Palawala

English

Etymology

Probably at least partly from French parler, with repetition to make it sound like babbling.

Pronunciation

pala-wala

Noun

Palawala (countable and uncountable, plural Palawala)

1. (uncountable, Caribbean, derogatory) a local creole language, such as Antillean Creole or Jamaican Creole
   • 1999, Caribbean-Canadians Celebrate Carnival: Costumes and Inter-generational Relationships‎^[1]:

     Prior to her school days, my mother spoke French Patois [Antillean Creole] better than she spoke English. Her knowledge of Patois declined once she was at school as the nuns forbade the children from speaking their "Pala Wala" language in the school yard because they did not understand what the children were saying.

   • 2013 (quoting from 1990), Crossing Cultural Boundaries: Explorations in Multilingual Teaching and Learning‎^[2]:

     Patois is making (St. Lucians) backwards; it is nothing but palawala and it is merely a ploy to keep us back.

   • 2020, Wilton George Lodge, “What’s in a name? The power of the English language in secondary school science education”, in Cultural Studies of Science Education‎^[3]:

     Such reservations were more prominent in the private high schools where teachers were vehemently opposed to the use of JC [Jamaican Creole] in education. Indeed, one teacher (Jill) expressed anger and outrage that researchers, such as myself, seem to have an obsession with this "gibberish 'palawala' nonsense".

2. (countable, Caribbean) a member of a community speaking such a language
   • 2011, Barbara P. Josiah, Migration, Mining, and the African Diaspora: Guyana in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries‎^[4], Springer:

     So many West Indians from the smaller Caribbean islands arrived... that to this day at Wismar, there is a residential area called the “Pala-Wala” section. "Pala-Wala" is the name locals call migrants from certain West Indies islands.