Caribbean Slang

There are many words from my home that are not used anywhere else, some are also used in other islands but none of them are used here. So there are many words I no longer used often unless I'm talking to family because most people here just wouldn't get it. Some are hard to explain the exact meaning in the same way that certain phrases in French or Spanish don't translate well into English. Some are derived from Patois or French or Creole or Hindi or Spanish or English. Many are combinations of these. They are generally understood by anyone from my native land.

I miss hearing my local dialect sometimes and it's great talking to family who still live at home because their accents haven't changed. Mine has changed and it alters slightly whenever I move to a different place . In college, neither my family nor my roomies' families (I had 3) could tell our voices apart. I'm a natural mimic and it happens unconsciously.

When I lived in MD it was different from when I lived in upstate NY to how it is now. It also changes depending on where my friends are from. When I go home for a couple weeks it almost comes back - at least from my American friends' perspective. Still most of my family and friends at home teased me about my 'yankee' accent. FYI, all American accents are referred to as Yankee accents even if not from NY.

For example there's something called a 'tabanca' and from that you have tabanca songs. A tabanca is something you get when you have a relationship with someone who then dumps you for someone else - that the gist of it anyway. So we'd say, I have a tabanca if we were in that situation. I was thinking about this because I have a list of tabanca songs (of course, another list ;) but I list those another time. Also there is a calypso called "I have a tabanca"- it's very funny.