Jamaican Maroon spirit-possession language

Jamaican Maroon spirit-possession language, Maroon Spirit language, or Jamaican Maroon Creole, is a ritual language and used to be the mother tongue of the Jamaican maroons in the past. It is an English-based creole with a strong Akan component. (It is distinct from usual Jamaican Creole, being similar to the creoles of Sierra Leone (Krio) and Suriname such as Sranan and Ndyuka language. Today Maroon Spirit language is used by Jamaican Maroons (largely Coromantees) while possessed by the spirits of ancestors during Coromantee (Kromanti) ceremonies or when addressing those who are possessed.

The term "Kromanti" is used by participants in such ceremonies in order to refer to the language spoken by ancestors in the distant past, prior to the creolization of Jamaican Maroon Creole. This term is used to refer to a language which is "clearly not a form of Jamaican Creole and displays very little English content" (Bilby 1983: 38). While Kromanti is not a functioning language, those possessed by ancestral spirits are attributed the ability to speak it. More remote ancestors are compared with more recent ancestors on a gradient, such that increasingly remote ancestors are attributed with increasing strength the ability to the use of the non-creolized Kromanti (as opposed to the Jamaican Maroon Creole used to address these ancestors).

The language was brought along by the Maroon population from Trelawny town to Nova Scotia in 1796 where they were sent in exile. They eventually traveled to Sierra Leone in 1800. Their creole language highly influenced the local creole language that evolved into present day Krio.

See also

• Spirit possession
• Krio
• West African Pidgin English

References

• Bilby, Kenneth (1983). "How the "Older Heads" Talk: A Jamaican Maroon Spirit Possession Language and Its Relationship to the Creoles of Suriname and Sierra Leone". New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 57 (1/2): 37–88.