having the population decide for themselves what the word should be.

  Which is true of all languages and especially all Bible translations. You realise that English Bible translators coined all sorts of words, and that English itself is completely permeated with loanwords, right? It’s a famous witticism that “We [English] don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary.” And the English Bible is full of words that were coined to explain the culture of original to English speakers. This is entirely normal in Bible translation.

  Only in relation to subaltern languages is the idea of borrowing, loanwords and coining new words problematised or presented as evidence that it somehow makes it not a “real” language. If the percentage of loanwords determines a real language then English would have to be one of the fakest languages ever.
• 

  silentbuddha

  The idea of Jamaican patois being considered something that should be put in its written form is funny to me because where does this stop?
  Is there going to be a Trinidadian patois next then a St. Vincent patois, a Nevis patois, a Bahamian patois, insert any other Caribbean island thereafter.
  Each one of these islands has a very distinct patois, the only reason that the Jamaican patois is the focus is because Jamaica is considered the most popular Caribbean island, and they have the loudest voices of any island in the Caribbean.
  There is no school in Jamaica that you can go to where you would be able to learn this currently. You can’t even use patois in school in the class. It’s literally considered the same as AAVE or Ebonics in the United States.
  The average person who picks up that magazine knows exactly what’s being said if they already speak English.
  Wi waahn yu fi kom a tuu speshal miitn we yu no afi pie no moni
  
  We want you to come to a special meeting where you don’t have to pay money
  We wunt yuh tuh cum tewa speshul mee’in wer yuh ain’t gotta put up no bread
  
  
• 

  andr

  they also translated the Italian which is Venetian, which I have spoken since birth

  they also translated very vulgar expressions as if it were nothing,

  ciavare has a very lively sexual basis

  and a member of the CD uses it in a video

  geniuses at work! how much I laughed!
• 

  Anony Mous

  @andr: I was in a place where they have a regional ‘fishers’ language - it’s actually a mix of dialect words in 3 languages and a lot of “vulgar” words in each of those.

  The branch office tried to make inroads by ‘harbor work’ (this was a well publicized thing they tried in the late 90s, early 2000s), made a special congregation, CO came and talked to us. Basically these people lived on or near the boats, would be out on sea for a few weeks, home a few days during the fishing seasons.

  They got exactly 1 fisherman to ‘study’ but became a problem when it came to earrings and facial hair - it was hilarious for us trying to ‘civilize’ this person into a suit, shaven, without his earrings and going in service, and then the elders got all uptight when he came back from his voyages with his earrings, beard and smelling like oil and fish (it’s not solved by taking a shower). And then the fact he kept using words that were practically curse words in the ‘proper’ language.
• 

  slimboyfat

  The idea of Jamaican patois being considered something that should be put in its written form is funny to me because where does this stop?
  Is there going to be a Trinidadian patois next then a St. Vincent patois, a Nevis patois, a Bahamian patois, insert any other Caribbean island thereafter.

  Interesting questions, which prompted me to research the issue a little. Watchtower does have Saint Lucian Creole, which has fewer speakers than Jamaican Creole, in addition to Haitian and Guadeloupean, that have more speakers than Jamaican Creole. Maybe they will get round to the Caribbean islands in time. This is what I found are the some of the languages classed as creoles that Watchtower has already produced material for on their website with the approximate numbers of speakers in those languages:

  Nigerian Pidgin - 120 million speakers

  Guadeloupean Creole - 13 millions speakers

  Cameroonian Pidgin - 12 million speakers

  Haitian Creole - 12 million speakers

  Tok Pisin - 4 million speakers

  Jamaican Patwa - 3 million speakers

  Mauritian Creole - 1 million speakers

  English Guyanese Creole - 700,000 speakers

  Saint Lucian Creole - 700,000 speakers

  Sranan Tongo - 700,000 speakers

  Hawaiian Pidgin - 600,000 speakers

  Solomon Islands Pidgin - 600,000 speakers

  Réunion Creole - 560,000 speakers

  Guinea-Bissau Creole - 350,000 speakers

  Arabic Juba - 250,000 speakers

  Belizean Creole - 170,000 speakers

  French Guyanese Creole - 134,000 speakers

  Seychelles Creole - 73,000 speakers

  San Andrés Creole - 20,000 speakers

  Torres Strait Creole - 8000 speakers

  For comparison, some small European languages that Watchtower produces material for include:

  Swiss German - 5 million speakers

  Galician - 2 millions speakers

  Irish - 1 million speakers

  Romani - 1 millions speakers

  Low German - 1 million speakers

  Welsh - 750,000 speakers

  Basque - 750,000 speakers

  Maltese - 520,000 speakers

  Crimean Tatar - 480,000 speakers

  Frisian - 470,000 speakers

  Luxembourgish - 400,000 speakers

  Icelandic - 330,000 speakers

  Montenegrin - 240,000 speakers

  Komi - 220,000 speakers

  Gagauz - 140,000 speakers

  Tabasaran - 120,00 speakers

  Erzya - 120,000 speakers

  Võro - 87,000 speakers

  Faroese - 69,000 speakers

  Kashubian - 50,000 speakers

  West Greenlandic - 50,000 speakers

  Scottish Gaelic - 57,000 speakers

  Tat - 30,000 speakers

  Corsican - 30,000 speakers

  East Greenlandic - 3000 speakers
• 

  silentbuddha

  The problem with these translations is that you can have 3 million people who speak these dialects but no one reads them. Haitian Creole is a different beast.

  3 million people speak patwa, but no one reads it. It’s frowned upon in school and in professional environments. Please go find your nearest Jamaican and ask them to write any sentence you choose in patwa. If you ask 3 people they will all be different.

  30 million black Americans speak AAVE but none of them write it or would even know how. They are wasting ink and paper creating literature that people are laughing at because they can’t understand why someone is doing it.
• 

  slimboyfat

  Reading and writing are two different things. Presumably anyone who can speak a language is also able to read it, even if they couldn’t easily compose in that language without practice. I can read much of what is written in Scots but I would find it difficult to compose my own, and it’s not my everyday way of speaking. So providing written material in creole and marginal languages provides a choice for those for whom it is their everyday language of speech that they can read it too, if they wish. If they prefer not to, that’s their choice, but being given the choice is surely a good thing. Why should only large and dominant languages used in everyday discourse be available in written form? If a person in London, Berlin, or Paris can read material in the same language that they speak everyday then why shouldn’t a person in Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Switzerland, Lübeck, Corsica or elsewhere have that same choice. If Haitian Creole is used in written form then presumably Jamaican Creole can become more widely used in written form over time, and perhaps Watchtower will play a part in that.

  Various studies have acknowledged the role of JWs in supporting languages with few speakers to revive and expand material available in various forms.

  Barchas-Lichtenstein, J. (2014). Jehovah's Witnesses, endangered languages, and the globalized textual community. Language & Communication, 38, 44-53

  Barchas-Lichtenstein, J. (2013). " When the dead are resurrected, how are we going to speak to them?": Jehovah's Witnesses and the Use of Indigenous Languages in the Globalizing Textual Community. University of California, Los Angeles

  Davis, J. L. (2014). Intersections of religion and language revitalization. In The Changing World Religion Map: Sacred Places, Identities, Practices and Politics (pp. 1091-1101). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands

  Hansen, M. P. (2010). Nahuatl among Jehovah's Witnesses of Hueyapan, Morelos: A case of Spontaneous revitalization

  Simard-ÉMond, A. (2023). Understanding conversion to Jehovism among Indigenous peoples: The case of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg. Social Compass, 70(2), 283-303
  
• 

  Anony Mous

  I know there are UN, NGO and governments programs that are trying to ‘civilize’ their spoken languages into written language under an attempt at ‘preservation’. In most cases these efforts have failed or had the opposite effect. I wonder if they are making use of any grants and satisfying the requirements by ‘publishing’ something. Posting some gibberish on your website to ‘satisfy’ the requirements - wouldn’t surprise me.
• 

  peacefulpete

  The Seventh Day Adventists preach their sectarian doctrine in well over 400 languages and dialects. The Hare Krishnas in 70 languages, Even Spong Bob Square Pants is translated into 50 languages. When you are saying something stupid it is not relevant how many ways you can say it.
• 

  NotFormer

  "They got exactly 1 fisherman to ‘study’ but became a problem when it came to earrings and facial hair - it was hilarious for us trying to ‘civilize’ this person into a suit, shaven, without his earrings and going in service, and then the elders got all uptight when he came back from his voyages with his earrings, beard and smelling like oil and fish (it’s not solved by taking a shower). And then the fact he kept using words that were practically curse words in the ‘proper’ language."

  Colonial era mission efforts were often criticised for their insistence that the natives wear trousers. That outward appearance was more important than inward change. The WT, for all its assurance that it is superior to the superficiality of the churches, has always been about the surface.

  Anony Mous, would they be more lenient towards "such a one", after the changes in dress standards?