Peter Espeut | Bad English and bad Creole

I am in no doubt that Jamaica’s home tongue is a separate language from English, the home tongue of our former imperial masters. For me, in many ways the Jamaican language is more expressive and versatile than English; some concepts and ideas are better communicated in the unique and elegant vocabulary and syntax of our Jamaican Creole. I love my language!

Claude McKay was the first person to publish in Jamaican Creole – Songs of Jamaica in 1912. Our dear Miss Lou (the Most Hon Louise Bennett-Coverley) and others have created a body of literature worthy of us, which we need to celebrate and encourage; Jamaican theatre and music has cemented our Jamaican idiom in the performance arts, and proves that Jamaican Creole has strong monetary value.

Jamaican Creole is best listened to rather than being written down and read. Miss Lou did a good job of penning her poems, but this is not good enough for our linguistic purists at The University of the West Indies (UWI), who have applied their esoteric notation to our idiom and have come up with an academically sound (pun intended) phonetic notation which standard English readers and speakers find difficult and inelegant. These language gurus would never suggest that written Spanish or French or English itself should be reduced to its standard phonetic notation for common use. Why are these frustrated academics insisting that we adopt their ratified standard notation for our oral Jamaican mother tongue so that it can transition into a written language?

LACK APPRECIATION

Further, they lack an appreciation of the beauty of the form of the transliterated Creole words a la Louise which match the equivalent English notation and sounds.

If we wish our idiom to be accepted internationally as a valid language, we cannot treat every departure by Jamaicans from standard English as authentic examples of Jamaican Creole. The truth is that some of us are genuinely bilingual, while others of us are proficient in one, and dabble in the other, such that what comes out is either bad English or bad Creole.

You can hear both on local radio stations every day – news readers and commentators who think they are speaking standard English but who actually massacre the language; they may think a genuine English word or phrase sounds too “braaad” or is wrong, so they change it, bastardising the language in the process. So you get “bringing the curtains down”, and bringing something or the other “to your doorsteps”, and “lives and livelihood”, to give three current examples. This is another language again – a sort of Janglish!

You can hear Janglish in Parliament, and when members of the public and senior government officials are interviewed and make a valiant effort to “speak properly”.

In our rush to get people to accept Jamaican Creole as a genuine language, some are prepared to avoid calling out bad English.

So often standard English speakers who attempt Jamaican Creole make a mess of it, often with comic and even tragic results. I once heard a well-meaning clergyman say to his congregation, that during the coming week “I will pray God fe yuh!” What a faux pas!

Almost as hilarious was the Jamaican in Mexico transliterating, searching for Spanish to express his emotions, saying “Yo soy embarazado!” (Which actually translates as “I am pregnant”).

In our haste to show our acceptance of Jamaican Creole as a genuine language, some may be guilty of using bad Creole!

FAILED TO TEACH STANDARD ENGLISH

We have to admit that Jamaica’s education system has failed to teach standard English to most of our students. I do not wish Jamaican Creole to be eradicated; that would be a tragic loss! What I hope for is that our students are able to speak and write standard English when they wish to, and the same for Jamaican Creole. The problem is profound, as many of our teachers are in the Janglish mould!

The advantage of knowing English is that it is treated as the language of international commerce, largely because it is the official language of three of the G7 countries. Because England – and later as Great Britain – was successful at empire-building, English is becoming (some would say “has become”) the language of international diplomacy (which used to be French) and of scientific discourse (when beginning to study chemistry at UWI in the 1970s, I was advised to learn German).

I learnt Spanish and Latin in high school, and Greek at university. Learning foreign languages – with their different tenses, moods and voices – has helped me to be a better practitioner of English. I can easily see how teaching English as a foreign language to speakers of Jamaican Creole – and those who think in Creole – would produce better outcomes than assuming that everyone – teachers and students – think in English.

Ultimately, facility in English comes from reading the language. I won the English prize at my high school graduation – not because I was taught well (which I was) at both prep and high school – but because I love reading, and would habitually read three books each week. And I absorbed a lot more than language arts from the books I pored over.

Knowing the mechanics of a language is one thing, but being able to express oneself with precision has more to do with familiarity with handling ideas. Exploring philosophy – especially logic – promotes clear thinking, and even improves performance in mathematics, which ultimately is a form of logic! I have long been a supporter of inserting philosophy into the school curriculum.

We are where we are because of our curriculum and our teaching approach. We must respect our powerful culture by teaching English as a foreign language; and we must promote conceptual development and clarity of thought and expression by exposing our students to the wisdom gained by humanity over millennia.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and human development scientist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com