Reading and writhing

Carolyn Cooper, Contributor

Most Jamaicans can't easily read and write in our mother tongue. Call it broken English, dialect, patois, patwa, Creole, Jamaican Creole or just plain Jamaican. It doesn't make a difference. As the poet Mutabaruka puts it so wittily, "the language we talk, we can't write; and the language we write, we can't talk." Some of us just can't face the Jamaican language on the page.

Two of my recent columns, written mostly in Jamaican, have provoked a fair bit of debate. The subject, not just the language, upset some readers who seem to be quite prepared to forgive and forget the scandalous conduct of politicians. They just want to 'move on'. Where to? I fear that it may be to a state called 'more of the same'.

For other readers, the language itself was very much the problem. I'd composed a fictional prayer on behalf of the prime minister, 'Dear God, is me, Bruce.' I speculated that, in his moments of repentant anguish, the PM would pour out his heart to God in his mother tongue, not English. And God would have to answer in Jamaican to prove that it's a divine language.

An aggrieved reader responded on The Gleaner's blog: "Why write like this? I started reading and had to stop. I speak Jamaican dialect anytime, anywhere so I don't have a problem with it. However, it's not something I want to read in a Gleaner article." This reader obviously thinks that the Jamaican language has no business being written down; and certainly not in The Gleaner, a newspaper with pedigree, presumably, unlike that unmentionable, "hurry come up" tabloid.

Incidentally, the word "pedigree" has quite ordinary origins. It comes from Middle French, 'pie de grue,' meaning 'foot of the crane'. The branches of the crane's foot resemble the spreading lines of genealogical charts. Like the Jamaican expression, 'crab toe', which we use to describe illegible handwriting, the French 'pedigree' takes an image from nature to represent the markings of culture.

Corrupt language

I've corrected the spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors in the quotes from that dismissive reader cited above: "Columnists should think about their audience when they are writing. If Carolyn is trying to reach out to the ordinary Jamaicans, I know for sure they will not waste their time to read this as they will not be able to follow it. This is absolute rubbish. Your intellect should tell you that the Jamaican dialect/patois is effective only when someone is listening to another person speaking it. This article is suited for one of your university lectures or some other public forum where you are required to deliver a speech, definitely not The Gleaner."

But all of that is simply not true. Jamaican has long been a written language, as illustrated so beautifully in two books edited by the Jamaican linguists Jean D'Costa and Barbara Lalla. Voices in Exile, published in 1989 by the University of Alabama Press, gives examples of written Jamaican from as early as the 18th century. Language in Exile, which appeared a year later, is subtitled Three Hundred Years of Jamaican Creole. Quite a long time.

Furthermore, many so-called "ordinary Jamaicans" actually take pleasure in reading and writing in their mother tongue, as we see on the Internet. It is the extraordinary Jamaicans who have trouble with the language. About two decades ago, Morris Cargill wrote a contemptuous newspaper column titled 'Corruption of language is no cultural heritage'. I decided to write a response using the 'corrupt' language.

Too often, we 'defend' Jamaican in English, playing right into the hands of those sceptics who assume that Jamaican is not a language of analytical thought. I decided to use the specialist writing system for the Jamaican language developed by the linguist, Frederick Cassidy. Instead of using the notoriously irregular writing system of English, he designed a phonetic system.

Cargill, trained as a lawyer, claimed that he "couldn't make head or tail of the maze of phonetics". Andrew Sewell, the postman in my neighbourhood". whose head was not in his tail, could certainly find his way through the 'maze.' It all depends on your politics. Mr Sewell is a Rastaman who is committed to learning, unlike many supposedly educated people who have no real interest in scholarship.

For Mr Sewell, the Cassidy writing system confirms the fact that Jamaican is a language quite different from English: 'It full di space of our real African language.' Better yet: 'It ful di spies af owa rial Afrikan langgwij.' Mr Sewell acknowledges the African pedigree of the Jamaican language.

In anguish and pain

So why is it that so many Jamaicans can't read and write Jamaican? The answer is quite easy. Our school system has failed us. Because we don't take Jamaican seriously - it's seen as a language of brawling entertainment - no effort is made to teach literacy in the mother tongue. Instead, many primary- school children struggle to become literate in English, a language they don't know, reading and writhing in anguish and pain.

The Jamaican Language Unit at the University of the West Indies, Mona, led by Professor Hubert Devonish, has taken a giant step on the long journey to prove that bilingual primary-school education makes sense. The unit has translated English textbooks into Jamaican and a select group of primary-school students has been taught literacy in both Jamaican and English.

The Ministry of Education must now ensure that every single child is given the opportunity to talk and write in both English and Jamaican. The Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, signed by UNESCO, affirms that education in one's mother tongue is a human right. It's high time we start taking language rights seriously in Jamaica. Chat bout!

Carolyn Cooper, PhD, is a public intellectual specialising in cultural enterprise management. She is founder and director of the Global Reggae Studies Centre, a private- sector initiative. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com or karokupa@gmail.com.