Jamaica: Expect developments in language debate

[Harold Schiffman]

Expect developments in language debate
 Thursday | August 21, 2008

Louis Marriott, Contributor

The mother tongue of a society is clearly one of the aspects of its
heritage that defines its nationality. Yet, nearly half a century
after the formal declaration of Jamaican nationhood, some powerful
Jamaicans continue to wage a relentless campaign to suppress our
native language.

In 1970, I was commissioned by the English by the radio department of
the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to write a drama series
aimed at improving communication between Creole-speaking Jamaican
immigrants in Britain and the host populations with whom they
interacted from day to day. The BBC engaged, as linguistic advisor for
the series, a brilliant young man who had just completed a PhD
programme at Cambridge University on 'Jamaican pronunciation in
London'. He had done his field work among Jamaicans in London, as well
as spending a couple of months with tape recorder and notebook in a St
Andrew slum and in a poor village in Westmoreland.

A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE

I was intrigued by the fact that the BBC, generally regarded as the
greatest authority on the English language, was very clear in its
policy that Jamaican Creole, though largely derived from English, had
evolved as a different language, was not bad English or broken
English, and should be accorded full respect as a separate language.
This contrasted starkly with the attitude of that organisation's
counterparts in Jamaica

The linguistic advisor, now one of the world's most accomplished
language experts, introduced me to Beryl Loftman Bailey's Jamaican
Creole Syntax. After reading that seminal work on Jamaican grammar and
considering the Concise Oxford Dictionary's definition of a language
as "the method of human communication, either spoken or written,
consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way",
I wondered how anyone could argue that English was a language and
'Jamaican' not.

On my first visit to Curaçao, in 1969, I marvelled at the standard of
English spoken by my hotel chambermaids until they explained that in
primary school, they compulsorily learnt four languages - their native
Papiamento as the first language, the colonial Dutch as the second,
and then the dominant languages of the Caribbean, Spanish and English.
Serving a population of slightly more than 100,000 were two daily
newspapers written in Papiamento. I subsequently learnt that in some
places, it is normal for four-year-olds to speak four languages.

A FALSE PREMISE

That brings us home to the great 'patois'/'patwa' debate in Jamaica.
The anti-patois posse apparently believe that our children cannot cope
with more than one language. Their public argument is based on a false
premise; that the protagonists of Jamaican language education aim to
displace standard English with Jamaican, when what is really proposed
is bilingual education.

While institutions like Birmingham College in Warwickshire, England,
and York University in Toronto, Canada, are offering courses in the
Jamaican language, we wallow in self-denial, calling our systematic
language 'patwa' or 'patois', French for 'rough speech', and traducing
our linguists by calling them hypocrites who, while benefiting from
their superior education, are intent on denying poor benighted
Jamaican children of the opportunity to expand their horizons by
becoming competent in the use of English.

One day, we shall all wake up to find one of two developments that at
least some of us will find unpalatable. First, some smart overseas
institutions will capitalise on the worldwide popularity and lure of
Brand Jamaica by offering more and more courses in the Jamaican
language.

Second, one or other of our two major political parties will realise
that recent findings of a survey by the language unit of the
University of the West Indies (UWI) are real; that contrary to the
impression created by those with disproportionate access to the mass
media, the vast majority of the Jamaican people recognise their
language as valid and want it to be offered in schools. When that
happens and the party puts the promotion of the language in its next
election manifesto, watch out for flying sparks.

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080821/cleisure/cleisure3.html

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