‘The Harder They Come’, a popular Jamaican film, was referred to as “the first English-language film shown in the US with subtitles” due to thick Patois used in it. So there’s indeed pervasive confusion, but in the end Patois often just can’t be understood by English-speakers.
Fun fact: Patois developed starting in the seventeenth century, and mixes languages of West and Central Africa, used by the slaves, with British and Irish English and Scots, used by the slaveholders. Where Scots is itself a sister language of English, descended from Early Middle English.
‘The Harder They Come’, a popular Jamaican film, was referred to as “the first English-language film shown in the US with subtitles” due to thick Patois used in it. So there’s indeed pervasive confusion, but in the end Patois often just can’t be understood by English-speakers.
Fun fact: Patois developed starting in the seventeenth century, and mixes languages of West and Central Africa, used by the slaves, with British and Irish English and Scots, used by the slaveholders. Where Scots is itself a sister language of English, descended from Early Middle English.