An analysis on Jamaican dialect used on Bob Marley songs

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the study is to analyze the Jamaican dialect used by Bob Marley as presented in his 14 songs. The problems investigated in this study are; what are the similarities and differences of Bob Marley’s pronunciation compared with Standard English? And what are the dominant differences on the pronunciation used from the Standard English pronunciation?

As the foundation of the analysis, some theories have a relationship with the problem formulated. The theories are about language, variety of language, Standard English, dialect, and organ of speech.

This analysis used descriptive qualitative approach. The data are taken from the Jamaican dialect pronunciation used by Bob Marley on his songs and compared with the Standard English. The main source of the data is text lyrics consist of album published in 1984. After finding the similarities and differences between Standard English and Jamaican dialect, the researcher found the dominant different on the pronunciation used from Standard English pronunciation.

Some findings can be taken from the analysis of the collected data. There are similarities and differences pronunciation between Standard English and Jamaican dialect used by Bob Marley. The similarities of Bob Marley pronunciation are; when he say first time /f з:st taim/ in standard English it is also /f з:st taim/, Made strong /meid strŋ/, Old pirates /əld paiərət/, Merchant ship /m з:t∫ənt ∫ip/. The dominant differences of Bob Marley pronunciation are; Bob Marley makes different pronunciation when he pronounces the long vowels, such as, /i:/ as /i/, /u:/ as /u/, / :/ as / /, and /a:/ as /Λ/. And he also produced difference vowels of pronunciations such as: /au/ as / /, /ou/ as /o/ or / /, /ei/ as /ə/, /æ/ as /ə/, /e/ as /i/ and /ai/ as /i/. he also produced difference consonant of pronunciation such as: /v/ as /f/, /θ/ as /t/ o /d/, /t∫/ as /s/ or /z/, and /z/ as /s/. Th at the beginning of a word is therefore substituted with a d. Th at the end of a word is simply reduced to t. sometime, H at the beginning of a word is missing sound, such as: hand as and, hypocrite as ypocrite.

Beside the differences of pronunciation, there are some original Jamaican languages used by Bob Marley on his songs, such as: Jah as God, ya as you, she as said, ere as honey (baby/dear), Rasta as name of Jamaican religion, and a-yin as among.

Finally, further researcher is suggested to find some other information about Jamaican dialect and other element of sociolinguistic such as social dialect, regional dialect variation or structure and speech level which are not mentioned in this study yet.