Talk:from me born

@Chuck Entz An IP just made edits that I find objectionable and in my view should have been discussed. (My reasoning for keeping the current quotes in Jamaican Creole is that the syntax of the sentences in quotes is fairly typical for Caribbean English-based creoles; the English is just there for context. I think the point about the same authors, study and quote as the English cite is valid, but it does not follow that the quote is not in Jamaican Creole.) How should I request a checkuser comparison to Dubitator? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 11:13, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

RFV discussion: October–December 2020

This entry has survived Wiktionary's verification process (permalink).

Please do not re-nominate for verification without comprehensive reasons for doing so.

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from me born

The claimed source has:

• (1) from, prep.
  • 1-4 and 6-7 sences alone
  • 5 phrase
    • 5.1 from [a] long time
  • 8 phrases
    • 8.1 from a chiles
    • 8.2 from early; from early o'clock
    • 8.3 from ever since
    • 8.4 from hell freeze/froze
    • 8.5 from hinder
    • 8.6 from in front
    • 8.7 from morning
    • 8.8 get/have change from (a dollar coin, or a money bill)
  • note: from off/off from, from out of
• (2) from, conj.
  • 1 & 3 sences alone
  • 2 phrases
    • 2.1 from a baby; from a child/boy/girl; from, jg born; from small, from young (CarA) adv phrs [X] From babyhood, childhood, birth, youth etc.
  • 4 phrase
    • 4.1 from God make/send morning

So only (2)2.1 has a similar sense as this.

Abbreviations, as given in the work:

• CarA = Caribbean Area/Region
  with the explanation: "an entry-item labbelled as CarA (Caribbean) is not to be taken as being in use in all, perhaps not even in most Caribbean territories, but rather in too many to list conveniently. In general, whenever an entry-item has been found to be assignable to six or more territories it has been labelled CarA or, if it appears to have no occurence in Jamaica, The Bahamas or Belize, it has been labelled ECar (Eastern Caribbean)."
• adv = adverb
• phr(s) = phrase(s)

Thus:

1. The source doesn't have this term.
2. The source doesn't state it's "Jamaican Creole" (jam).

@Dentonius who maybe doesn't know about WT:CFI & WT:RFV. --Dubitator (talk) 16:26, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi, @Dubitator. I didn't create the English version. Personally, I prefer "from mi bawn" or "fram mi bawn." Feel free to remove the standard English version if you like. But the Jamaican Creole version is legit. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk)

@Dubitator, did you seriously RFV the Jamaican Creole version? From me born mi neva see nuttn like dis. A poppy show business dis, bredda. Tek weh yuself wid dat. ;-) -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 16:57, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, this a RFV for the alleged Jamaican Creole (jam) term and not for the English (en) term. --Dubitator (talk) 17:04, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

@Dubitator, have you tried asking a Jamaican? Da bredda ya cyaan real. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 17:08, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

But you know what, @Dubitator. You have a right to question the entry. Here's an article from the Jamaica Gleaner. Search for "from me born" and tell me if it's something you think Jamaicans use: Mother's Day playlist

@Dentonius, do you know WT:CFI? I could ask all Jamaicans and they all could tell, that "from me born" exists in Jamaican Creole with the given meaning, but as that's not durably archived, it's not enough as for WT:CFI.
As for audio sources (e.g. songs, audioplays) and many videos (if it's only sound and not text on the screen), they don't reveal any spelling.
As for your source, it looks to me more like Jamaican English^WP (as part of Caribbean English^WP) than like Jamaican Creole^WP, so it would be English from me born. --Dubitator (talk) 18:32, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

@Dubitator. Now I see what kind of person you are. I understand you very well. Please explain the process to me. What's required of me at this point? How will the outcome be decided? Who decides? But most importantly, who are you? I see that you haven't contributed to the dictionary proper and you joined today. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 18:40, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

As WT:CFI explains, a durably archived source is needed, e.g. a Jamaican-Creole text, grammar or dictionary. -Dubitator (talk) 18:45, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

@Dubitator, You're forgetting the other option, which is "clear widespread use". It doesn't apply very often, but it might in this case. If you really could go to any native speaker and they would say "yeah, I use it all the time", it would pass regardless of whether there are durably archived sources. The tricky part is proving that's the case.

At any rate, I happen to have a dictionary that's been gathering dust on my shelf for a couple of decades (Cassidy, F.G, Le Page, R.B (1980) Dictionary of Jamaican English, 2nd edition):

B. quasi=conj: From the time when; usually from a time early in one's life and ever since. Esp. in set phrases: from me born, […]

In case you're wondering, it calls this usage "chiefly dial", and "dial" is how it designates patwa. As it says in the introduction:

"It may be wondered why two such different types, the language of the educated and that of the folk, might not have been separated and treated in two dictionaries, one perhaps based on printed materials, the other based on dialect sources, oral or written. The answer is that just because there is one continuous, gradual scale of usage between the extremes of these types, any sharp division made between them would have had to be arbitrary, tearing apart what is, in fact. a thoroughly interwoven fabric."

For what it's worth, @Dentonius has said and done a lot of things that I, too, find annoying- but I have never, ever seen him making stuff up. Trying to get rid of what is obviously a real term by means of technicalities is, IMO, a misuse of CFI. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:23, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

@Dentonius: please, just find a usage (and add it) or let someone else find it. No-one here is trying to convict you of lying or such. There is no need to start any personal attacks. And @Dubitator: I would ask you to do the same. Isn't Jamaican Creole by any chance an LDL? Thadh (talk) 18:51, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

@Dubitator, well buddy, it seems you got me. I am shit out of luck. Wiktionary takes up way more of my time than it should. If other people here want to keep the Jamaican Creole entries, I'll let them do the work to verify something which is obviously in widespread use. I have no time for games. Let it fail RFV. Then let it go to RFD. Delete all of the Jamaican Creole entries if you wish. Do you think I give a fuck? Walk good, bredda. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 18:59, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

@Thadh: It is, cp. WT:LDL and WT:WDL. But it still needs a proper durably archived source... --Dubitator (talk) 19:03, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

I am struggling with whether Vybz Kartel's or Popcaan's songs are Jamaican creole or Jamaican English. But it seems - seeing the uxes added in the entry - that the better orthography would indeed be "from mi bawn". Thadh (talk) 19:11, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Oh Lord, let me stop this before it goes any further:

• Jamaican Creole does not have a standard orthography.
• If you want to find out how Jamaicans commonly write Creole words, you'll need to restrict your search to our local newspapers and check: The Jamaica Gleaner, The Jamaica Star, The Jamaica Observer, etc. The newspapers are written in standard English but they often quote word for word people who speak Patwa. After doing my own checks whenever I did, I was disappointed to find out that "from mi bawn" is less popular than "from me born." But both are equally valid forms.
• There is a writing system similar to Cassidy's which the people at the Jamaica Language Unit (JLU) at the University of the West Indies (UWI) have been fighting tooth and nail to get recognised at the national level. They want to supplant our standard English education with a Patwa-only education as if this would somehow be helpful. Anyhow, that's politics. The long and short of it is that Patwa is not an official language of Jamaica and it has no official writing system.
• The very nature of a Creole language means that we speak in a dialect continuum. It's very rare for us to speak the "raw Patwa" (basilect) 24-7 unless you're from deep rural Jamaica. So there is no clean separation between Patwa and English. If a Patwa speaker wants to, they can speak in a way to confuse the hell out of the uninitiated, but they don't have to.

What this guy above wants is for me to buy UWI's crappy books to come here and write "fram mi baan" or I have no idea what they're pushing. Another of their aims is to disguise the fact that Patwa descended from English. I also despise that writing system because they're automatically making choices about the phonology. I, as a Kingstonian uptown Patwa speaker, speak very differently from somebody in, say, St. Elizabeth. These people have no authority to decide that. This is one reason why I avoid that bullshit Jamaican Wiktionary and Jamaican Wikipedia project written in that garbage style of Patwa which nobody knows.

That was my rant. But no Sir, I am not doing extra work for this. Either you want to document our language or you don't want to. If you want to make it hard for yourselves, fine. Let the language remain a mystery to you. - Dentonius (my politics | talk) 19:26, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Problem solved. Copied and pasted the quotes @Equinox had already provided. Removed the mistaken reference. That I apologise for. I must have been half asleep when I thought I saw "from me born" on page 245. Anyhow, if you're having trouble determining what is Jamaican English and what is Jamaican Creole (JC), that's precisely what JC and life in Jamaica is like. There is no cut-off point. Jamaican Creole is the way Jamaican people speak ranging from broad Patwa to something approaching standard English. All the best, folks. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 05:17, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

@Dubitator, do you speak Jamaican Creole? Why did you revert my last commit? Please don't play games. Unless you're a native speaker of Jamaican Creole too, you can't possibly know more about the subject than me. Declare yourself, fellow. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 07:22, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

@Dentonius, DTLHS: The citations provided by @Equinox are already in English from me born, and they are either English or Jamaican-Creole. If they were Creole, they wouldn't belong into the English section, so moving instead of copying would be correct. But for me they look more like English anyway. --Dubitator (talk) 07:33, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't speak Jamaican Creole. But I think it is obvious one instance of usage can not be in two languages at the same time. Whether being a native speaker or not is irrelevant here. 恨国党非蠢即坏 (talk) 08:21, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Let's demystify, shall we? Let's look at words first: ganja, spliff, reggae. Are these Jamaican Creole words or English words? They're both. English has a beautiful habit of borrowing from other languages. This is what makes English such a versatile language. Here's a sentence: "I can do that." Is that an English sentence or a Jamaican Creole sentence? It's both. Jamaican Creole's vocabulary is mostly English. The big difference is how Jamaicans interpret and utter those words.

• A Jamaican in polite company will say: "/aɪ kæn duː ðæt/".
• A Jamaican among friends will say: "/ˈaɪˌkʲan ˈdʊˌdat/" or more informally /aˈkʲan ˈdʊˌdat/

The example above was for people speaking at the more Englishy-end of the Patwa-English spectrum. We can of course speak in a more unrefined way: "Mi can dweet" /ˈmɪˌkʲan dwiːt/. This kind of code-switching is normal for us Jamaicans. Sometimes you'll hear us speaking more-or-less normal English. Other times we'll sound unintelligible as we choose a register which incorporates more Patwa. It's not either-or. This is what Jamaican Creole is. For the sci-fi geeks out there, have you ever watched The Expanse on Prime? Do you see the way the OPA folks speak? That's how Creole speakers operate.

The main point is: Don't assume that the way you've read a Jamaican Creole sentence in English is the way we say it. The phonology varies from region to region and, in many respects, it sounds nothing like English if you aren't used to it. The way we say any given sentence also depends on register and our mood. I don't know how true this comparison is but a Ukrainian lady I once knew who lived near me when I was living in Jamaica told me the Creole is to English as Ukrainian is to Russian. Almost every Creole speaker understands when people speak standard English. It's not necessarily the case that the reverse is true.

If you can't accept that one set of citations can back up an English entry and a Jamaican Creole entry simultaneously, it might mean that you'll have to explore both topics a little more: English and Jamaican Creole. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 09:55, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Or not. This logic could be used to include the entirety of patwa in English. The only time a single quote can be used for two languages is when there's code switching within a single quote, and even then each individual part of the quote is in one language or the other. This isn't something that's specific to patwa, it's just simple logic. If I say "buenos días to all mis amigos in México", that's not an attestation of "mis" in English.

Yes, it's hard to draw a clear line between Jamaican English and patwa, but a dictionary has to do so in cases like this. Either it's one or the other, or it's useless for proving attestation. Given that its grammatical structure is very different from English, I would be inclined to err on the side of patwa, though the example with "neither" in it strikes me as more English than the others. Still, Jamaican Creole is a less-documented language according to CFI, so it doesn't need three quotes- one mention in a reliable reference work is all that's required. I would say that any of those quotes that could be interpreted either way are better used in the English section, because English requires three examples in durably archived sources that are being used to convey meaning and not just mentions. As a native speaker of both Jamaican Creole and Jamaican English you would be better qualified to determine which is which, but they have to be one or the other. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:10, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

I'll take number three, Chuck: But from me born, me never hear 'bout no girl wha' fall in love with her little brother. For anybody who's curious how a Jamaican might say that. It's something like this: /ˈbʌt ˈfɹam ˈmɪ bɑːn, ˈmɪ nɛba ˈjeɹ ˈbɔʊ̯t nʌ ɡʲal ˈwa ˈfɑːl ɪn ˈlʌv ˈwɪd ɑːɹ ˈlɪkl ˈbɹaˈda/ -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 15:27, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz, looking back... this conversation took more effort than simply going to Google books and getting a new quote. I'll play the game. If people want me to provide a reference in the future, I'll just do it. Is this idea okay: How about I mark the JC entry for "from me born" as an alternative form of "from mi bawn". I would make "from mi bawn" the main JC entry. There are apparently quite a few quotes on Google books. I won't use any of Equinox's quotes. I'd supply my one required quote from Google Books and move my examples over to that page. Would that be acceptable? --- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 18:43, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

@Dentonius This looks like an acceptable quotation to me: [1] Maybe this as well, but the publisher looks like a print-on-demand business to me: [2] I'd say that anything Jamaican that uses me as a subject pronoun at least gets a first picking as being considered Jamaican Creole. (Very annoying RFV by the way.) ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 19:39, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

@Lingo Bingo Dingo, thanks. I won't mess with Equinox's quotes. Equinox worked hard to find them. So I'd prefer not to touch them at this point. Here are two I found which look more Patwa-ish:

• (search terms: "from me born" neva) [3] From me born me neva see such wickedness.' Beryl heaved her chest and folded her hands in a gesture of defiance.
• (search terms: "from mi bawn") [4] Doah no bada tell nobody For mi promise no fi talk An mi no wan mi name go call Far no cyah how yuh secret dark If yuh pinch tell mi yuh bizniz Yuh won ' ever haffe fret For from mi bawn mi no hear nobody Call mi ' mout - a - massy ' yet.

So, the question is: which should we use as the main form for Jamaican Creole: "from me born" or "from mi bawn". What do you guys think? (The other would become an alternative form). -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 19:52, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

But importantly: I think it has been demonstrated that both "from me born" and "from mi bawn" are widely used and are, in fact, Jamaican Creole. Can we do something about this RFV, please? Let's pass it and get back to making Wiktionary even greater. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 04:29, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

I am not wont to close RFVs, but I would say that from me born passes RFV and I think any impartial closer would judge the same. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:23, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Here's what gets me... Why didn't @Dubitator just leave a message on my talk page asking me to provide quotations for all the Jamaican Creole terms? I would have happily obliged. People write to me all the time on my page asking me to correct things and I've never said no. Instead, a bureaucratic procedure was initiated. That, to me, isn't cool. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 05:55, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

@Dentonius I don't think that the procedure of starting a RFV was unbecoming, but it certainly was annoying that the OP didn't personally check Google Books, where it's existence in Jamaican Creole quickly becomes plausible. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:23, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

@Lingo Bingo Dingo, Amen! -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 18:26, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

RFV passed. Jamaican Creole is an LDL. The entry contains one scholarly mention and two quotes. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:43, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

RFC discussion: December 2020–September 2021

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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from me born

1. The language of the cites in the Jamaican Creole section are English and not Jamaican. 2. The 1975 cite of V. Rubin and L. Comitas (Jamaican Creole section) and the 1976 quote by the the same (English section) have a similar title ("Ganja in Jamaica") and similar strucutre, hence it's obviously the same language. --17:52, 8 December 2020 (UTC) — This unsigned comment was added by 93.221.40.103 (talk).

Hi, IP editor. I apologise for not listening to you in the past. You've taught me a few things as well, including what brackets=on is about. What do you think would be the ideal way to deal with the "from me born" situation? — Dentonius 14:53, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

• Resolved at RFV. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:48, 14 September 2021 (UTC)