Good info and a mistake a lot of people would make! You are uniquely qualified to share with the rest of us ways to keep us "ugly" mainlanders! Keep it coming.

Are you sure? Everyone I know from STT says "mon"...or "me son". Maybe it sounds like Man to locals, but to us statesiders it sounds like "mon".

Ditto, it's man.

RL

Here's one of our favorite calls:

"Yo de man!"

We would say:

"Da man ain' gah no sense." (That man has no sense)

Blu...we really do not say "mon." Maybe some of our folks might say it to indulge the tourists, but in our regular everyday speech amongst ourselves, we say "man." I would say the same for Jamaica. I think toursits are the ones who started saying it trying to endear themselves to the locals and locals, trying to gain a sale, just repeat it back to the tourists.

When visiting downtown or anywhere on land besides a beach, pool or hiking trail resists the urge to remove your shirt and go bareback (for men) or to stroll around in swimwear (for the ladies)... particularly downtown. Many residents find it offensive and disrespectful.

--Islander

Very true Islander!, On my first visit to the BVIs many years ago I was on a powerboat from CB. It was very natural for me to take my shirt off on the way over to Tortola, When I stopped in for the obligatory visit to customs, the young lady there would not serve me without a shirt. I kept my mouth shut but was clearly steamed! An older man who was sleeping on a bench when we arrived watched as I went and put my shirt on and called me aside and "reminded" me of this. This is good stuff folks keep it coming!

What if I wear my halter type bathing suit top with a long skirt covering the bottom of my bathing suit. is this acceptable?

I hate to argue but I STILL contend that MON is said. Maybe its because of Jamacia or whatever but it is said. Don't tell me it isn't. The cab/taxi rivers play that stuff up all the time. People might say it in jest. Whatever but it IS SAID, yes, in the USVI. I come from the midwest where we are known for speaking clearly. We dont say, one-two-tree either. THE "th" sound is very lazy here as well as a few other pronunciations. The english language takes a beating here and you folks can't deny it. Now, I dont CARE but since you are saying its man and SOMETIMES its not, I have to speak fro my experiences. Lots of people in the public have their "public" act where they play up to the way people here are preceived then when they arent in public, they talk normal. So whatever. I think the point is not worth it, Orion.

Swimsuit issue: A little double standard. Now, if its a hottie in suit, us men surely won't mind. Now, if its a guy or an oler woman, there will be a swarm of people to come over an tell him how inappropriate it is to wear a swimsuit. Who says chivarly is dead? HA-HA.

Chris I'm not sure you said anything different than what I've stated. When natives talk to one another, we do NOT say "mon." I was born there and know this. In fact, it's one of the the little inside jokes we make about tourists and have been making for years. What I admitted and you echoed is that we PLAY it up for the tourists as we (or some of us) are aware they are doing nothing more than attempting to endear themselves to us and thus we do the same to them. "Yeh mon." You might hear it in the taxis and at vendors or see it on t-shirts, but ask any everyday native in St.Thomas if we REALLY talk like that to one another and you will hear, "no."

Now I started this thread in JEST for a little ribbing so I would not want anyone to take it THAT serious as to become offended. Should have disclaimed it at the very beginning.

As for the bathing suits on women (drool), we fellows do not mind. It's our women who might be offended because of the [hypocritical] conservative society we have down there, but for us guys, it is pure eye candy considering the fact that whatever the hell they are feeding the new brand of white females nowadays, it's working wonders. LOL!!! So curious, wear the halter top if you wish. 😀

Bare midriffs are a no-no on the streets and in resturants if you are no longer a toddler. You will see teens and young women dressed in bar midriffs but not the locals.

My perception on the man/mon issue is that the word I most often hear is somewhere in between. To someone who comes from, say, Rochester (NY), where the "a" in "man" is fairly flat and nasal, a softer pronunciation of that same word could be perceived as "mon". I don't hear "mon" at all, even as a tourist, but the accent (and wishful thinking?) could cause some to think that's what they heard. Agree with Chris Cody that the "h" in "th" is largely silent, whether (wedder?) at the beginning, middle or end of a word. Took me a while to figure out "thief/teef", especially since it's also used as a verb.

Curious - The rule of thumb I use regarding appropriate attire is the same that I use here in my (definitely!) non-resort community. If you wouldn't wear it to go shopping at home, it's probably not appropriate street wear in the islands. BUT, pull on a lightweight shirt and you're good to go! My absolute favorite inappropriate "costume" was the woman from a cruise ship who wore a big, long, fluffy ship's issue terry cloth bathrobe and flip-flops into town to shop. It was a scorcher of a day - I hope she roasted.

Just my 2 cents on the "Mon" thing. I have a picture taken 5 years ago of the end of the road on the east end of STJ. I am looking at that picture at this moment. Clearly written on large white letters on the road it says "Stay Lef' Mon". It covers the entire lane comming back west. When there in April we looked to see if it is still there and it is although it is very faded.

So if Virgin Islanders don't say Mon then who wrote that?

LOL!!!

I think you guys are still missing the point. We say or write it because that is WHAT the tourists say and we indulge them.

This example might not fit precisely, but have you ever watched a commercial or show where a visitor to some particular place starts joking around with a native in what HE or SHE thinks the native says or how the native might act and the native is just looking at them? It's kind of the same thing. Like rolling up on a Mexican in Mexico and instantly busting into some horrible spanish when all along the Mexican can speak perfect english. LOL!!! It's kind of like that. While the tourists is there cracking themselves up with 'yeh mon,' we're thinking, "what kind of English is that?" LOL!!!

Joanna, yes, we will mangle some English when we're ready. WE don't have ANY use for the "th." That's one letter too much. 😀

Hi Orion - I would never think (tink?) that the language is mangled. It's a charming dialect that requires a careful ear and sometimes a little help to understand. I love trying to figure out the grammatical structure and idiosyncrasies.

A particularly fond memory of mine is riding in a truck with two West Indian friends. I'm pretty good at accents and sentence structure (I work with a number of international students) but I was completely lost when these two men began speaking to each other in Creole English. I swear to you, I could not understand a single word, even though I knew they were speaking English. Normally I could understand them very well, but I learned then and there that they attempted to adopt American accents for us.

Some of my favorite pronunciations by West Indian friends:
Belize - sounds like Billy's
Gazebo - I swear to god, I though he said "scuzzy boat"
Inventory - accent on the second syllable

And you make a good point about the silent "h"!

Could the difference here be differences in generatations? In April we visited with the Januarys at their house and it was very hard to understand most of what Mr January said. I don't know about the man/mon thing but he had a very thick accent so obviously there were alot of differences in the way he pronounced things.

Joanne you made me laugh. Yes you can say it, we mangle the Emglish language to varying degrees IF the Queen's english is considered the standard. I used to live in New York and can speak like someone from the middle of Brooklyn and they have their way with the English language too, but those Bostonians are worse. LOL!!!

"Scuzzy Boat." LOL!!!

Case in point. The word is forehead, but after we were finished with it, be it in Jamaica or Trinidad and points in between, we say "farrid." Say 'forehead" really fast and you will see you get "farrid."

And you do know we are an animated bunch and when we get upset and start cursing, watch out. You might not understand a word we're saying, but you will feel it. West Indians are the only people I know can curse you and make you cry and we have a thing about telling people about their mother's nether regions.

I read a post somewhere a few months back where the poster staying on STT, with wife and mother in law, who returned from shopping in CA indignant in rage. When he asked his mother in law, what the matter was she replied that STT has the rudest taxi drivers she had ever seen. When he asked her to explain, she said "every time I turned around one of them was calling me a bag of sh*t!!" Of course the reality was they were asking her if she wanted to go "back to the ship!" Too funny!

Funny one Wes.

I remember a time here in Florida two roommates got into an argument in the street. One was from Haiti and the other was from St.Lucia, two island nations that speak a similar dialect known as French creole. Well a mostly Haitian crowd gathered around and heard the St.Lucian fellow yell a threat in creole to the Haitian guy which to him was supposed to be something to the effect of "I'm going to kill your ass." What the Haitians heard was "I wanna blank you up the ass!" The crowd and his adversary burst into laughter. LOL!!!

And so I was in Jamaica one year at a pastor's house having lunch with his family. Now in Jamaica many of you might know that their highest level of profanity is "bloodcl**t." Well for those Jamaicans who don't want to be as raw, they came up with a variance of that word and say "bombacl**t," but it essentially carries the same rawness and effect.

Well the pastor got me excited when he pulled out a VHS copy of a trip he took to Tortola, British Virgin Islands for a pastor's conference. It was a promotional video for the Virgin Islands so naturally I recognized lots of places. Well they showed one of the ferries that travels between St.Thomas and St.John that all of us natives and many vistors know. In excitement I yelled out, "hey look de Bomba Charger!" (the name of the ferry) There was a hushed silence in the house as everyone looked at me with raised eyebrows. It did not register right away what I had done, but after about a minute or so the light went off. I had some 'spalinin to do and I had to tell them that the word "bomba" is actually an African word meaning "head" and it used to refer to the head slave back in the days of slavery. The [true] explanation floated, but I'm not so sure that he, his wife or kids found enough justification in that to revolutionize Jamaican vernacular. LOL!!!