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Who cares about Kwéyòl, (Creole) anyway? The language debate continues in St. Lucia

Posted by CaribShout on October 24, 2009 at 3:07pm

Have we been using our unique Creole culture to our advantage or have we spent too much time running away from it? Who cares about Kwéyòl? Why does it persist in spite of the greater necessity of English? Why does it survive when it has been insulted, derided and hated by the very people who perpetuate its existence? Who needs it anyway? The Kwéyòl Language Committee of the Folk Research Centre already knows what it thinks the answers to these questions are. They think kwéyòl is necessary and St Lucia would be worse off without it. Last Thursday, they held a symposium with people from various sectors of society to impress on them the benefits of Kwéyòl. In their fourth decade of fighting for the survival and progress of the island’s mother tongue, they are not yet wary of fighting what often looks like a losing battle. The odds are stacked against St Lucian French Kwéyòl. It’s a dying tongue, some say. Others think it’s already dead, we just haven’t pulled the plug yet. But then again, the odds have always been stacked against this language. People have been predicting the death of Kwéyòl since it was first born on the plantations of this island which switched from British to French hands so many times that the slaves figured there was no point learning either language very well. At first, it was not even considered a language—just a slave dialect which would pass away with time as politics and economics changed the circumstances which led to the creation of the language in the first. But Emancipation came and went, as did the Industrial Revolution, the First and Second World Wars and the Great Depression between them and the Cold War after them and still St Lucia French Kwéyòl persisted despite all the efforts of parents to beat it out of their children. Why doesn’t Kwéyòl just die like other useless languages? The STAR looked into some of the major weaknesses of the language that should have led to its death and found some interesting reasons why it survives into the 21st century and still has something to contribute to a post-modern world where web pages matter more than books themselves. Kwéyòl has its downsides and weaknesses, for sure, but obviously it must have strengths and upsides and those are what is keeping it going in an age where English is infecting every other major language in the world with words like ‘jeans’, ‘hamburger’ and ‘email’. It is not possible to list every strength and weakness of the island’s native tongue, but there are a few major areas that deserve consideration. Here now are just a few of the upsides and downsides of the language that thousands of mothers told their children not to speak, but ended up teaching them by accident. DOWNSIDE: Nobody in the real world speaks Kwéyòl. It’s a language shared by five or six countries in the world, none of them known for anything really excellent (except for Walcott’s Nobel Prize, which Trinidad likes to take the credit for). And each of them speaks their own version of kwéyòl—for example, St Lucian kwéyòl has Amerindian words like ‘mabouya’ where Mauritius kwéyòl knows no such thing. Every country in which kwéyòl is an official language has to have another official language, whether English or French, in order to communicate to and trade with the world at large. St Lucian web sites abound but to this day, there is not one bi-lingual site much less a Kwéyòl one. Even this article about Kwéyòl is written in English as is almost half of the literature on the subject. (The other almost half is written, of course, in French.) UPSIDE: No one outside Kwéyòl-speaking countries need’ to speak Kwéyòl if Kwéyòl speakers know English, French or Spanish. The argument that Kwéyòl is obsolete because it is not a widely spoken world language sucks for the simple reason that China has fast become a world leader in trade, technology and geo-politics, yet no one outside of China speaks only Chinese on a daily basis—not even the Chinese. Whether or not other people speak one’s native language has proven to matter a whole lot less than whether we speak their language as well as our own in matters of trade, politics and technology. DOWNSIDE: Kwéyòl is too ignorant to survive a knowledge-driven world. It has yet to assimilate many of the modern scientific and technological terms that have become necessary for survival. Imagine trying to explain to a farmer that you shouldn’t mix a systematic with a contact. Or explaining to someone who wants Viagra that if he’s taking nitrates he could experience a sudden drop in blood pressure. How about a Kwéyòl course in web page design or even something simple and pre-modern like law, economics or politics? It just can’t happen without a concerted effort to translate ordinary words like ‘server’, ‘calculus’, ‘quadratic equation’ and ‘bi-lateral trade negotiations.’ It is because of these inadequacies that Kwéyòl has increasingly been thought of as an ignorant language. It is precisely these inadequacies that led parents of past generations to employ the strategy of beating the Kwéyòl out of their kids.

kweyol-dictionary UPSIDE: Kwéyòl is not scientifically ignorant. In fact, it is a storehouse of scientifically valuable data which has great commercial potential. It has its own worldview of science and technology. Because it is a language invented by an agricultural people, the knowledge of generations of rural Africans, Europeans and the pastoral Amerindians passed down orally. Because agriculture is linked to lunar movements, many children knew the phases of the moon and their properties without ever learning it in school. Kwéyòl also has its own names for many plants and animals. The loss of Kwéyòl culture has led to the disappearance of some of this knowledge and the near-extinction of many fruits, vegetables and medicinal plants. These plants and animals are resources that could be exploited for the educational and material benefit of St Lucia but once they are lost, there is no modern science existing today which can bring them back. DOWNSIDE: Kwéyòl can’t be read. Even the most fluent Kwéyòl speakers have trouble reading it. Kwéyòl has been accused of not just being a language of illiterates but an illiterate language. It has produced no literature of any great importance and everyone knows that in order to get respect as a language, a literature must be offered. There have been no world hit songs in kwéyòl and any language that wants to survive the 21st century had better have a hit song, otherwise the kids have no reason to learn it. UPSIDE: Kwéyòl is a written language and some of the best stories in the world have been translated into Kwéyòl. Kwéyòl may not have hit songs internationally recognizable artistes but its music is pervasive, infectious and has commercial potential that may exceed that of soca and rival that of reggae. Musicians in Haiti, Martinique and Guadeloupe have consistently proven that one can fill up international stadiums and sell millions of units of the course of a career marketing kwéyòl music to people who don’t understand a single word of what they are saying. Barba-Lucian singer-songwriter Gilo stood out from the crowd of Bajan artistes by simply throwing in a line or even just a word of Kwéyòl in each of his Crop-Over hits. And Derek Walcott has proven that an en bas gorge band lead by two 80-year-old men can be ridiculously popular with young audiences in Europe. One wonders why Lucian musicians even bother learning reggae, soca and Pro Tools when a banjo and violin is all it takes to get them out of the shadow of Jamaica and Trinidad. The New Testament and 36 Psalms have been translated into Kwéyòl and published. This is critically important in the post-Jesus world as every single nation which became literate in their own language since the death of Christ did it with great assistance from Bibles translated into their native tongues. There are also two St Lucian Kwéyòl dictionaries with two different methods of spelling, leading to either greater confusion or more choices depending on your intellectual capacity. Add to that the publications of unlikely Kwéyòl language hero Michael Walker and there you have it—a literature. It ain’t the sonnets of Shakespeare, but let’s be fair, some of Shakespeare poetry was not really all that great. DOWNSIDE: Kwéyòl is uneducated. There is hardly any formal instruction in Kwéyòl. Kwéyòl-speaking kids are sent to schools to learn everything in English regardless of the fact that it is not their first language, but most introductory Kwéyòl courses are geared towards adults. The education ministry has made efforts to formalize Kwéyòl language instruction, but these instructions focus, strangely enough, on teaching the language rather than teaching subjects that matter (like science, economics, etc) in Kwéyòl so that Kwéyòl speakers have a better understanding of the world around them. UPSIDE: Kwéyòl may not yet be best friends with the school system, but so far it hasn’t needed formal instruction to remain one of the most pervasive cultural forces in the Eastern Caribbean. Kwéyòl may not be a significant part of the formal education system, but somehow it managed to survive and even to thrive in the environments where it is spoken on a daily basis. Kwéyòl survived a decades-long unofficial campaign by parents, teachers and social leaders to stamp it out and actually made a comeback in the 80s and 90s, just when its critics thought it was on its death bed. As a cultural phenomenon, it has shown great resilience and the only reason it has not exhibited adaptability in St Lucia is because St Lucians have not adapted it to changing circumstances. Kwéyòl’s continued resistance to change is not a commentary on the inability of the language to express the new realities of the 21st century but on the inflexibility of the people who use it and the disrespect users of Kwéyòl have for their own language.
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