The language of the people and our arts

THERE is a constant argument that creole must be standardised. Creole is from my perspective a functional dialect, for the language we spar with daily is, by all means, a combination of the colonial interactions that the Anglo Saxons have encountered over the past 1,000 years as colonisers and from the Romans who had colonised and the Norsemen who had partially colonised them.

In Guyana, from experience, there are several layers of spoken Creole, with terms annexed through importation by our travelling grassroots population. It is, however, true that our creole should be documented and origins affixed to words and terms, as Creole is also a combination of proverbs, nuances and sayings that refer to deeper ethnic cultural meanings long lost in its original context. For example, the term “Yuh eyes pass meh”, takes the user back to African tribal conduct that when standing before an Elder one does not stare eye to eye, with our usual dismissive countenance of eyes rose occasionally to the sky while in conversation, indicating dismissal. “Eye pass” today in Guyanese Creole has broad and wider definitions. In the 70s, standing at a corner could result in an arrest for some charge that constituted a 24-hour detainment. Language, as follows, was applied, “Alyuh move, de Boche deh round de corner” to urban GT youth, boche meant police, its French and was used in WWI to describe the Germans, but it became part of the vocabulary for a period, and is still recognised.

My concern over creole came into serious focus when Legend of the Silk Cotton Tree was staged in 2008. Early in the script, Elsa the main female character was awakened from a haunting doze by the Silk Cotton Tree by three village girls. One said, “Gyal yuh ent know about this silk cotten-on tree and yuh belly big,” the actresses were both from traditional rural villages, Afro and Indo-Guyanese but neither at some point could deliver the Creole way, how their ancestors would have handled it 30 years before. Our Creole is the language of the Arts, if we are to capture the Guyanese experience for entertainment, edutainment and educational purposes, in 20 years we will be in trouble. My contention is that this must also be combined with an effort to get our population reading, seriously reading, including our politicians.

A visiting friend of an older offspring when I raised this issue about reading offered a callous response, “Paps why worry? Is less competition fuh me.” I responded that those semi-literates will join political parties and enter Parliament and make stupid decisions for both of us, which stunned him. I related to him that the late lawyer Vic Puran had made a similar reference to me outside of the Brickdam police station while I was in a protest in the mid-90s and an inspector (name given as Boyce) pointed his hand weapon at a female protester and pulled the trigger, the gun jammed, her life was saved. I was confused as to why he would do such a thing. Vic offered an answer, that the police officer felt that the kind of people who then constituted the Government, that if he demonstrated that he was ready to kill PNC black people he would advance his career.

Vic’s reference was that if the unenlightened gravitate to politics while the learned to careers, the society is turned upside down. The relevance is that there is an essential need for a wider range of enlightened intellect (which does not necessarily mean certification) for a society to be advanced. I concluded the conversation by tying the young man into his own passion to write and produce music. “If you can’t read and understand contracts, research the industry you need to get into, have a working idea of the pros and cons, then you will be most likely just another fallen statistic because you also need people around you who can’t be easily duped.”

Creole is a spoken language, our official language is our colonised English with a Guyanese accent, while our official language for legal, education and business is standard English. We cannot write proposals, theses, compositions, complete assignments or write letters to the editor in Creole, though we can use Creole as emphasis in the context of our narrative. Every nation uses its version of Creole, whether it is called Pidgin, Patois, Patwa or Ebonics, it amounts to the language of peoples from specific homogeneous locations now residing and belonging in mind and spirit in a multicultural, multiethnic national location speaking a common language and its dialect that has been reshaped by multiple extracts from the human variations present and of languages spoken before in the historical timeline, that without exemption belong to all of us in its application to our easy and effective communication.

The movie ‘My Fair Lady’, a classic, encompassed the battle between considered proper speech and street language. The late Sir V.S Naipaul of Trinidad was accused of being so much of a talented, self-loathing colonial that he imitated an Oxford accent to distance himself from himself, in his imagination at least – which is ironic as, with his creative writing, he used creole in the dialogue gratuitously.

Language is important, dialect defines a cultural being. I do stop when I hear ‘Ceolese’ spoken now and again, and we are losing that part of our being. I grew with my godparents in the country but was not an evolved third generation villager. They were from Georgetown as well as other villagers, but around us was a creole dialect. The colonised English of Georgetown has now reached across Guyana. Creole is not dead, but like most things, if we here do nothing, it will die. I heard an ad from a large service entity lately and a young lady was saying something intended to sound like Creolese, the script went like this: “You gots to be kidding me” rather than “yuh gaffo be mekking joke or wuh?”
We’re not even sounding like ourselves any more. Creole is expressive, emotional; it commands rhythm, movement and coordination; it’s not static, not something to lose. It is time to take pro-active stock.