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( Patois)
Patois is any language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. It can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, and other forms of native or local speech, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant. Class distinctions are embedded in the term, drawn between those who speak patois and those who speak the standard or dominant language used in literature and public speaking, i.e., the "acrolect". The term patois comes from French, but beyond that its origin is uncertain. One derivation[1] is from Old French patoier meaning "to handle clumsily, to paw". The language sense may therefore arise from the notion of a clumsy manner of speaking. Alternatively[2] it may derive from Latin patria (homeland) referring to the localised spread of the language variety. In France and other Francophone countries, patois has been used to describe non-Parisian French and so-called regional languages such as Breton, Occitan, and Franco-Provençal, since 1643. The word assumes the view of such languages as being backward, countrified, and unlettered, thus is considered by speakers of those languages as offensive when used by outsiders, although speakers may use the term to refer familiarly to their own language (See also Languages of France.) Many of the vernacular forms of English spoken in the Caribbean are also referred to as patois (occasionally spelled in this context patwah). It is noted especially in reference to Jamaican Creole from 1934. Jamaican Patois language is comprised words of the native languages of the many races within the Caribbean including Swahili, Hindi, Portuguese, Chinese, Amerindian, and English. Trinidad and Tobago has a patois influenced by its linguistic diversity; French, Spanish, Latin, Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew, German, Dutch, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and others. Patois is also spoken in the Atlantic coast of Costa Rica.
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