Editorial | Patois and the liberation of English

John McWhorter, who writes a column in The New York Times, tells a story which might help in understanding Russian attitudes towards Ukraine, as well as partially explains Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the neighbouring country.

Mr McWhorter had picked up some Russian but was not a fluent speaker of the language. Most times, he says, he could understand maybe half of what people are saying in their conversations. Except that, some years ago, in a new neighbourhood, he understood none of what his neighbours, who he thought were Russians, were saying. They were speaking Ukrainian.

It used to be common, Mr McWhorter explains, for Russians to consider Ukrainian, a dialect of their own language, ‘Little Russian’ they called it. Indeed, Mr Putin has in the past argued that Ukraine is not a country with a distinct culture or history from Russia.

But said Mr McWhorter, with respect to language in his March 11 column, a few weeks into the Russia-Ukraine war: “Ukrainian is indeed closely related to Russian – they both use a Cyrillic alphabet and have similar grammatical patterns – but Russian it is not.”

Mr McWhorter was not writing about the war, although his reference might have been intended as a challenge to any claim against the legitimacy of Ukraine as a national and cultural entity. Indeed, John McWhorter is a black associate professor in linguistics at Columbia University. That March 11 column essentially argued the validity of Black American English, in which he referenced Jamaican Patois’ right for recognition, rather than being seen as “just broken English, a bad habit”.

Mr McWhorter explained: “... [One] way we know that languages like this are indeed languages is that you can write a detailed grammatical description of each of them, full of complex rules (and exceptions) mapping out how to pronounce words, add tense to verbs, put sentences together, convey nuances – just as in grammatical descriptions of languages such as Ukrainian that aren’t creoles but have suffered similar disrespect.”

MAKING THIS ARGUMENT

Indeed, the Jamaica Language Unit at The University of the West Indies, supported by unimpeachable, empirical research, has been making this argument for decades. However, advocates for the recognition of Jamaican Patois are assailed as Luddites and intellectual and cultural nihilists, who would displace English as the country’s official language, with the effect of dislodging Jamaica from the global economic system.

The claim, of course, is nonsense. The debate, though, is likely to be reignited (which is a good thing) by last week’s call by Prime Minister Andrew Holness for Jamaicans’ acceptance of English as the “ideal” language of the labour force – which really means business and commerce.

“Take away all the cultural issues about language being a barrier to access, and the ability to speak in our social context being a barrier to access,” Mr Holness said. “We need to get over that and ensure that we protect the English language in our country as discrete from our Jamaican language, which we must speak as we will and as we want. But, get over this nonsense that one is going to block you from access in the society.”

It is difficult, however, to argue that advocacy for Jamaican Creole’s recognition as a “discrete” language from English – which Mr Holness acknowledged – is undermining the labour force’s facility with English. Rather, the failure to concede that English coexists with another, more dominant, mother tongue, and the consequences therefrom – is probably the greater problem.

English is the language of instruction in Jamaica, in a system where, at the end of their primary education, a third of the students remain illiterate. Many of those deemed to be literate have major shortcomings. Indeed, nearly six in 10 grade six students, that is, children who are about to enter high school, can neither write nor extract information from simple English sentences. At the end of high school, three in 10 Jamaican students fail at the regional English exams, and many of those who pass, muddle through. Universities feel compelled to have remedial English courses for students.

MANY CAUSES

There are many causes for these failures, many of them addressed by the Orlando Patterson Commission on reforming Jamaica’s education system. One of the underexplored issues, however, is our clinging to the assumption that Jamaica is a naturally English-speaking country, rather than a bilingual one, in which most people have some grasp of English, but that English is not the mother tongue of the majority. It is not the first language of their homes or communities. Yet, we approach teaching English as if it were.

There are many problems to fix in education. But, if Jamaica is to build a workforce that is adept at English, it will likely demand renouncing of the standing assumptions and a radical overhaul of the way English is taught – in the fashion of teaching a foreign language.

But that approach would require not only a rhetorical acceptance of Patois. Rather, it has to be internalised that English has a social and culturally dominant society partner in Jamaican Creole/Patois. The recognition of Patois’ legitimacy, and harnessing the values that might unleash, would very likely, and quite paradoxically, lead to the real liberation of English. Without the baggage of assuming that people know English, it could be taught and learnt.