Subject pronouns

1.  Subject pronouns

STANDARD ENGLISH PRONOUN SYSTEM

2.  Object pronouns

STANDARD ENGLISH PRONOUN SYSTEM

3.  Possessive pronouns

JAMAICAN CREOLE

PRONOUN SYSTEM

See how Standard British English has 18 different pronoun forms while Creole has only 6. Creole is much more "compact", more "efficient" in using the available forms to cover the range of meaning. But Creole has two forms for "you", one (/yu/) for singular and another (/unu/) for plural. Standard English is rather unusual in not having such a distinction, so in this respect Creole could be said to be more "universal". (10, 256)

Plurals

In Standard British English, nearly all nouns have specially marked plural forms, e.g. book-books, woman-women. Creole usually does not mark plural in this way, so that plural nouns often have exactly the same form as the singular, as in: t'ree policeman. Sometimes dem is added after a noun (especially one referring to people) to show plural, e.g. di gyal-dem, "the girls".

These grammatical differences between Creole and Standard have given rise in the past to the idea that Creole speakers have "wrong" or "sloppy" grammar. However, as you can see (especially from the pronoun example) Creole grammar is systematic and has its own logic. Most Creole words look like words of English but they are combined using grammar rules which belong to Creole alone. (38)