Cultural Expressions

There are certain terms, inflections, idioms, colloquialism, slang, buzz words, expressions specific to islands or countries. At this moment I am thinking about the colloquial words that abound in our native island’s speech. Sometimes it maybe difficult to decode and these expressions are literally and hardly ever found in the dictionary. Yet we know our own particular slang patterns very well.

I remember one Christmas Enrique and I went to Montserrat and he ran to me and said that the girl sitting on the stools at the bar is from The Bahamas. I told him no way, I asked why did he think so. He said her accent, what she said. He also noticed the distinct design of her jewelry, which looked to him to be Bahamian bought, particularly the design of her wedding band. At that very minute my brother who came in on a flight with her told Enrique that the girl at the bar was a Bahamian. Yes, Enrique gave me the look; how dare I do not believe that he did not know his own people.

Okay,  so I called my Aunt late one night hoping she would be up, she said she just finished washing her dishes and “lock off de light”  and why am I calling her this ‘odd hour of  night’ I recalled for years I could not stop using the term when I was going to turn off the light.

The other day, my friend was saying to me she will never forget when she visited Cat Island and she asked a lady how may children she had.  She said “I been behind that door five times” which means she had five children. I have heard the term “coat suit” which is a sometime used Bahamian expression for a “three piece suit” several times and each time it brings the same chuckle as it did the first time. Often it is used as an outright joke when someone is dressed up as in “Why you so dress up in your coat suit?”

I hope that you can share a light moment with your friends or co-workers the slang terms, colloquialisms even idioms that you may find of interest. Enjoy your day or what is left of it my friends!

Your email: