James an dem…

In Shaetlan the expression "X an dem" means "X an those associated with X". Who exactly "an dem" refers to depends on the context, but it is rarely ambiguous. For example, if John is a member of a band, the question "Will John an dem be playing at the festival?" is unambiguous: it refers to John and the members in his band. This is a perfectly neutral and grammatically correct way of referring to groups of people.  Linguistically it is a grammatical feature called the "associative plural". It can come in different forms, but it is a very common feature: 85% of the world's languages have it. Standard English belongs to the minority of languages that lack the associative plural.

Artwork by Julie Dennison (@juliedennison).