Does anyone else have this kind of issue with their native language?

"wow, your English is really good for a Jamaican!"

"So what's your official language?".... "No, I mean what did you learn in school?"

This is a pet peeve of mine, especially among my Jamaican peers. We’ve been asked what our official language is ad nauseum. For those of you who originally thought our native language was Spanish, you were close! Jamaica was first colonised by the Spanish between 1494 and 1655, but came under British rule from 1655 until our independence in 1962.

We do have a creole known locally as patois (pronounced pat-wah), which is what our stereotypical accent has been molded from. Patois is mostly a spoken language and is English-based with derivatives of African and European languages, due to the variety of regions represented on the island at the time of its creation. Everyone born on this island in over 300 years is a native English speaker!

Does anyone else have this kind of issue with their native language?

I think it's an issue because potential students don't believe Jamaicans grew up speaking English.