I am Guyanese. I was born and raised in Guyana. For those of you who don’t know, Guyana is in South America and is a neighbour of Brazil, Venezuela, and Suriname. Guyana is home to the largest single drop waterfall in the world, Kaieteur Falls. The weather is tropical, the people are hospitable, and the food is amazing!
The main language in Guyana is Guyanese Creole (Creolese by its speakers, or simply Guyanese), it is an English-based creole language, but it’s broken English. This is and will always be my main language.
My accent is very understandable here in Canada but only the people close to me really do understand what I mean when I say certain words. This is not because my words aren’t being pronounced clearly, it is because I tend to use the same word for many different things. Friends and colleagues here love the way I speak and they think it’s unique, so unique that copy cats even tried to steal it as their own! LOL.
Here are some of my “uniqueness”:
I prefer to all alcohol as RUM, even though I don’t drink rum. If I am meeting friends for cocktails, I would send a text “hey, are we still on for rum tonight?”, and they would know what I mean.
All file folders and binders are called FOLDERS. Ha! yes, that’s how I see it! My boss has gotten used to this by now lol.
“Couple” does not mean two, so if I say “a couple of minutes”, you could end up waiting an hour.
Whether its a bathroom or washroom….it’s all bathrooms for me. I have asked people in office buildings to use their bathrooms!
When I say “take out food”….yea, I am not taking it anywhere, I am just making a plate :/
All pop, ice-tea, sodas….all are called “drinks”.
Underwear is panties…bras are bras. I walked into Victoria’s Secret and said “I need some seamless underwear and strapless bras”, yep, I got weird looks.
There are no sofas or love seats, just chairs! Me shopping for furniture is usually fun in stores.
Area rugs, carpet??? Huh?? They are all CARPETS! Yes, I have an area carpet in my living room…I don’t know, it’s a confusing world.
There is no “switching” on or off anything for me. It is “turn on” or “turn off”, like turn off the tv, turn on the lights.
I don’t “plug” or “unplug”, it is plug in or plug out. I need to plug out my phone charger.
Heat up food in the microwave?? No! We HOT UP food in the microwave!
So, that’s only a few that I can think of, I will add more as I remember. I am sure my fellow Guyanese have some of these same ways of talking. Tell me yours below!