- FileMiss Lou "liberated the language." She was awarded the national honour of the Order of Merit (O.M.) last year.
Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor
IT IS an accepted fact that the level of illiteracy in Jamaica is way too high. I agree.
But I also suspect that the figures are under-reported. You see, the figures only take into account those persons who are illiterate in English.
Those who are illiterate in patois should demand to be counted. I think the human rights people should seriously examine the issue and make a recommendation about a class action suit on behalf of those who have been excluded. An afta dat, me tink sey shame wudda kill we ef we eva add dem awn to de list.
Did you know that some people are illiterate in the vernacular?
Some of them are my very good friends, sorry to have to say, no not sorry dat dem is me fren, sorry dat I can't help dem.
Traditionally, people who have been illiterate in English have been ashamed to admit it. They go about in a kind of corner to get help without anybody find out.
Dem always leave dem glasses somewhere, dem eyes alway dark, de writing too small. Dem see yu a read newspaper an gi out, "So what is de substance below dat deh headline?"
That forces you right away to read it out or summarise and then you both engage in a very informed discussion about the subject at hand and nobody has lost one shred of their dignity in the literacy department. And if yu nat looking, dem jim screechy into one of the JAMAL buses.
Not so with the people who kean read or write wan word in de langwidge of the majority. Dem is proud of their deficiencies. Call yu up seven o'clock Sunday mawnin fe proclaim dem short-comings.
Dem kean read yu column. Or dem set fe yu into a gathering of English literature folks to ask "Why yu switch?"
This, you would imagine would take somebody like me by surprise since only people who get rich switch. But the displeasure and score they are really expressing is at the fact that "you have written in the vernacular". Dem kean even bring demself fe sey patwah.
Well, let's be fair. Some a dem call sey it tek dem a likkle while but dem eventually get tru it. Me undastan dat. Far when I was learning to read English it was a struggle an afta me get ova sey French nuh spell nutten like how it pronounce me cudda manage.
An me had was to put a expensive frame roun de firs French test my son pass inna high school and put it up pan him wall fe remine him sey fram yu have brain inna yu head nutten nuh impossible fe learn.
An me admit sey de Jamaican language trying pan yu eye nuh matta how yu spell it especially if yu kean spell. But me doan undastan people who gwaan like sey even afta it spell it kean pronounce.
De odda day wan a dem buckle-hole into a public space.
Bout: "Amina, I'm so glad you are writing in English again because I really cannot read the other thing". Yu hear it? The other thing! Volumes of other things. Like right away I know that said person does not always read my columns because I do not consistently write in any language.
As a bona fide multi-lingual member of this community is name way de ting come into me head an me mood is same way a put it on de piapa.
Den me ask meself some questions like "Is kean dem kean read it or is naw dem naw read it?" For plenty people who kean speak a word in Spanish, French or any other language but English, pick up tings off supermarket shelf ans struggle wid de farin langwidge part a de label, be it in Russian or Japanese, even doagh de English translation is dere, just to convince demself of how clever dem is. Dem calling dat "consumer literacy".
Dem want to know what is in package dem reading. That is because de lable come from farin an since it come fram farin it must be a langwidge an since is a langwidge it mus can learn.
Sometimes is jus as well dem read de farin part for de English part is so-so Greek an dem end up very illiterate in what dem is consuming. Dem all want to read ole iron and tuff plastic what underline everything yu write and try to destroy yu self-esteem, like it know more dan you and can read yu mine.
Dat name computer literacy. The Jamaican vernacular now, by contrast, cannot be learnt or dem wudda at least get somebody fe translate it fe dem. But maybe everybaddi dem know is similarly afflicted and take great pride in de deficiencies. Jus like how Miss Lou did teck pride in the language of the people.
"Other thing"
Which brings me to one of the other questions about some of the people who wonder why "a sensible person" would write that "other thing".
Look here, doan sey me sey, but some of dem is judge for JCDC drama competition. Some of dem judge speech in which the contestants invariably choose "a piece by Miss Lou".
Wan likkle bwoy who now go to big high school mek a stir fram him into primary school an account of dem same people judge him a big gold medal winner wid Miss Lou "roas Turkey".
The same Miss Lou of whom it has been said "liberated the language". Look like she did only liberate it to go on stage.
An again some of these people love go to NDTC and clap de loudes bout what de Professor an de eminent dancers do with the reggae pieces and end up glad to see how Bob Marley can be interpreted in dance.
Dem proud how the Hon. Louise Bennett Coverly, O.M. and the Hon. Robert Nesta Marley O Everything put Jamaica on the map.
Dem glad when Folk Singers come back from South Africa with acclaim and Carifolk use Jamaican folksongs and capture gold medals inna Austria. Well guess what?
None a dem neva put we dere in Hinglish. Dat write big so we can say it loud and with hemfasis. Furdermore Bob and Miss Lou leggo some concept into de vernacular what plenty book learning Queen-speaking people never conceive.
In fact many of those who are not Queen-speaking wudda twis up book-learning people wid facts and concepts bout ancient civilisation and globalised world economy what dem doan dream of yet.
Like de man who me ask why him begging and him calmly reply dat him is a market failure but FINSAC never concern wid fe him level of de market.
No bail-out fe him, him cudda rot inna debtors' fail. Dat name cultural literacy - the understanding of how you came to be and your responsibility to equip the young one with said knowledge.
If dis country was depending pan Queen-speaking people to tell anybody bout Marcus Garvey de likkle man from St. Ann wudda dead again, and this present generation would not be just struggling to survive to find a place in the sun, the place would be empty and dem wudda dead too. Or at best, on dem way out like the language we raise we blood pressure fighting over.
America long time mark it up and cross it up in their bid to make it functional, all my computer ask me if me want American English or some other type of English. And nobody meck fun of the language like de Englishman himself.
Check out some of the satire by English poets, commentators and novelists about the inconsistencies in spelling, grammar and application. And did you know that the language we now call French was one of the dialects of French? Oy, yes.
It became the official French simply because it was the overwhelming language spoken in the capital, the political and cultural centre of the country. I vote to shift the capital of Jamaica to Savlamar or St. Elizabeth or some other part of the sugar belt and decide on the official language as per the French.
Set of symbols
What a tyranny. Yet that is exactly what this on-going feud about the Jamaican language is - the tyranny of the minority to maintain the dominance of the language of the colonisers in spite of the desire of the majority to speak and record history from their language perspective.
For language is nothing more or less than an arbitrary set of symbols which we agree have certain meanings. We cannot arrive at any agreement by bully-riding and belittling others.
Our approach to the language question is, to my mind, symptomatic and reflective of a non-productive culture of disputes resolution - those who have the power win!
For I doan believe sey in mose instance, it have wan ting to do wid increased competencies and economic advancement or facilitating anybody to become anything except perhaps more efficient servers of those who are married to what has evolved from Shakespeare, Chaucer and company "till death do us part".
And plus, look how dem love what Chaucer pickney dem get such a hard time fe dare change. You really believe that the haves want to gie the have-nots the means to get some of what they use to maintain the great divide and give up this holy-righteous verandah talk and sniper letters to newspapers about those people who keep u all back because of their failure to speak English. and even worse, those disingenious ones who defend this aspect of the culture as a right, as weapon, as tool of liberation.
Power, not reason, not issues of development, is what fuels the debate about the language. Who has it, how it is exercised.
In the winter of 1997 the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting coincided with the Scottish International Storytelling Festival in Edinburgh.
One of the pieces selected for the opening ceremony was by one of the Scottish tellers to the Festival. It as not to be performed by him, however, but read by an English actor with a "more universal accent".
Paddy, the Scottish storyteller believed the organisers feared he might appear in his kilt (we did have plenty laugh an debate bout dat part), and tell his story in Gaelic.
"Culturally illiterate", he had called them, for not seeing how much his presentation would have enriched the proceedings. What are we willing to lose by this persistent demeaning of the evolution and the facilitation of the growth of the Jamaican language?
