PATOIS

Patois

Patois is any language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. It can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, and other forms of native or local speech, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of Cant. Class distinctions are embedded in the term, drawn between those who speak patois and those who speak the standard or dominant language used in literature and public speaking, i.e., the "acrolect".

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patois

Noun

  1. A regional dialect of a language (especially French); usually considered substandard.
  2. Any of various French or Occitan dialects spoken in France.
  3. Creole French in the Caribbean (especially in Dominica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago& Haiti).
  4. A Jamaican Creole language primarily based on English and African languages but also has influences from Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi.
  5. Jargon or cant.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: patois
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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