“Ethiopia Speaks Jamaican Creole: Voices From Shashamane” is the title of the public lecture being hosted by the Jamaica Language Unit in the  Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy, UWI, Mona. Dr. Renato Tomei, Research Fellow in English Studies at the University for Foreigners in Perugia, Italy will deliver the Lecture. The Lecture which was postponed due to the limited state of public emergency declared by the Government of Jamaica is now scheduled for Friday, June 4, 2010 at 4 pm at the Neville Hall Lecture Theatre, UWI, Mona.

The Lecture will explore interesting cultural and linguistic features in the communities in the Shashamane Valley where Jamaican Rastafari, along with other people of African descent from the Americas left their home country over decades to reside in Shashamane. In so doing these people were returning to the land of their forefathers, rejoining a history and a culture that they had lost as a result of the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. However, decades after members of the communities in the Shashamane Valley, whether of Jamaican descent or otherwise, are using Jamaican Creole, particularly the Rastafari version, as a language of everyday communication.  This variety of Jamaican Creole has become another language of Ethiopia, alongside the dozens of other Ethiopian languages such as Tigrinya, Oromo and Amharic.  Hence, a return to the source by Jamaican Rastafari has transformed that source into the image of likeness of the land, Jamaica, from which they had come.  

The university community and the public are invited.