Learn Jamaican Patois online

free interactive course2,000 real sentences works on your phoneVery easy for an English speaker, ~265 hrs

Jamaican Patois is spoken by about 4 million people. Jamaica plus the diaspora. English-lexified, so the boundary with Jamaican English is a continuum rather than a line.

On our measured language map, its closest relatives are English, Krio and Tok Pisin. If you speak one of those, much of the vocabulary will feel familiar from day one.

one sentence from the course
Jamaican PatoisDemjraivtu wok
EnglishTheydriveto work
split into its working pieces by the course itself, and paired with the English underneath. Tap a piece to light up what it pairs with. Every one of the 2,000 sentences works like this.
4 millionspeakers
2,000real sentences
1,693patterns discovered
~265hours from English
Try a Jamaican Patois lesson now, free, no signup or create a free account

Real Jamaican Patois sentences from the course

Jain wi.
Join us.
Git op!
Wake up!
Paadn mi.
Forgive me.
Mi api.
I am happy.
Mi kyan swim.
I can swim.

How the course works

Every lesson is built from 2,000 real Jamaican Patois sentences, aligned with their translations word by word and piece by piece, so you always see how the sentence actually works instead of memorizing flashcards. The grammar is discovered from the sentences themselves, 1,693 patterns so far, and a spaced-repetition quiz teaches it in the order that unlocks the most of the language first. Our measured estimate for reaching conversational level from English is about 265 hours of study. Read how it works.

Learn Jamaican Patois from your own language

Most apps only teach Jamaican Patois through English, if they teach it at all. These starting languages already have a built course, and any other published language can be paired on request:

EnglishDutchOld EnglishRomanianSpanish

Related languages you can also learn

KrioTok PisinAfrikaansDutchFrisianLimburgishKapampanganMauritian Creole

Speaker figures follow Ethnologue and national censuses, rounded. The difficulty estimate is calibrated against U.S. Foreign Service Institute data.