Understanding Jamaican Patois: An Introduction to Afro-Jamaican Grammar
This easy-to-understand introduction to Afro-Jamaican grammar "explains clearly and simply the basics of Jamaican language. Most importantly I think the book has an important role to play in helping Jamaicans take pride in their language and see that it is not second-class" (Deborah Pruitt, anthropologist, Berkeley, California). (Foreign Language Studies)
For those interested in language ceolization, Understanding Jamaican Patois is a good description of the basics of the creole spoken in Jamaica. A relatively short book, it spends a good deal of time talking about orthography, which is always a problem/concern with a primarily oral language. This discussion is interestingly illustrated in the reading selection (a childhood tale by Llewellen "Dada" Adams) at the end of the book, which is written in facing pages in the two orthographies (one mixes phonetic and standard spellings; the second is purely phonetic). Ending the book is an all-too-short appendix comparing some similar features in Haitian and Jamaican phrases.