Creole Language versus Standard English debate heats up

Apr 11, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I refer to the letter by Henry Singh U.G lecturer in Kaieteur News, February 8, wherein he alleges that many bright students end up in wasteland because of the notion that they are not bright.
Permit me to ask, which area is considered the wasteland, and who are the perpetrators behind the formulation of the notion of not being bright. I stand to be corrected, but as a bona fide Guyanese I have always labored under the apprehension that in Guyana, the Queen’s English was our official language, and Guyanese Creole English the de facto language of national identity.
The Proceedings of the Second Creolists Conference held in Mona, Jamaica in 1968 affirmed, “A creole is inferior to its corresponding standard language only in social status”.
I do wish to inform Mr. Singh with no succinct attack on the oratorical effusion of Mr. Devonish that there has been hitherto a substantial amount of academic linguistic research done on Creolese particularly as it pertains to Guyana and the Caribbean.
Pursuance of my Master’s  thesis  titled  Linguistic Competence  using Dialectal Readers now a part of Mc Gill University Faculty of Education, brought me into vicarious reading contact with Guyanese linguists such as John Rickford, RichardAllsopp and Walter Edwards, as well as a few other prolific non-Guyanese linguists. Mentioned in Mr. Singh’s article is the following “In reality, it is the educator who has failed them, teaching them in their (the teachers’) English Language, which is mistakenly taken to mean our native tongue”.
Should the blame, (if any) not be given its rightful deserver as education in Guyana is largely provided by the government of Guyana, via the Ministry of Education and its subsidiaries in the different regions of the country.
The role of the accused (teacher) then is simply to administer the loot as directed by the provider (Ministry of Education).
Reported data has stated that there are no current statistics regarding bilingualism in Creolese and Standard English but there are statistics related to literacy in English. In 1995 a report summary “Nipped in the Bud: Young Guyanese adults and their functional literacy” provided by Dr. Zellyne Jennings of the University of Guyana and disseminated to the Ministry of Education mentioned that 89% of the out of school youths between the ages of 14-25 were functionally illiterate.
Putting this finding in simple context, blatantly indicates that a large percentage of the population do not possess adequate linguistic competency in Standard English.
Taking the said data just a nano step further on the road to commonsensual logic would indicate that there would be a high percentage of people who would not display true bilingualism.  By true bilingualism I mean native speaker fluency in both Creolese and Standard English.
Recently there have been calls made to the Government and the Ministry of Education in Guyana to make all schools English speaking zones, due to poor CSEC grades for English Language. Again, conducted research by Allsopp inferred that in Guyana the ability of the people to speak Standard English was not indicative of their ability to comprehend it.
Observations and informal interviews with Guyanese during the afore-mentioned conducted research brought home the conclusion that most people did not see any true value in speaking Creolese, did not regard Creolese as something valuable but rather viewed it as a social and economic hindrance.
Of ironic note is the fact that some monolingual speakers that were interviewed during the conducted research expressed the fact that they were somewhat ashamed to travel to Georgetown, on account of being ridiculed or made fun of due to their inability to speak proper English.
An important point, and one not to be overlooked by any stretch of the fertile imagination is that Allsopp also found that in speaking with those employed in the educational system, the expressed feeling was that  that they would like to rid the country of Creolese.
Another question that comes to the forefront of my active cranium and which would need to be addressed is what is the current stance and attitude by the Ministry of Education regarding the promotion of Creolese in schools in Guyana?
Are the students receiving an education indicative of the Government’s stand on this lingering linguistic issue? Education is a major factor which affects the language vitality of Creolese.
Having thus said, is it not somewhat hypocritical to throw the baby out with the bath water, if provision is not being made at the teacher training level, especially since Mr. Devonish is all for making education especially at the incipient stages available via Guyanese Creolese? Does the current government have any specific language policies?
In everyday Guyana,Creolese is activated in almost any domain that necessitates communication, but when people have to communicate with Government officials or government employees then the typical language of expression is best Standard English. Such behavior as we write and speak is currently illustrative of most people in Guyana.
Reports have stated that even  Guyanese who have expressed a desire to learn Creolese, have been confronted with laughter and derision, not to mention displays of pained disbelief, followed by “ wha you whan lean da fuh” , “ahwe trying fuh get away from dat”. .  Further tales have circulated about city folks or Georgetown people who are forced to speak Creolese when visiting relatives in the rural areas, so as to avoid remarks being made about their citified speech.
The attitudes of people toward Creolese become quite evident when you ask people where Creolese is spoken, with folks saying that Berbice takes pride of place in being the area where it is worst spoken.
At its basic level Creolese has three varieties, and I do hope that this aspect was brought out in the speech by Mr. Devonish.There are clearly identifiable speaker markers.
Acrolect is the speech of upper class Creolese speakers, mesolect that of middle class speakers and basilect spoken by illiterate rural labourers. In addition depending on geographical location, race and ethnicity, there exists many sub dialects of Guyanese Creole.  In areas where the population is largely of a distinct ethnic group, then a specific form of Guyanese Creole exists. Another lingering question is, “In Guyana itself how much interaction is there between Creolese speakers and Creoles from other locations?
This linguistic battle between Creolese and Standard English can only be won when all participants, stakeholders and interested parties have clearly identified goals and objectives, and a comprehensible game plan for achieving the desired objective.
Hopefully, the train has not left the station, leaving decreolization behind. Incidentally, do we know what are the current views/feelings of the populace regarding the speaking and teaching of Creolese?  We cannot leave them out as they form the basis of what the linguistic issue is all about?
Yvonne Sam

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