A dancehall dictionary endorsed by the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) and Jamaica Lexicography Project is currently being researched for publication in four languages in an attempt to profit from the internationalisation of dancehall, says editor Joseph Farquharson. It will take five years to complete and include a team of four translators one editor and one research assistant. The problems of the existing dictionaries included out-dated "slanguage" and ambiguous or non-lexical definitions, said Farquharson, an advanced doctoral candidate in linguistics at the University of West Indies, Mona who holds a MPhil in European Literature (Spanish) from the University of Cambridge in the UK.
"If it was 'The girls are demanding my large penis' it really and truly would not have been in the spirit of dancehall and really one had to find the appropriate language that you are translating into," he explained to nodding intellectuals in agreement
The dictionary will not only have phonetic pronunciations but include sentences which utilise the defined word. For instance, "the gal dem a bawl fi mi anaconda" would be translated to "the girls are [crazy] about my big d*&^", he stated.
The dictionary is proposed to be published in English, Japanese, German and Spanish.
Wonder if Ragga get fi drop couple word inna di dictionary lmao
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