ABSTRACT
Jamaican Creole (JC) is a Caribbean English-lexified creole language, spoken primarily on the island of Jamaica (pop. 2.7 million people) but also in North America and Britain. When creolists say English-lexified creole, we mean that it is a language closely related to English in terms of vocabulary but nevertheless grammatically distinct from English. A creole language is one that was created as a result of intense language contact between a superstrate language (that is, a dominant colonial language—English in this case) and less powerful substrate languages (several West African ones). (On creole languages see also the chapter on language contact.) JC is a language that is separate from English and is in no way inferior to English, although many people, including some Jamaicans, think of it as a low-status language, due in part, no doubt, to the status of Jamaica in the world political economy.
