I am excited to find out about the Jamaican Lexicography Project (Jamlex), which hopes to produce a Jamaican National Dictionary to succeed and improve upon the Dictionary of Jamaican English compiled by Frederic G. Cassidy and Robert B. Le Page and the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage by Richard Allsopp.
The project is run by Joseph Farquharson who, according to his personal web site, is a doctoral fellow in the Department of Linguistics of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Joseph has released the first Jamlex appeals list, about insects:
In bold and italic font you will find the word written using an English-type system. This is followed by the same word written out in the special writing system developed by Frederic Cassidy around the middle of the last century, and recently revised by the Jamaican Language Unit, at the University of the West Indies, Mona.
appeckeh (apeke)
boobo (bubu)
bugaboo (bagabu)
iniquity (inikwiti)
gingy fly (ginggi flai, jinji flai)
jiji-waina
kitty-boo (kitibu)
moonie (muuni)
news bug (nyuuz bog)
pity-me-likkle (piti-mi-likl)
rain fly (rien-flai)
titty biter (titi-baita)
tumble bruise (tombl bruuz)
tumble turd (tombl tod)
