Lovin' da Local Lingo, Part 2

It’s time for more Lovin’ da Local Lingo. I’ve learned many new words since last time and have tried to incorporate them into my daily vocabulary. Sure, Caribbean words sound incongruous coming out of a bespectacled white girl’s mouth. But that’s part of the fun, yes? I enjoy surprising locals in the coffee shop by inserting a local saying mid-conversation.

For Example:

One of our dear regulars, a lovely, salt of the earth man named Steve, was in early for coffee. On his way out, he stopped again at the register to buy a paper.

“Ashley, do you have any Daily News?”

“No, dey ain’t reach yet.”

He chuckled, “Dey ain’t reach, huh? You starting to sound Caribbean, girl.”

I smiled. “Maybe someone teef ‘em”

Steve shook his head and walked away saying, “Someone teef ‘em. You’re too much.”

So children, when an item or person arrives someplace, you say that it reach.

A related term is carry. If you take a person or an item somewhere, you say that you’re carrying them/it. As in, “I gon carry my dog to da beach on Sunday.”

And if you couldn’t tell by the context, if something is teefed, then it has been stolen. If someone be teefing from you, what they’re doing is stealing. This is one of my favorites. And can you really blame me?

Stay Tuned for More... 

Finding Pleasure in the Health Card Process

People who work in the food service industry in St. Thomas (and there are many of us) must annually renew their health card in order to stay legally employed. To do this, one must carry a personal poo sample to a lab where it is tested for worms. They don’t test for anything else—Hepatitis, cholera, bird flu, VD…just intestinal worms. Don’t ask me to explain. Then one must take the results to the community clinic at the hospital where, after 1pm on weekdays, they issue health cards to food handlers and others who need it. Having had to do this twice now, I’ve gotten over the initial shock of having to scoop a piece of my poo into a sample jar and later hand it to lab technician. (I learned after the first time to write my name on the sample jar BEFORE the sample was collected.) The whole process is just sort of a pain in the ass (pun not intended) like any bureaucratic process in the VI. But at least the waiting room experience is far more entertaining than it would be in the Midwest.

I couldn’t have been more pleased with the company I kept during the short elevator ride to the 2nd floor. The woman I rode with wore the type of vibrant Caribbean outfit I most enjoy. A fuchsia business suit with bright orange accents and fuchsia heels to match. Her hair was done up in thick braids, and at the crown of her head the braids were multi-colored. They reminded me of the consistency of rag rugs, but with the hues of those sweet rainbow candy canes (as opposed to the peppermint ones). I’m telling you, I couldn’t be more turned on by the color of this island, both nature-made and human-displayed.

My other source of entertainment came from another local woman wearing pink. This one in hot magenta scrubs, who also seemed to be waiting for a health card. She apparently knew the people working in the community health clinic because she maintained a loud conversation with them while eating her lunch in the waiting room. Clearly, she had no problem being the center of attention. For dessert she pulled out a banana (pronounced locally as bah-nah-nah). Upon noticing this, the man sitting in front of me asked her something I had trouble making out, but I’m pretty sure it was,

“Wh’eh ya get ya banana?”

To which she replied, “It not ya business wh’eh I get my banana.”

This back and forth continued for a couple minutes. And I'm confident that I was not imagining the sexual innuendo. She finally ended the exchange by declaring,

“Dat da problem wit black people. Dey see too much and hea’eh too much and say too much. Black people is too nosey.”

I found this statement rather entertaining since the young lady’s skin was the color of milk chocolate.

Patience and a sense of humor.
That’s what it takes to live happily in the VI, folks.

Bama-Wha?

Working at the coffee shop with Loida, a born and bred St. Thomian, has been wonderfully enriching in many ways. One thing I particularly enjoy about working together is learning so much about the local lingo.

I am often delightfully surprised by the old world elegance of some of the words she says. She’ll occasionally use a term I haven‘t encountered since my days reading 18th century novels as an English major. This coming from a young woman of Puerto Rican descent—beautiful like a puma, Gangstress tattooed on the inside of her right forearm, and don't fuck with me written on her face.

One day while relaying the details of an argument with her boyfriend, she said,

“Ashley, I was so vexed wit him dat I…”

“Loida, did you just say that you were VEXED with your boyfriend?” I interrupted.

She smiled. ‘Yeah, I was vexed wit him. Why?”

“I just don’t hear that word often. It’s old-fashioned, Loida, I’m so surprised to hear it coming out of your mouth! It’s great though. Okay, go on, you were vexed with your boyfriend, and you…”

Another time we were talking about the food offered downtown for lunch. She said something to the effect of, “I like to get my stew chicken or my salt fish and all of my provisions…”

Again, I interrupted her. “Did you just say ‘provisions’?”

“Yeah, my provisions,” She nodded, “Like my dumplins, my plantains, my sweet potatos,” she counted out on graceful hands, forever active when she talks, “…..Why you laughin?”

“That’s just another word I rarely hear out of an old-fashioned context. Unless it’s the military or something. Do a lot of people use ‘provisions’ when talking about food down here?”

She nodded, “Yeah,” and shrugged like it’s common, no big deal.

I’ve since determined that provisions is used to describe the variety of local side dishes. And they seem to be smaller side dishes, because I was quickly corrected when I referred to baked macaroni as a provision. 

And then sometimes the words are so absolutely island-sounding that I’m both surprised and not surprised at the same time.

A couple weeks ago, while lifting boxes of soda to store in the back room, Loida said to me,

“Ashley, you wan get a bamacoo or wha?”

“Wha you say?” I asked, doing my best island accent but still sounding very much like a white girl from the states.

“A bamacoo, ya know. You get dem when ya lift sumting heavy.”

“A hernia?” I asked.

“Yeah, a hernia. We call it bamacoo.”

“Oh my god, that’s a great word! How you spell?”

“I don’t know... ask Juel. She probly know. My granmadda use it. I tink all island people do. ”

“Okay, use it in a sentence for me, Loida."

“Girl, you done lift dat ting, you gon get a bamacoo, ya know.”

“I love it. Thank you.That definitely makes the blog.”

Lovin' da Local Lingo

I’ve fallen for the St. Thomas vernacular.

While it’s sometimes still hard to understand locals when they talk to each other, working in the coffee shop has helped me grasp the island accent, lingo, and speech patterns more quickly than I might have otherwise.

The island language is loose and easy—ending consonants are often dropped and words run together or are left out entirely, especially when stateside people don’t need to understand. The pitch of the words flows up and down, as if tracing the hills and valleys of the island’s topography. Th’s are replaced by “t” or “d” as in “tick” for “thick” or “da” for “the.” Often a couple words are rearranged from ther formal English order. I notice this more in interrogative statements. As in, “What time it is?” or “What dis is?” For instance, I often hear in the coffee shop, “I could have a dumbread and cheese?” At first, this flip flop seems just plain wrong, but it soon grows charming. Especially because t’s are pronounced very sharply, adding a graceful staccato to the melody of words.

And, as in any local dialect, there are rules to be followed.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s an important enough part of local etiquette to be mentioned again. And that is greeting people according to the time of day: Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening, Good Night, and Good Day are the proper salutations. Though people often drop the “Good” and just go with the “Morning” or “Afternoon.” It’s quite nice when someone walks into a doctor’s waiting room, and says “Ahfta-noon,” to the group gathered, and most people respond, “Afternoon,” in a harmony of accents.

It takes some time to get used to doing this constantly, but after a bit of practice it becomes second nature. I must say, I have come to enjoy this social custom. Greeting the people you approach, to acknowledge their existence on this planet, rather than averting eye contact to avoid having to say anything, is a rather pleasant and connecting experience.

Another lovely aspect of the local dialect is the abundance of affectionate terms such as, “hon,” “sweetheart,” or the Spanish-influenced, “mame'”. It makes you feel just plain cared for and valued when someone tacks “honey” or “baby” on the end of a sentence directed toward you. People also tend to use the titles Ms. and Mr. more frequently than I hear in the Midwest.

Here’s an example from my life:

A taxi driver—one of our regulars—approaches the counter.

“Good Morning, Mr. J-----,” I say, “How are you today?”

“I am blessed, sweethawt, tank you. An’ I can tell dat you ladies are blessed as well from da smiles on yah beauttiful faces.”

And if he’s feeling generous, he will buy coffee for the ladies sitting up front. The ones who commune at R&J’s every morning before going to work in one of the jewelry stores downtown.

There’s an affectionate quality to the interactions that I don’t remember experiencing back home.

It’s funny that I’m writing this because when I first moved to the island, I was bothered and intimidated by how rude people can be. This is a complaint made by many who live here, transplants and island-cultivated alike. Sometimes clerks won’t make eye contact or even speak to you at places like Kmart or Pueblo. This doesn’t bother me as much as it used to because I’ve found that if you speak to people as if they’re real people and not just the roles they play (cashier, receptionist, etc.), they will often respond in kind. And if they don’t, you can’t take it personally because it’s just one of those things about living on St. Thomas. And the hospitality that can occur here is so genuine and generous that it makes up for any rudeness you may encounter.

Safari Bus Wisdom.

Tropical Tidbits: Vocabulary Words

Antiman: A homosexual.

As in, "Da ship wit all de antiman heh today."

Flit: Mosquito killer that is sprayed in the air rather than on one's skin.

As in, "You should flit your room tonight to keep those dengue-infected mosquitos out."
Unintended connection of note: According to urbandictionary.com, flit was a 1950's slang term for homosexuals."


And... a photo essay on a bit of St. Thomas life:

"Drinking Roadies"

Have I mentioned that road side dumpsters serve as our public waste removal system?

"Ditching Roadies"