I was out for morning coffee and walk with two close friends, partners and one was carrying a baby. (All adults early 30s)

Having a light hearted conversation where the father said that he’s trying to keep the little one away from Peppa pig cause she’s bratty and annoying but it’s only a matter of time.

I said : “ At least Peppa speaks in coherent English and develops language skills.

When we were growing up we had to listen to the Teletubbies who basically spoke in some kind of broken patois”

My friends chuckled; their partners glared at me. Then I retrospectively realised the implication I made and got a bit embarrassed.

Verdict?

37 comments

  5. No. But rather that patois, something like gobbledegook would have been better. Patois is a legit linguistical thing. Telletubbies were full of shit.

    That being said, no one should be getting offended by it.

  6. Faux-pas? Maybe, only because patois has racial connotations, but I think anyone who would use that to jump to the conclusion that you’re a full blown racist is jumping the gun a bit.

  7. I would have winced. Firstly, any kind of patois is not a lesser language and it’s condescending and just plain wrong to think otherwise. Secondly, Teletubbies was very carefully developed with experts in child development and what you ignorantly called ‘broken patois’ was in fact teaching very young children the rudiments of language and speech rhythms and so on.

  8. Probably not the most appropriate word to use, but I wouldn’t be offended by you misusing the word in this way.

    Do your friends partners speak patois or have a personal opinion of it ?

  9. The word “patois” doesn’t have to have a racial connotation in English, but I can see why it does for many people.

    So really, you didn’t make any faux para from a purely linguistic point of view, but maybe it’s better to avoid the word as most people would understand it.

  10. I think it is a bit of a faux pas but not actually racist or offensive.

    Most people will associate patois which Jamaica, we had a great deal of Jamaicans come over and “broken English” was used to describe their language. There was a misconception that Jamaican patois was not a legitimate language, but just stupid people refusing to speak proper English.

    Technically though the teletubbies do have their own form of linguistic communication which they understand to each other, so their language would be a patois. But there’s nothing broken about it, and I think that using the term broken patois is fairly outdated and disrespectful.

  12. I love words so personally I’d have taken it on the face value of you meaning mumbo jumbo gobbledegook type speech.

    I guess it’s not a word used commonly enough for everyone to think that so they jump to “what some Jamaicans speak”. It’s not used enough to make up social rules about it.

    I don’t think it’s a racial faux pas.

  13. No and I’m not sure how anyone would be offended by this, it’s obvious what you meant.

  14. I mean patois, really? You couldn’t think of a better word? Or were we being overly pretentious to hammer home the point?

    There is nothing racial in any of this, but if someone is from a lower income family you’d likely annoy them, though honestly they’d likely not know what the word meant so you also might have just confused people by using language that’s really not overly common.

    Jibberish would have been better or babble, actually patois is likely the last word I’d use.

  17. As someone who grew up on Teletubbies and is also half-Jamaican I wouldn’t be offended but deffo would give you a side eye.

  18. Teletubbies developed language skills – babbling is an important part of acquiring a language.

    I don’t know if you’re racist, but you do sound a bit dopey.

  19. >Teletubbies who basically spoke in some kind of broken patois”

    Babies who hear any form of spoken language – including Teletubby gibberish – will develop their language skills. Peppa Pig is the next stage, or couple of stages, beyond Teletubbies.

  20. Patois means a regional dialect, and the whole notion that they are a ‘broken’ form of language is a pervasive idea rooted in snobbery and a bad understanding of linguistics. There’s a racial edge too as Patois can also specifically mean Jamaican creole language.

    So I think it probably does have insulting implications, racial or not, but I wouldn’t judge you for it because it’s one of those subtly ingrained things that we as a society don’t really discuss or interrogate much. Plus ‘patois’ is quite an obscure word so I’d give you the benefit of not knowing the meaning exactly.

    There’s also that ambiguity to English where eg. ‘an ugly Englishman’ can either imply being ugly is a trait of Englishmen, or this specific Englishman in discussion is ugly. It’s less insulting if you take it to mean they’re trying to speak in a patois, but they happen to speak it badly – but I don’t think that’s the most intuitive interpretation.

  21. A little bit. I know others disagree but I think it is a tiny questionable bit of behaviour. As others have pointed out, patois is an actual thing that’s quite complex and nuanced. You just hearing weird sounds and going “language that the blacks spoke” is a bit weird (in exaggerating but you get my point about that being your go to). Could have said it sounds like aliens, or animals, or something that isn’t a real language, but you did and went straight to that of all languages? Especially in the context of taking abiut “coherent English” and “language skills”. I’m sure people who speak Jamaican patois are quite coherent, and I’m sure they also have language skills too. So it goes back to this hierarchy and superiority of languages and a belief that some are inferior and less developed.

    I don’t think its full on racist or anything, but it is a weird thing to go to. I think the mild embarrassment is appropriate, but otherwise nothing to get bent out of shape for. Well done for spotting it and wondering about it. That’s the best outcome.

  22. Bloke at work called someone coloured the other day.

    If this is the worst you’ve said I’d not be losing sleep over it

  24. I think the issue is less about race (patois is a linguistic term, not racial) and more that patois is not a synonym for nonsense. If you speak patois, it makes perfect sense. So your “joke” just didn’t make sense.

  26. Wait til they discover In the Night Garden.

    It’ll make the Teletubbies sound positively coherent.

  27. It’s their choice to be offended by language that wasn’t intentionally derogatory.

  28. Yeah you did, patois is w local dialect language and not inferior to other language in some ways much more rich culturally. Also massive underestimate of the telly tubbies, the language they used was specially designed to appeal to babies and toddlers. It was annoying as hell for anyone else, similar stuff is used in in the night garden which is wierd as hell but toddler baby crack.

  29. For the record…

    Patois has two meanings.
    1. an informal or improper version of a language
    2. the dialect of English spoken in Jamaica, which IS a ‘proper’ language because it follows its own consistent grammar & rules

    Whichever one you meant, it was likely interpreted as the second so was indeed a rude thing to say.

    Btw the same applies to Creole – it is a linguistic category AND a specific dialect/language spoken in Haiti

  30. This person: Peppa Pig is a brat lmao

    You: The Teletubbies are incoherent because they speak with Caribbean accents

    Why is patois the word you used? There are so many words to describe what you mean and patois isn’t one of them, and it’s a recognised linguistic term.

  31. The suggestion that patois is invalid and inferior to the “coherent English” that Peppa Pig speaks? Seems like a microaggression to me. Any given patois is perfectly coherent to its speakers.

    It wouldn’t make sense to call Finnish incoherent just because you don’t speak it yourself, for example. But Finnish is associated with predominantly White Europeans and in the UK, patois is most commonly associated with Black Caribbeans.

    Kind of like how white people who move to another country get to be “ex pats” and brown people get to be “immigrants”

  32. I’m extremely sceptical of anyone who would get actually offended by this. It feels more like they think they SHOULD be offended by it so are acting accordingly.

  36. I think inferring any language is inferior to another is an odd/ problematic thing. No wonder people glared. Do better in the future and apologies if they’re hurt by it

  37. If Patois offended someone, then they are either <20 years of age and seriously white knighting and brigading every perceived slight on the behalf of marginalised communities, or just a fucking idiot with no real world experience.

    Either way, not something to concern yourself with.
    Life will smack them in the genitals before long..

    &#x200B;

    EDIT: I genuinely worry for the education levels in this country… not that so many people are not familiar with the word – that is fine..
    But more that so many are willing to climb on a pedestal to bemoan it’s use without any real understanding or frame of reference.

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