English

Alternative forms

• Jafaikan

Proper noun

Jafaican

1. (informal, also used attributively) Multicultural London English
   • 2006, June: Archibald St John Smith, How British is That?!: The Eccentric British Guide Book, pages 33–34 (Crombie Jardine Publishing Limited; ISBN 1905102720)

     Forget Cockney, Brummie, Geordie and Scouse, according to the Daily Mail — who else? — Jafaican is laying siege to our inner-city accents and is infiltrating the sacred English language. Soon we may all be familiar with creps (trainers), yard (home), yoot (child), blud (mate) and bitch (girlfriend).

   • 2007, March 16th: Debbie Stowe and Paul Stump, Who is Borat?: The Unauthorized Biography of Sacha Baron Cohen, page 122 (Barnes & Noble; ISBN 076079281X, 9780760792810)

     […] from Cockney, or East London, terminology to a style called “Jafaican”, which has elements of Jamaican and African street talk.

   • 2007, June 28th: María Alvarez, Mirror, Mirror, page 88 (Fig Tree; ISBN 1905490062, 9781905490066)

     She is frowning, hiding her nervousness of Suzy’s presence behind the Jafaican babble.

   • 2007, December 17th: Bobby Smith and Margaret Oshindele-Smith, One Love Two Colours: The Unlikely Marriage of a Punk Rocker and His African Queen, pages 197–198 (Troubador Publishing Ltd; ISBN 9781906221393)

     One part of segregation not immediately obvious is language. I do not mean someone unable to speak the English language, although that is another variation on it; I mean the usage of ‘street’ talk or ‘Jafaican’ as it is sometimes referred to.

   • 2008, January: Janet Holmes, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, page 413 (3rd edition; Pearson Education; ISBN 1405821310, 9781405821315)

     In the early section of this chapter, I discussed attitudes to British Patois, a variety used by members of the West Indian community in Britain. While attitudes are always changing, and new varieties of Black English, such as Jafaican, are said to be developing, […]

   • a. 2009, Ignacio Ramos, A. Jesús Moya Guijarro, and José Ignacio Albentosa Hernández [eds.], New Trends in English Teacher Education, page 209 (Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha; ISBN 9788484276531)

     In terms of its characteristics, MLE is anchored to a large extent in Jamaican Creole, throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s a competitor to Cockney. But Kerswill et al report that it has now encompassed and synthesized elements of everything from Cockney and African English to Hindi, Bangladeshi languages and Arabic. For this reasons it is sometimes called, erroneously, “Hinglish” or “Jafaican”.

See also

• Hinglish