Carolyn Cooper | Testing the limits of our Jamaican language

In April 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote a provocative column with this indelicate headline, ‘Female unmentionables out in the open’. This is how John H. Christian responded on The Gleaner’s website: “Great article Carolyn Cooper only the English Language could, with a smattering of your Beloved Patios [sic] be able to paint such a picture ... well done .. Now write the entire piece in Patios [sic]..lol...”

Translating a single newspaper column from English to Jamaican was a big joke to Christian. His laughter confirmed his complete ignorance of all the scholarly work that generations of linguists in the Caribbean and elsewhere have done to demonstrate the power of the Jamaican language. Christian obviously does not know that the New Testament has been translated into Jamaican. The Bible Society of the West Indies published Di Jamiekan Nyuu Testiment in 2012.

DON’T TEST!

In response to Christian’s mockery, I wrote: “Thanks! Here’s a quick translation of the first two paragraphs. Don’t persist in putting limits on the Jamaican language! Don’t test!” Here’s the original English:

Proverbial wisdom confirms that when trouble tek man, pikni shirt fit him. Now, when coronavirus frighten man, female underwear fit him. Male cross-dressers already know the pleasures of sporting female garments. These days, men of all persuasions are wearing panties and bras as masks to block transmission of the virus.

‘Unmentionables’ appeared in the English language in the 19th century during the reign of prim and proper Queen Victoria. The word referred to trousers. By 1910, it became even more unmentionable, meaning underwear. Why were undergarments so vulgar that they couldn’t be mentioned in polite society?

I translated the headline, ‘Female unmentionables out in the open’, in this way: “Uman hidey-hidey business out a road”. And the rest of the translation went like this:

Old-time people seh when trouble tek man, pikni shirt fit him. Today, when coronavirus frighten man, uman drawers an brassiere fit him. Di man dem weh love dress up inna uman clothes, dem done know how it sweet. Inna dem ya time, all kind a man a brandish drawers and brassiere pon dem face fi stop di virus from spread all bout.

Hidey-hidey business. Dat a wa di English people dem did tink bout uman brassiere an drawers. Yu no fi talk bout dat. Dem seh dem deh a ‘unmentionables’. Dat deh word turn up inna English language inna di 1800s when nice an deestant Queen Victoria did deh pon di throne. Fos time, unmentionables did mean trousers. By 1910, a den yu couldn’t talk bout it. It start fi mean brassiere an drawers. Wa mek dem so raw chaw yu couldn’t talk bout dem if yu a tapanaaris?

‘HOW NOW BROWN COW’

I told that story on Thursday (January 27) when I was giving the 8th H. Pamela Kelly Distinguished Lecture at the University of Technology. The series is named in honour of one of the university’s outstanding educators. I focused on language, power and dis/advantage in Jamaica. Mrs Kelly certainly knows intimately the sense of alienation that many students endure in Jamaica schools. In an interview with me, she recalled the distress of her early years at Wolmer’s High School for Girls:

“I felt very disadvantaged because my heart language did not seem appropriate. I was most comfortable speaking Jamaican. And the language of school was exclusively English. For almost three years, I didn’t speak more than was necessary. But I read a lot of books in English and could write well. In speech class, I learned to round up my mouth. We had to repeat phrases that often didn’t make any sense to us, like ‘How now brown cow.’

“But, I suppose, the speech class was useful. It taught me a certain register of English that has served me well, particularly in my role as Public Orator at the University of Technology. All the same, it would have been so much better if my heart language had been accepted. I wouldn’t have felt so insecure. Coming from Watt Town in rural Jamaica, I was told, more than once, by a teacher who had been recruited from England, ‘You can take the man out of the country, but you cannot take the country out the man.’ Fortunately, I was not a man.”

TARGET ENGLISH

In 1995, Mrs Kelly was invited to teach at the University of Technology for six weeks in the place of a lecturer on maternity leave. She stayed for 25 years. A decade earlier, she and Dr Leonie Harris had established Target English, a private school where English was taught as a foreign language. Students came from all over the world: Venezuela, Haiti, Panama, Korea, France, Sweden, Japan and China.

At the University of Technology, Mrs Kelly applied the language teaching techniques she had perfected at Target English. In 2003, she set up the Self Access Learning Centre, designed to nurture students who were not comfortable speaking or writing English. Mrs Kelly knew that teaching English as a second language would empower students whose heart language was Jamaican. The centre served a wide cross-section of the university community and was a spectacular success. It later expanded to include other languages and is now named the Language Teaching and Research Centre.

The Ministry of Education needs to acknowledge the fact that Jamaican is a language. And it is the first language of the majority of primary school students. English must be taught as a second language. The ministry must concede that the present methods of teaching English are failing Jamaican children. If the learning of English by all primary school students is, indeed, a target of the curriculum, the aim of the Ministry of Education most certainly needs to be far more precise.

- Carolyn Cooper, PhD, is a teacher of English language and literature and a specialist on culture and development. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and karokupa@gmail.com.