What is our mother tongue?

There needs to be clarity on the first language of the country. While English might be seen as the language of work, a large part of the population struggles with the language. On the other hand, Patois, which is more widely spoken, does not have the structure required to qualify it as a language.

English of course, but …

30 May 2022

PRIME MINISTER Andrew Holness is unlikely to have been erecting straw men against whom to mount attacks. So, Mr Holness needs to clarify his recent remarks about English as Jamaica’s language of work and the context and circumstances of use of Jamaican Creole in the society.

Mr Holness seems to imply, as he has done in the past, that there is a movement or campaign against the use of English in the society, rather than calls for an acceptance that it is the mother tongue (the language which people naturally speak) of the majority of Jamaicans, and for respect and status to be also accorded to the island’s Creole, or Patois.

Indeed, in the face of his remarks last week, the prime minister should forthrightly enunciate, or have enunciated, his government’s formal policy on the language question and how his latest statement squares with his observation on the issue towards the end of 2019.

Speaking at the opening of the newest branch of the business process outsourcing (call centre) company, Itel, Mr Holness called on Jamaicans to accept that English was the “ideal’ language of the labour force, which this newspaper had apparently missed as a central feature of the debate over language.

“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.”

We don’t know that there is any quarrel, contention or controversy that if Jamaica is to develop a global competitive economy in the 21st century it, along with all the other things, requires a workforce that is competent in English, the global lingua franca. But it is a false assumption that English is readily accessible to the majority of Jamaicans, in that it is their first language and the one that they naturally speak, even if they have some facility with it.

STRUGGLING

Indeed, it ought to say something that a third of Jamaican students end their primary education without the ability to read – that is, in English, the language of instruction in the island’s schools. But that statistic masks a graver problem. Many of the students who read apparently sound words without comprehension. Indeed, the Patterson Commission noted that 56 per cent of sixth-grade students could not write, and that “57 per cent could not identify information in a simple sentence”.

While over 70 per cent of students pass English in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate exams, they still struggle with the language. Local universities have, in many instances, been forced to introduce remedial English courses because of the crisis with the language. In society generally, even people who clearly understand and frequently use standard English tend to bring a tight muscularity to the language.

These issues do not speak to people’s intellect, but rather to the cultural fact that it is not their first or natural language. And with the way English is taught, which begins with the presumption that students have a natural facility with the language and that what they learn at school will be reinforced in their communities and homes, where, in fact, the language of the community is far more likely to be Creole/Patois.

The Patterson Commission did not address how these tensions between English and Creole/Patois impact on teaching and learning in Jamaica or whether it contributes to the island’s poor education outcomes. Or whether, as some researchers have suggested, the coexistence of the two languages in classrooms would lift standards.

We also agree with Prime Minister Holness that Jamaica should be a multilingual country – which should start with recognition that it is a bilingual one.

And if the prime minister says, with which, again, we agree, that English is going to be the primary language of commerce, then it has to be taught in a way that gives deep access to the majority for whom it is not their primary language. In other words, to introduce a concept that tends to raise the hackles of some, we have to teach English in the same way that we might address the teaching of French, or Spanish, or might approach Mandarin – as a foreign language. In many ways, this would be like a return to the old days when classes in English included the deconstruction of sentences into their various components and clauses, for a better appreciation of grammar and context. And we should do this without apology, if we expect more than 43 per cent of our sixth-graders to be able to extract information from single sentences.

DEMANDS AN ACCEPTANCE

But this approach demands an acceptance that there is something else at play in Jamaica’s communication environment – a mother tongue which the majority of the population uses. Respecting this fact, and giving Jamaican Creole/Patios respect and recognition, wouldn’t diminish, weaken or undermine English’s place as Jamaica’s language of commerce and global engagement.

In his 2019 remarks in the debate over languages, Mr Holness expressed concern that this discussion was “going in a way to suggest the abandoning of English and speak Patios”, which, frankly, few people heard. This probably means that anyone who may have said so quickly recognised the folly, and promptly dropped the idea.

Significantly, Mr Holness also said: “There should really be an institute that seeks to bring a structure to the (Jamaican) language, and to do what is necessary to make it institutionalised.”

In fact, the Jamaica Language Unit at The University of the West Indies, Mona has studied the structure of Jamaican for decades. A standard for spelling and writing of Jamaican exists. What the language does not have is legal recognition and the institutionalised support that would come with the Government’s imprimatur.

 

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