Patwa (Jamaican) in Parliament? Wrong Place? Wrong Time?

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Madame Speaker, me get up this afternoon. I say what an autoclops after MP for Southern St. James Nikisha Burchel tried to start her sectoral presentation using the Jamaican language and the speaker did shut her down. So what do you think? And what do you think about the idea of using PWA in parliament? I'm Dion Jackson Miller. So tell you what I think. Right now it's time for tea.

[00:00:33]Madame Speaker, me get up this afternoon for make my first sectoral speech.

[00:00:40]>> Comic portfolio.

[00:00:41]>> Hold on, hold on, hold on. Standing orders. And I think you are fully aware.

[00:00:45]And if I have to stop you again during your presentation, you will not get any additional time.

[00:00:54]>> No. And she knows Broken English is broken.

[00:01:05]>> Standing order six page three presentation.

[00:01:25]>> MADAM SPEAKER, MADAME SPEAKER, allow me to speak >> a leader.

[00:01:35]>> Madame Speaker, perhaps I should abandon >> that attempt to use our local language >> because >> I have been reminded of the linguistic conventions of this honorable house.

[00:01:50]Yeah. Oh my god.

[00:01:51]>> Because maybe there is no more fitting way to begin a presentation on culture than to speak briefly in the language understood by the overwhelming majority of Jamaica people.

[00:02:12]Even if that language still struggles for full acceptance in some of our most formal national spaces, including this very parliament.

[00:02:25]>> So let me give you the Queen's English.

[00:02:28]So me and the rules are rules people going catch up again today. I know a lot of you watch the channel. I appreciate it. So hear me out. All right. And by the way, I was interviewing Dr. Joseph Farson from the Jamaican language unit at the University of the West Indies. He used a quote from Gandhi and I just had to go look for it especially for my rules are rules friends and by the way for the millionth time I just want to say I support rules. I support law and order. I want an orderly society. What I do not support is rules that are irrational, outdated, that are rooted in racism or selfhatred or misogyny or anything like that. So here's what Gandhi said. He said, "An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so." Now the law of nonviolence says violence should be resisted not by counterviolence but by nonviolence. This I do, he said, by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment. Well, Gandhi said it more elegantly than I can. So, remember he led resistance against British rule and should he have not done that because rules are rules. And I know you're going said that's something entirely different, but yes and no. The point I'm trying to make is that it's problematic when there is some kind of act of resistance against a rule and we unthinkingly go to rules are rules instead of interrogating the rule in question to see whether or not it's valid and just.

[00:04:06]So what are the rules in this case? So just before I tell you that I know there are some people who are saying what we talk about this for look how we waste time I talk about pwan there are so many important things to talk about like rebuilding Jamaica after hurricane Melissa and I just want to say first of all I've always had the position that we can do or talk about two things at once also there are a lot of people doing work on that so for instance you have the higher education task force for disaster resilience HDE that's made up of research virtual from our four major universities. Caribbean Maritime University, University of the West Indies, University of Technology, and Northern Caribbean University. They're doing a lot of work in putting together policy recommendations for the way forward after Hurricane Melissa. I'm also leading a series of seven panel discussions in which they're sharing ideas and recommendations with you. So, you can check those out, right?

[00:05:06]You can go to the UWI's WJC YouTube page and also you can look out for the HDE playlist on this channel where I'm doing some explainer videos to break down the work they're doing for you. And that's my shameless plug for the day. Back to PWA in Parliament. So what are the rules in this case? Well, let's start with standing order number six. That's the one a lot of people are talking about and that says the proceedings and debates of the house shall be in the English language. Now, my first thought was, how is it every Jamaican who heard this if you never know it before, never say, "Oh, what kind of foolishness this?

[00:05:46]Oh, what kind of backward this this? How do people think it's okay in 2026 for us to have a rule that says we can't use our Jamaican language in our parliament, the people's parliament, where 63 members of parliament sit, having been sent there by votes from the Jamaican people, the same Jamaican people who speak Jamaican, some of whom only speak Jamaican. How is it that people's reaction is not we need to change this cuz it's a foolishness rather than just defaulting to rules are rules. But if you're going down the rules or rules path, you should be aware of the fact that parliament regulates its own procedures and can pretty much do whatever it wants within the bounds of the constitution.

[00:06:36]So standing order 86 says any one or more of these standing orders may after notice or with the leave of the speaker be suspended on a motion made by a member at any sitting. So I know what you're going to say. MP Burchel didn't move a motion. She just started to speak in PWA, which is why the speaker shut her down because rules are rules. Look, the speaker could have easily have said, MP Burchell, please move a motion that you're going to be speaking in part one, then you know, let's just get on with things instead of which she chose to shut her down. Now, it's not surprising because we all know by now how rigid and inflexible the speaker has decided to be in carrying out her duties in sharing the house. And no, rigidity and inflexibility in my view do not make you a good speaker. The kind of tension and hostility we're seeing in the House of Representatives, this parliament, I have never seen before. I don't think it's useful to the parliament. I don't think it's useful to the people. And I think most of it is completely unnecessary.

[00:07:39]and is due to the lack of discretion with which the speaker leads the house.

[00:07:45]So yeah, this was political theater by MP Burchel because you know something I looked at her speech and only the first two sentences were actually in PWA right two sentences she never had any intention of delivering the full presentation in PWA at all and no I don't have any problem with the political drama with the little political theater that she enacted because I do think theater and protest have an important role to play in highlighting in problems in society and that's what this has done. So, as I said, it started the whole Jamaica talking. Looking forward to seeing your comments on this. But some of the comments again continue to be really disappointing. Honestly, we have to be hearing again how yes, I don't have any problem with PWA, but you know when you hear the but that it has no place in formal settings. And you know something that is just a way of saying that they think PWA is really just a language for the kitchen or the backyard, the language that the enslaved people used to use. while the colonizers sat up in their great houses and looked down on the black enslaved people and looked down on the language they spoke. I've heard a question asked as to well we have Hansard how would Hansard record it if people start talking in PWA first of all there is an official writing system for Jamaican there has been for decades it's called the Cassidy writing system and when you look at it looks very strange and foreign but it's very very phonetic so it's actually pretty easy to read even if you're not fluent in it which I am Not I do agree with everything about the Cassidy system. I don't like how they've institutionalized for instance dropping the H because I don't think all PWA speakers drop their H. Why would you default to that? But hey, I argue with English and for them fool rule them all the time. So here's an alphabet chart with Cassidy. All right. And you look at it, you'll see the picture, right? So you know what word we're talking about. The English word is on the bottom and the word written in Jamaican, written in Cassidy is on the top. So let's just go through a few. So you see a there right? And if you're looking at Cassidy, read it with me. Ai, see how easy that is? So look at the next picture now. Again, just reading it using the Cassidy ball.

[00:10:20]Lime Bible, church, dog, egg, feather, goat, can kind of strange to me. Can I supposed to can Okay. Anyway, iguana, cake, tea, judge, kite, lamp, mango, nose, king, okra. All right, you get the picture. So, I'm going to read just a little from the New Testament that was translated into Cassidy by the Bible society of the West Indies. And this is online, a little piece of it is online. I actually have the Bible. They had given me a copy of it. So let us look here. All right. So this is a gospel according to St. Matthew and you see on the right hand side it's written in Cassidy. The good news about Jesus as according to Matthew. Now I haven't practiced this. I'm reading it cold. So I'm not going to sound very fluent but you're going to see what I mean when I say it's really not that hard to read.

[00:11:32]It's very phonetic. You just need to sound it out. So let us go down to chapter two. The wise man them. Again you look at it and you say what? Just sound it out. Wise and your sister is wise. The wise man them. Jesus did born in a Bethlehem.

[00:11:52]One turn in a Juda. Them time a rod did a king in a Juda. Now in them same time day some wise men from the east said did come a Jerusalem and an axe where the picn were born the other day where we turn king for the Jew people them we see him star in the east we show same born and we come to show him enough respect all right I just going to leave it there as I said I didn't practice it I wasn't wasn't trying to do that. I was trying to read it cold just to show you that it's not as strange as it looks and that it is possible to write down Jamaican. Now, the other argument people tend to come with is to say we don't want to isolate ourselves by institutionalizing a language that nobody else in the world speaks. This is one of those straw men that people set up to try to make an argument, right? Because there is nobody there is nobody who is suggesting that Jamaicans should talk Jamaican and should not speak English. In fact, every single advocate of the Jamaican language that I know and I've been interviewing on this issue for like years. Everybody wants to hear Jamaicans fluent in English, which is currently not the case. So, it's not one or the other.

[00:13:24]It's not Jamaican or English. The idea is let's recognize, let's celebrate our own language at the same time using it to make sure that all our children, all our people can also speak English very very well. Speak and write. Obviously, this argument is one that's put forward by people to try to fight against the idea or the suggestion that we should adopt Jamaican as one of our official languages because yes, countries can have more than one official language.

[00:13:59]And it is absolutely legitimate to have as one of your official languages an indigenous language that nobody else speaks. For instance, look at Wales.

[00:14:08]Wales has two official languages. One is English, one is Welsh, and I promise you that there are not a whole lot of people in the world outside of Wales who can speak Welsh, but who cares? It's their language. They still have a language in which they communicate with everybody else in the world, but they want to preserve and recognize and celebrate their own language. Why we can't do that? Why we're so afraid of the idea of celebrating ourselves, of recognizing ourselves? We get excited when Obama comes here and says what a goan Jamaica right but somehow we have a problem with the idea of an MP a Jamaican MP in a Jamaican parliament speaking in PWA. In fact, one of the conversations we refuse to have is that research has shown that using Jamaican in the classroom can help children learn better and learn English better. What is happening is that people don't want to have the conversation because there's this morbid fear that if Jamaican is used in the classroom that children going to come out somehow not speaking English. Nobody wants that at all. Nobody. Children pick up languages very easily. They are quite capable of speaking two different languages. Right?

[00:15:29]And if you speak to them and you say say for instance your choice is to say we only speak English at home. That's what they're going to grow up doing. That's what happens in homes where people for instance speak French and Spanish or English French and Spanish. I had one teacher, one language teacher who spoke three languages and she said the way she brought up her kids, one day would be Italian day. That's all they spoke. One day would be French day, another day would be English day. and they all grew up triilingual. She said they used to cuss at the time, but they know thank her cuz obviously it's a huge benefit to them. Also, not a soul is trying to insist that you have to talk Jamaican or your children have to talk Jamaican if you don't want to or if they don't want to. That's not the idea. For instance, I speak much more English than PU. I do code switch a fair amount as you would see if I watch my videos, but I speak mainly in English, right? I am not trying to say you mustn't do that if that's not what you want to do. What I am trying to say is why we can't celebrate our own language so that people who want to use it can use it without somehow feeling that it's less than. I want to see all Jamaican children, all Jamaicans fluent in English, but I also want to see Jamaican as one of our official languages. I want to see Jamaicans feeling empowered to use it in all kinds of different spaces.

[00:16:56]And please note what I'm saying. If you don't want to use Jamaican, that's fine.

[00:17:01]But people who want to should not be made to feel that it's less than or inferior or inappropriate. This hangup we have, you know, is actually hurting our people. I'm saying this to you as a fact. And by the way, for people who think this is not important, it actually really is. People who study court, and I have seen this for myself. I have seen people in the witness box answering questions, not understanding what the lawyers are asking them because the lawyers are speaking in English, right?

[00:17:36]And we have this idea that everybody can speak English, everybody can understand English. It is not true, boy. Honestly, sometime I think the colonizer then Kool-Aid makes extra strong in a Jamaica cuz why we have these hang-ups? Why we hate ourselves? So why is it where everything the colonizer them bring come we automatically think is better than we are or what we have or what we brought or what we have created. So some foreigners come here and talk P. We get all excited and we start up and down like Madansson talk about oh Jamaica little but with Talawa but then we have problems when an MP is using the language in our parliament make it make sense. So yeah, I do have a problem with what MP Burchell did in parliament and I wish rather than us going round and round with this rules on rules argument, we instead focused on the issue, the issue that what she did spotlighted so well that we actually have a rule that says we can't talk our language in our parliament. the language that the linguists call the heart language for most Jamaicans that that language should not be spoken in our parliament that need for fix. So, I'm going to leave it there. As always, I want you to sound off in the comments. Want to see what you think about this. All right, like the video, share it with somebody you think might be interested, subscribe to the channel, click the notification bell so you know anytime I drop a new video.

[00:19:06]I'm Dion. Thank you so much for watching. And back to my tea.