The Editor, Sir:

I read with dismay Janice Lindsay's letter to the Editor of Thursday, June 19, purporting that a Patois Bible would help to promote heritage tourism. What does promoting heritage tourism have to do with spending the country's limited resources on translating the Good Book into patois? Absolutely nothing. It's a useless, unnecessary waste of money. A Jamaican patois Bible will not suddenly propel Jamaica on to the world stage as a destination of choice or make anyone feel any greater affinity to the island. Its use and worth would be, at best, insular and limited to a small percentage of people interested in such farce.

Nonsense

Patois is not being short-changed. That is nonsense. Similar to any colloquial language, Jamaican patios is a vibrant, oral form of expression that can be used to communicate ideas and concepts with great benefit in the appropriate setting including the classroom. All of us learn patois informally through oral exchange and can barely read it once it is written down.

Surely, there are many other ways of promoting Jamaica's culture and packaging our unique heritage in novel ways to make our island attractive to potential visitors. I am so tired of the hypocrisy of these "intellectual soldiers", militantly advocating for patios to be elevated to the national language while writing and voicing their protest in perfect Queen's English, crying foul and labelling their opponents as elitist.

Let's get real and stop fooling ourselves. This is the 21st century and we are living in an increasingly borderless global village. The true elitism lies in the hypocrisy of those who know fully well that we must achieve competency in Standard English to compete effectively in a knowledge-based global economy.

I am, etc,

MICHELLE A. BECKFORD

michellebeckford@hotmail.com