The Full List

Like football, cricket and drinking white rum, calling to women as they pass by on the street is something of a favourite pastime for Jamaican men. Let’s take as an example the experience of an attractive female friend of mine who recently had car trouble in New Kingston. While sitting in traffic her car had made a strange coughing noise and immediately shut off in the middle of the road. My friend is not mechanically inclined (she says she thinks the car had a heart attack) and had forgotten her cell phone at home so she had no way of calling a mechanic. Being the intrepid sort, however, she decided to lock her car and walk from Knutsford Boulevard to Old Hope Road where her mechanic was located. She describes that walk as one of the most “intriguing” of her life. The number and variety of comments that were directed at her by bus drivers, vendors, taxi men, construction workers and just random men sitting on walls was astonishing. She shared some of the more memorable comments with me:

Two American men run into each other on a busy street in New York City. They are old friends. How do you think they might address each other? Well, they might say something like this: “Hey there Todd. How’re you doing old friend/old buddy/old pal. Long time no see“. Surely there can’t be that many terms of address which can be used when two men greet each other? Of course there can. This is Jamaica and we have a 100 ways to say even the most ordinary things. It’s fascinating to observe the large number of terms of address used in Jamaica and equally fascinating to note the rapidity with which they are invented, accepted into popular usage and often discarded. It suggests a dynamic, constantly changing culture and a people with tremendous natural creativity. (Or a people with a lot of free time on their hands) The following is thingsjamaicanslove.com’s attempt to compile a few of the many terms Jamaican men use/have used to address each other:

Jamaicans have a rare talent for mangling the English language.  One of the many ways we do this is by gleefully mis-pronouncing even very common words. Consider the short list of words below and their mispronunciations. (Note: If you are not seeing why these are mispronunciations please seek immediate assistance.)

Anthony: An-tunny or H’antonny.  You’ll note that Jamaicans have a love/hate relationship with h’s.  We love to put them where they are not needed and hate to use them where they are necessary. A great example of this is found at public events when one hears the national anthem beautifully sung in chorus: “H’eternal Fah-der bless H’our land, Guard H’us with your mighty ‘and…”

Persons who don’t follow football (i.e. Americans, Canadians and space aliens) may have noticed instances of what may appear to be unusual behaviour in their Jamaican acquaintances these last few weeks. This unusual behaviour is as a result of an illness commonly known as World Cup Fever. World Cup Fever manfiests itself in many ways:

1. Firstly, you will notice that many offices and places of business in Jamaica are deserted during World Cup matches and staff members can only be found in canteens, lunch rooms and offices where televisons are located. Please postpone your business till the match is concluded. (It is considered very bad form to ask people to actually work during World Cup matches.) Please also note that if the team supported by the persons at the office you are visiting loses, work may be suspended for the rest of the week as employees come to grips with the tragedy.

Goooood Morning, brothers and sisters! Isn’t it wonderful to be alive on this beautiful Sunday morning? Being here to fellowship with you and to see your happy faces is truly a blessing. Hallelujah!

This morning I want to talk to you about why I hate going to church. Now, you’re probably asking yourself “Why on earth would Pastor Johnson choose a topic like that?” Well the truth is friends; I was walking through the supermarket the other day when, just by chance, I heard someone use the expression “Easy like Sunday morning”. It was just a random comment brothers and sisters but the truth is, it struck me like a thunderbolt! I said to myself, what the hell is easy about Sunday mornings in Jamaica? And the more I thought about it the more I realised that the answer was: Nothing is easy about Sunday mornings. Not. One. Blessed. Thing! In fact, Sunday morning is the opposite of easy if you grow up in a typical Jamaican home.

So you’ve just graduated from an expensive overseas medical school having spent many long days and nights learning all the arcane secrets of the medical profession. You’re full of pride at becoming a doctor and are bursting with eagerness to put your hard-earned knowledge to good use. Then… you get assigned to a clinic in deep rural Jamaica or one of Kingston’s ghettos and you start to realise that you don’t know quite as much as you thought you did. Much to your distress, patients frequently come into the clinic complaining of strange conditions and illnesses you’ve never before seen mentioned in a medical textbook. Don’t panic, young healer, Jamaicans have their own names for everything. Luckily for you ThingsJamaicansLove.com has compiled a brief list of Jamaican names for some common illnesses/medical conditions:

After our first “Things Jamaicans Fear Most” article was posted a couple months ago, many of our readers were kind enough to take the time to give us the details of several other things that terrify them. We had no idea unnu so coward! But anyway, many thanks to all the fraidy-fraidy readers who took the time give their feedback and suggestions. Your input has inspired us to write another article about the things that scare the bravest people in the world…

Yeah, I did it. And no, I’m not sorry. Now that the “ponzi schemes” have gone belly-up and their founders are facing more criminal charges than Dudus and Bernie Madoff put together, many people have come forward to pontificate about the greed of the persons who invested in them. They heap scorn on the naiveté of investors who believed that rates of 10% per month were endlessly sustainable and they make it seem as if even a retarded six-year old should have known these schemes would fail. Well, I’m no child, I’m a hardworking man who invested in what seems to have been crap, and I lost my shirt. But hold on, I’ve thought it through and I’m satisfied that I made a reasonable decision based on the facts that were available to me. Lemme tell you why investing in a ponzi scheme made perfect sense at the time…

We make them at the start of each New Year and then promptly break half of them by the end of the first week. Indeed, New Year’s resolutions are made to be broken. Since we are at the start of 2010, Thingsjamaicanslove.com has produced the following resolutions that we believe are worth adopting and keeping and may even make a difference in the average Jamaican’s quality of life in what is shaping up to be a challenging year:

Never mind all the talk of IMF Agreements, budget deficits, tax increases and the like. Jamaicans have a passionate and abiding love for Christmas and year after year they enjoy the yuletide season to the fullest, despite the trials and tribulations they’ve experienced all year… That is, of course, once certain basic things are in place. The “basic things” required for the full and proper enjoyment of a Jamaican Christmas, include:

1. Ham. You MUST have a ham for Christmas dinner. Even if it’s the size of a chicken wing. Even (God forbid) if it has to come out of a tin.

2. Sorrel mixed with lethal amounts of white rum is a must. (In some homes the sorrel is entirely optional. The “Whites” is all that’s needed.)