Palawala

Noun

Palawala (countable and uncountable, plural Palawala)

1. (Caribbean, derogatory, uncountable) a local creole language, such as Antillean Creole or Jamaican Creole
   • Prior to her school days, my mother spoke French Patois [Antillean Creole] better than she spoke English. Her knowledge of Patois declined once she was at school as the nuns forbade the children from speaking their "Pala Wala" language in the school yard because they did not understand what the...1999, Caribbean-Canadians Celebrate Carnival: Costumes and Inter-generational Relationships
   • Patois is making (St. Lucians) backwards; it is nothing but palawala and it is merely a ploy to keep us back.2013 (quoting from 1990), Crossing Cultural Boundaries: Explorations in Multilingual Teaching and Learning
2. (Caribbean, countable) a member of a community speaking such a language
   • So many West Indians from the smaller Caribbean islands arrived... that to this day at Wismar, there is a residential area called the “Pala-Wala” section. "Pala-Wala" is the name locals call migrants from certain West Indies islands.2011, Barbara P. Josiah, Migration, Mining, and the African Diaspora: Guyana in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Springer