Even as Chris Tambu Herbert implored us to “Remember your own thing comes first and charity begins at home” 30 years ago, his praise song to national pride opened by leaving room for loving other things. Three road marches later, he did so himself, now finding his soul in a brand new—faith-filled—mode.
Like him, after singing Culture, I will tell a Bible story.
It was from people in a foreign land’s university I learned that the language I spoke outside the classroom wasn’t “broken,” but something with rules and grammar of its own, even at it shares a large lexicon (or word-set) with “Standard” or business English. The power of its distinct lexicon to convey meaning uniquely was never in doubt. Words like “lime” are now in the local news reporting mainstream.
In the Caribbean, Haiti, St Lucia, Jamaica have all done far more than we to celebrate bilingualism, recognise and formalise their popular “creoles,” bring them into the classroom, and grapple with the challenge of orthography—how to spell a spoken language. Dominica too.
But many schoolchildren here, I fear, still learn linguistic lies, and to feel shame instead of mastery of one language; when both are deeply valuable and functional.
Dictionaries by scholarly lexicographers (people who catalogue languages) from respected publishers—the Oxford Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (1996), edited by the late Guyanese Richard Allsopp; Canadian Lise Winer’s 12,200-entry Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad & Tobago (2009)—ought to be standard reference tools for every local editor, not only John Mendes’ slim 1986 collection Cote ci Cote la.
I made a big deal—even using Pierrot words—over how the press spelt Prime Minister Rowley’s jamettry and President Carmona’s boof. But not because I’m one of those language-nazis who delight in mocking errors and rule violations. I believe language is living and changing, as are its rules. Indeed, that is how ours evolved.
I did so because I learned—right here, from Merle Hodge—that our choices in orthography show a love and fluency for our language. Or the opposite. The core principle of the “Hodge school” of creole orthography is that when we see creole on the page, native speakers readily recognise it, so there is no need to render it as “broken English.” Using standard spellings of words shared with English is fine. Earl Lovelace’s prose is one of the finest examples of how creole rises off a Standard English page.
I want to go further. To argue that a loving respect and ear for our language must also guide how we spell its particular lexicon. That respect, when shown by newspaper editors, can help settle its usage and spelling. It’s happened already with jamette, which appears most often with this spelling.
I don’t believe that words can’t have more than one way of being spelt. Just that some spellings are more loving than others. Some meanings of words are too. Jamettes nationwide reminded the PM that jamettry means standing with common folk in activism and resisting fake respectability—not just sexual nastiness. Stories, too, have different meanings. One such story in the story of Sodom.
“Full-truth” believers like Tambu say it’s a story of homosexual abomination, for which God destroyed a city in Genesis 18-19. Modern Old Testament scholars make much more of inhospitality, as Prophet Ezekiel explains, as “the sin of Sodom. She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” (16:48-50)
Such sinfulness was on display across the nation after another captivating utterance by the Prime Minister, following the Sodom-like destruction of Dominica. When prophet Tambu socammanded us 30 years ago to love Trinidad and Tobago, he wouldn’t mind we love Dominica too.
I need 50…45…40…30…20…10 righteous Trinbagonians to have an angel stay by you.