Someone in Canada recently found my Jamaican in China site by googling “advantages of being Jamaican.”
What’re you kiddin’ me???!! The advantages of being Jamaican? Did you really ask that???
Well then. Hmmmm. Okay. let me start by saying: According to experts, there are 1,013,913 words in the English language (and that doesn’t include the creative additions to said language that have been contributed by Jamaican patois itself.)
Now, as we all no doubt recall from our high school math class on “factorials”, the number of possible combinations (not to be confused with permutations) of those words into sentences ranges in numbers that are beyond comprehension! The formula requires first computing the factorial of 1,013,913. Just for reference, the factorial of 1,000,000 is already a number with 5.5 million digits. So, that goes light years beyond the known duodecillion, tredecillion, septillion, and even the Eddington-Dirac number. (Look it up!) But enough fun with math, let’s return to the question at hand.
Ahem. Consequently, that puts the possible combinations of phrases one could construct in the worthwhile–albeit futile– attempt to capture just how advantageous it is being Jamaican into the millions of millions of millions as well.
I suggest, therefore, in response to our Canadian Googler’s query, that even with that magnitudinous palette of words, the world’s greatest minds, on the most dedicated of teams, with the noblest of intentions, and the strongest of commitments, toiling ad infinitum, with no restrictions on funding or technological computing power, could NOT begin to scratch the surface of the molecules of dew on the tip of the iceberg of widely-known as well as discreetly-discussed advantages of what it means to us, and to the world to be Jamaican.
And that’s just my introduction to this vitally important topic…I’m organizing the team even as we speak.