Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

[Q3210]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

draino, wish I did see an accompanying laff [img]/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/graemlins/704555_dwl.gif[/img]

[Guest]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

So, Jamaicans do better in Spanish than English...

Don't demean Patois

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Dear Editor,
This longtime debate about "Patois and/or English" in schools is foolish and boring. All the highbrows here do not understand why it is so important to read and write and speak one's mother tongue properly. It is a sick joke, and deeply unfair, when Jamaica's students have to take their exams in a language that is not their own.

Do German or Danish or Dutch students have to take their exams in English only because their languages are similar to that language, even "first cousins"? No. They learn English as a second language (ESL). And this the people in the English-speaking Caribbean should do, too.

In the Seychelles, a former French, later English colony, now a Commonwealth country, the pupils in basic school first learn Sesellois (a French Creole). Two years later, in primary school, they start to learn English, later French, too. The younger the children, the easier it is for them to learn a language.

To teach English as a second language it is important that the teachers learn a different methodology, another didactics. This is badly missing in Jamaica and the rest of the English-speaking Caribbean. The proof of this statement? The CXC results in Spanish in Jamaica are far better than those in English. As long as English in schools here is taught the way it has been for donkey years the results will be appalling.
I am,

Pepe Zabl
Long Bay
Portland

Link

[Andronian]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

Observer editor's take on the issue:
[Bolding is mine]

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/editorial...G_IN_PATOIS.asp

[ QUOTE ]

Let's be pragmatic about teaching in patois


Saturday, November 26, 2005


In all likelihood, the report in the Sunday Observer a week ago of the experiment in a handful of primary schools of teaching children in Jamaican patois would have caused many people to twist some of their clothing in great knots to the great pain and discomfort of parts of their anatomy.




We expect, too, that they will have fulminated at the information that a recent study had found that nearly 80 per cent of Jamaicans felt that Jamaican patois is a separate language and that nearly 70 per cent agreed that it should be made official alongside English. Indeed, most Jamaicans feel there should be bilingual schools.





As we have made clear in these columns before, this newspaper is in absolutely no doubt that if Jamaica expects to grow and to prosper, it has to have an educated workforce, capable of managing and manipulating information and technology. And we have to be adept at working in the language of international commerce, science and technology, which happens to be English.



But we make an error, we believe, in assuming that English is the primary language of Jamaica and that the majority of the Jamaican people are competent in its use. It is hardly true that most people can cross naturally and easily between English and Jamaican patois, or that even if people do not speak English well, they certainly understand it.
We have long accepted the fallacy of that argument.




What for us is relatively recent is a position of what to do about the problem of educating a work force that is internationally competitive in an education system that is based on English, when the majority of the people being catered to by that system are not proficient in English.




This newspaper has concluded that the crisis in education is so deep and the threats so wide that we can no longer pander to the arrogance of the minority who continue to insist on holding to a course that has delivered us to only where we are, rather than becoming creative in the effort to get to where we know we must be. In other words, we support the use of all available tools and processes in the effort to deliver decent education to all Jamaicans, not only those who are either bilingual or clearly proficient in English.




In this regard, we are willing to try everything. Including experiments like the one being conducted by the Department of Linguistics at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies and reported on by the Sunday Observer.



As we have argued before, it is our view that there has to be an acceptance that English is not the natural, primary language of Jamaica and that it should be taught as a separate language. Don't assume that the children who enter school already have a decent foundation in spoken or written English. So we have to get back to basics, teaching English as a foreign language, very much as a teacher may do with French or Spanish.




We also believe that where appropriate, teachers with the requisite skills may find it of benefit to supplement their pedagogy in English with Jamaican patois interventions. The point is, we should be about delivering education - by all means possible.



This is not about displacing English as the primary language of instruction and education in Jamaica, rather, it is about giving all the help it can get once that does not undermine the quality of the instruction being delivered.
It is about being pragmatic.


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Da smadi de se ebriting mi di'a se in ya. Likl, likl wi a com to wi sensiz man. Ai taim no?

BlackStar had posted something (before the board change) which suggested that our CXC results in Spanish are better than those in English. So we have to ask ourselves what it is about the teaching and evaluation of our official language that is failing our students.

[Blackstar*]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

So, Jamaicans do better in Spanish than English...

[ QUOTE ]
Don't demean Patois

Sunday, November 20, 2005


Dear Editor,

This longtime debate about "Patois and/or English" in schools is foolish and boring. All the highbrows here do not understand why it is so important to read and write and speak one's mother tongue properly. It is a sick joke, and deeply unfair, when Jamaica's students have to take their exams in a language that is not their own.

Do German or Danish or Dutch students have to take their exams in English only because their languages are similar to that language, even "first cousins"? No. They learn English as a second language (ESL). And this the people in the English-speaking Caribbean should do, too.

In the Seychelles, a former French, later English colony, now a Commonwealth country, the pupils in basic school first learn Sesellois (a French Creole). Two years later, in primary school, they start to learn English, later French, too. The younger the children, the easier it is for them to learn a language.

To teach English as a second language it is important that the teachers learn a different methodology, another didactics. This is badly missing in Jamaica and the rest of the English-speaking Caribbean. The proof of this statement? The CXC results in Spanish in Jamaica are far better than those in English. As long as English in schools here is taught the way it has been for donkey years the results will be appalling.
I am,


Pepe Zabl
Long Bay
Portland

Link

[/ QUOTE ]

[Blackstar*]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

In related news... [ QUOTE ]
After 26 years' work, Bible translated into Gullah
endangered language of West African slaves

Sunday, November 27, 2005

ST HELENA ISLAND, South Carolina, USA (AP) - More than a quarter century after the laborious work began, the New Testament has finally been translated into Gullah, the creole language spoken by slaves and their descendants for generations along the sea islands of the Southeast US coast.

Gullah is an oral language, so the translation was painstaking, beginning in 1979 with a team of Gullah speakers who worked with Pat and Claude Sharpe, translation consultants with Wycliffe Bible Translators.


St Helena Island, South Carolina, USA - Ervena Faulkner, the co-manager of history and culture at the Penn Centre, holds a copy of De Nyew Testament, Wednesday, November 9, 2005 in St Helena Island. The New Testament has been recently translated into Gullah, the creole language spoken by slaves and their descendants for generations along the sea islands of America's Southeast coast.

Many efforts have been made over the years to preserve Gullah, which mixed West African languages with English, and experts believe the translated Bible will be a major contribution towards that goal.

"I think this makes the language universal," said Ervena Faulkner, co-manager of history and culture at the Penn Centre, which is dedicated to preserving the threatened sea island culture.

"People have done Gullah cookbooks, they have done African-American sayings, they have done proverbs," Faulkner said. "But for the Bible to go out with the Gullah sends a message. It means we can speak the Word."

Nestled amid spreading oaks dripping Spanish moss on this island just east of Beaufort, the centre is located on the site of the Penn School, which was founded in 1862 to educate slaves newly freed by advancing Union troops during the American Civil War.

The culture - called Gullah in the Carolinas and Geechee in Florida and Georgia - remained intact with descendants of slaves because of the isolation of the region's sea islands. Now, about 250,000 Gullahs live in the four-state coastal area and about 10,000 of them speak Gullah as their main language.

De Nyew Testament, published by the American Bible Society, went on sale this month. As an example, the verse John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God," was translated to read, "Fo God mek de wol, de Wod been dey. De Wod been dey wid God, an de Wod been God. - De Good Nyews Bout Jedus Christ Wa John Write 1:1."

The Bible is written with the English translation in the margins. "That's the beauty of the way it's written," said Emory Campbell, who retired three years ago after 22 years as executive director at the Penn Centre. "The non-Gullah speakers can easily translate what the written Gullah is about. In a way, we are going to be training other people how to speak Gullah."

For generations, the language was something native speakers tried to abandon, because they feared it would hurt their chances of getting ahead in the wider world.

"It was a put-down," Campbell recalled. "You were looked on as being ignorant and at a low intelligence level if that's the language you spoke. We tried at all costs to avoid speaking it."

For that reason, Campbell at first would not help with the translation, until he spoke with a professor from the University of California who told him Gullah is indeed a language.

"I thought then it was a legitimate project," he said.

Creole languages develop when speakers of two languages who can't understand each other remain in long contact, as the African slaves did with their masters.

David Frank, a translation consultant who joined the project after Pat Sharpe died in 2002, said Gullah was frequently dismissed as "broken English", not a language in its own right.

"But that is the standard perception of creole languages that doesn't reflect the understanding of those languages and what they are," said Frank, a creole expert.

There are structural differences between Gullah and English which justify Gullah being recognised as a separate language, Frank said.

The translation was based on several different versions of the New Testament, along with varied Bible commentaries. Some of the Bible books were released when they were completed, with the Gospel of Luke published in 1994 and the Gospel of John released two years ago.

Dolores Pringle, head of the Penn Centre board of trustees, said the Bible can help blacks connect with their heritage.

"It can strengthen our relationship back to West Africa," she said. "Every group that has emigrated to this country has had a very strong connection back to their home country whether it's Italy, Ireland or whether it's England," she said. "I'm not sure our African-American youth have had that kind of connection back to Africa."

With the New Testament finished, talk has started of translating the Old Testament into Gullah - a task that could also take years. "It would not be beyond us," Campbell said.

"We would be glad to make sure that the Word is in our language throughout," he said. "I hope that more younger people will join the team and move forward." Source

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[Dr.Dudd]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

And then there was the fabled "Tower of Babel". Those who intend to devide and conquor will always encourage and promote lingual division.
As They use Papiamento to exclude the blacks from the tourists in The Neterlands Anteles,so they are trying to do in Jamaica.
The divisions will not work in Jamaica,not at the expense if the majority.
Any step tp further encourage the use of patois in education is a backward step. There is not enough money to properly teach english,so that the ke8ds are profi]idient at it but they want to further reduce the level of emersion in the subject.
Jamaican kids are not profecient in English because of the limited emersion they experience in the subject.
..and the comparisin to the achievement in Spanish is like apples to mangoes. The level of profiency required in Spanish is much lower for an equvalent pass as in English.
Believe it or not many people who cant pass English in an english speaking country (and there aree many ,even in the Us and UK) can actually teach it in countries where ir is taught as a second language. ( many do so in Japan,and China is opening that country's education to that too. <font color="blue"> </font> <font color="blue"> </font>
Simply because the level of profiency in the mother tongue is much higher,than that of any foreign language.

[Andronian]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

[ QUOTE ]

And then there was the fabled "Tower of Babel". Those who intend to devide and conquor will always encourage and promote lingual division.
As They use Papiamento to exclude the blacks from the tourists in The Neterlands Anteles,so they are trying to do in Jamaica.
The divisions will not work in Jamaica,not at the expense if the majority.


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All who love to invoke the "Tower of Babel" as some kind of warning of impdending disaster seem to forget that the fact is that mankind speaks different languages. Our reality IS the "Tower of Babel". Pretending the other languages don't exist only serves to disenfranchise their speakers.

Besides, lack of official recognition won't necessarily make other languages and cultures go away. Patois and Jamaican folk culture have survived for centuries despite being officially ignored and even disliked.

BTW, I never knew that all tourists speak dutch?
Also, how will official recognition of patois be against the majority when the majority speak it...lol?

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Any step tp further encourage the use of patois in education is a backward step.

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Any further mortgaging of our culture is backward step. 'Di aiya monki clym di mo im ekspoaz.' A we dat com fram? Monki de a JA? Erase a language and you erase a people. The root of poverty is Latin America and the Caribbean is not our languages. I had typed up a much longer post on this but the board threw it away and I can't be bothered to retype it. Suffice to say, afta wi don dash we wi kolcha wi a go a wanda ou com wi stil de inna pavati. Ask all the english speaking blacks in America who after having failed at acceptance by white America continue to fight for some sense of their own identity. Indeed, it's somewhat ironic that english speaking blacks are among the lowest on the ladder of social perception in America. For example, if you speak Spanish you may not necessarily be considered 'black' even if you are.

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There is not enough money to properly teach english,so that the ke8ds are profi]idient at it but they want to further reduce the level of emersion in the subject.
Jamaican kids are not profecient in English because of the limited emersion they experience in the subject.


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Patois is our natural language the way Spanish is the natural language of Cuba. You automatically get immersed in the natural language that you and your parents and friends speak. The way to teach a new language is not to try to eradicate the old. I know this was the policy of the slave drivers but I don't think that is something we ought to emulate.

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and the comparisin to the achievement in Spanish is like apples to mangoes. The level of profiency required in Spanish is much lower for an equvalent pass as in English.


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That's why I say our assumptions as far as both english pedagogy and evaulation is concerned are incorrect. We treat english as if every child goes to primary school with a reasonable proficiency in it already. This is not true. English is by and large NOT Jamaica's natural language.

Our precious education dollars might be better spent engaging students (at least for the first few grades) in a language that they already know perfectly. Might we be fooling ourselves that we are teaching them when all they're really doing is tuning the teacher out? In many cases teachers already have to use patois to truly achieve cooperation from students. Programs like the BEP are vital to help us learn how to systematize such informal usage.

[Andronian]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

Go here if you wish:

http://www.kreyol.com/dictionary/creole.html

Replace Kreole with Patois, Haiti with Jamaica, and French with English and you have Jamaica.

[ QUOTE ]
Language usually complicated interactions between members of the elite and the masses. Haitians of all classes took pride in Creole as a means of expression and as the national tongue. {I think we associate Patois with being Jamaican as well}Nevertheless, many monolingual and bilingual Haitians regarded Creole as a nonlanguage, claiming that "it has no rules." {Same contradictory attitude exists here}Thus, the majority of the population did not value their native language and built a mystique around French. At the same time, almost every bilingual Haitian had ambivalent feelings about using French and did so uncomfortably. In Creole the phrase "to speak French" means "to be a hypocrite." {I guess this is like spiiki-spoki in Jamaica. Using 'high language' in an informal situation is definitely viewed with suspicion}


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The use of French in public life excluded the Creole-speaking majority from politics, government, and intellectual life. Bilingual families used French primarily for formal occasions. {We use carefully enunciated english in formal occasions as well} Because Creole was the language of informal gatherings, it was filled with slang and was used for telling jokes. Haitian French lacked these informal qualities. {Likewise standard Jamaican English is a stilted formality. Our most naked thoughts come to us in our language.}Monolingual Creole speakers avoided formal situations where their inability to communicate in French would be a disadvantage or an embarrassment.[...]Middle-class bilinguals in Port-au-Prince suffered the greatest disadvantage because they frequently encountered situations in which the use of French would be appropriate, but their imperfect mastery of the language tended to betray their lower-class origins. {Yeah, spiiki-spoki an slip.}


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[Haitians: fighting for freedom since their idependence 200 years ago including paying 150 million franc 'debt' to France for daring to be liberate themselves and suffering a 19 year US occupation between 1915 and 1934 during which an armed renegade military was established and slavery like corvees (chain gangs) were used. Today they languish in a state of anomie after their democratically elected leader was deposed by a US instigated coup d'etat. Tink se US kyan av blak piipl a du az dem lyk inna dem bakyaad. Yu no si se JA onda manaz tu sayk a IMF 'asterity policies' an debt. Az fi di res a di riijon, Cuba de onda embaago an Puerto Rico a wan US colony! Maybe Hugo Chavez has a point...]

Anyway, mi a tel yu, emancipation no don yet. Wi a fi staat valyu wiself an stop judging ourselves by standards that were designed to humiliate us.

[Andronian]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

http://www.educoas.org/portal/bdigital/c...s&amp;navid=201
[ QUOTE ]

There were also weaknesses in dictation which the governor of Jamaica attributed to the difficulties of English orthography. He had observed that the teachers themselves did not pronounce the words clearly. At the same time, the children did not know the language well enough to follow the sound when it was pronounced well. This was due to the fact that they spoke the Jamaican creole—“a barbarous jargon of English words intermixed with others of Spanish and French origin, grafted on an African skin,” and forming “in fact, a patois.”


[/ QUOTE ]

See where some of you got your inherited views of our language? From racist white english governors.

Afta dem fous wok wi fou faada an ty dem up an duudu inna dem mout an mek dem swala it fi ponish dem, a slave jriva dem gi moni kom friidom tym. Not too long after independence the home of the former richest city and the former english 'pearl' of the antilles had to make a pact with the IMF devil for lack of funds. We have been in debt ever since and most Jamaican tax payer money goes into the pockets of foreign creditors. Furthermore, Jamaicans now need visas to go to england anyway and Jamaicans in england experience racism.

Therefore the english haven't done anything for us for which we ought to be caretakers of the purity of their language out of gratitude. Our forefathers set the batter of the english lexicon to bake in a tin of african syntax and constructions.
A fi wi kayk dat.
Eni ou di spirit tek wi fi chat wi chat.

IMO, part of Jamaica's problem is the importation of American materialistic ideals, while ironically, American imperialist manoeuvering makes the attainment of such ideals impossible for most residents of the Caribbean and Latin American region. Some more emphasis on 'ebry mikl mek a mokl' an 'wan wan koko ful baaskit' as conveyed in our language, might do our young people a world of good.

So, as I said, we learn their language, according to their rules as far as we feel it might benefit us (I've had to spell english words differently when in america). However the pedestal on which english is placed from which it is encouraged to stamp out our local tongue (the conveyor of our centuries old folk culture) is ridiculous and shameful. On what basis does it deserve this ideological elevation? Some foul depredations have befallen fair Xaymaca under English dominion.

Therefore, doesn't our inability to even recognize our language prove any notion of Jamaican independence a farce? Does it not support the slavery justification that black people are fundamentally childlike looking to the white man for paternal guidance, care and approval?

Anyway, let me hold my tongue because it seems that we are making progress in spite of the elitist minority.

[Andronian]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

Another reference on the topic.

The author has some rather peculiar designations for the Jamaican language (AfroJam and Jamaican Ebonics: I guess he's american or writing for that audience) but it's still interesting.

http://www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/upd4-2.html#h5

He actually argues that Jamaican is superior to english because every english grammatical construct that it dispenses with is unnecessary and it supplies a few that english needs and doesn't have (like a 2nd person plural [unu]). I think he likens it to the way many romance language threw off some encumberances of classical latin such as noun declension (though Romanian still has it).

A few little quotes from the article:
I used [...] where I deleted sentences in a quote.

[ QUOTE ]

Africans felt the need in English for a distinct second person plural pronoun, to which they were accustomed in their own languages.[...]In Jamaica this same second person plural pronoun takes the form uno or unu, which is the form it has in the Igbo language of Nigeria, the most likely donor language.


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One of the commonest and most useful innovations of all the English Creoles is the use of simple no for negation. This was probably derived from one of the two Iberian languages, Spanish or Portuguese, either during the Spanish occupation of Jamaica from 1492-1655, or from the 15th century Africanization of Portuguese along the Guinea Coast. [...] In Spanish they simply say no vemos/" we no see," which is exactly what we say in Afrojam, only we spell it wi no si.


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[ QUOTE ]

AfroJam, like Spanish and some African languages, divides the verb "to be" into "to be in a place" (like Spanish estar) and "to be someone or something" (like Spanish ser). The latter, the copula, is the Jamaican verb a which we just discussed: Man a heavy load/ A man is a heavy load. "To be in a place" is expressed by the verb de (pronounced deh, like a clipped "day") which may have a double Anglo-African derivation. It may be the English adverb there deh, which in Jamaican is a homonym of the verb de. Or it may derive from an African verb de in the Twi language of Ghana, meaning "to be situated, to remain, to live, to rest." Ewe, cousin to Twi, also has de/ to be. Further afield, even Old Nubian, the language of the Christian kingdoms of medieval Nubia, has a verb da meaning "to be, to exist" and also "there is, there are." This may seem irrelevant, as no Nubian slaves are known to have been brought to Jamaica, but in fact the Ashanti and some other members of the Kwa sub-group of languages, such as the Yoruba, claim an ancient Eastern origin. We just saw that Igbo shares the pronoun unu with Nubian and Nilotic.

Getting back to AfroJam, to say "there are many people here" one would say nuff people de ya.

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[ QUOTE ]

It [the Jamaican verbal system] is characterized by a single unchanging stem for each verb, preceded by a tense particle, which may be a condensation of an original auxiliary verb. Thus the vast jungle of English stem-changing and irregular verbs, which have to be laboriously memorized by anyone learning English as a second language, has been done away with at one stroke. No more "go, went, gone", "think, thought" or even "sing, sang , sung." Has any great loss occurred here? One does not need irregular verbs to discuss nuclear physics! Furthermore this system allows for easy absorption of verb roots from any and all foreign languages: a single unchanging form is borrowed and easily put through its tense changes.[...]No wonder a child who thinks in this language has trouble trying to translate his thoughts into standard English, especially when this process of mental translation is given no explicit recognition in the classroom!
[article has conjugation of se (say)]


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This Afro-Jamaican verbal system has an almost exact counterpart in Afro-Haitian, which has thus cut its way free of the even more tangled jungle of French conjugations and irregular verbs.


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The seeming ease with which the oppressed Africans of Jamaica and Haiti have streamlined, simplified, and rationalized the archaic tongues of their former slavemasters will probably be seen from the perspective of the coming third milennium AD as nothing short of revolutionary.


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We can learn a lot about ourselves through studying our language, its structure and origins.
Don't dis it or else... [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70368-hoppingmad.gif[/img]

Seriously, I would have loved to have learned all this at school in Jamaica. Jamaican schools should be the respository and disseminator of this kind of information on our own tongue. Too bad we were too busy swallowing our oppressor's lies, wallowing in self hatred and the belief that the english language (in which the plural of sheep is sheep according to someone) is some model of perfection to which others are subordinate.

[Andronian]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

A good response to the observer editorial.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/letters/html/20051202T190000-0500_93767_OBS_TEACHING_IN_PATOIS.asp

[ QUOTE ]

Dear Editor,

I wish to thank you for your editorial of Saturday, November 26, "Let's be pragmatic about teaching in patois". To date this has been one of the most cogent media pieces on debate regarding Jamaican/English in schools.

For years many in this country have argued for English to remain the sole language of instruction. It seems that proponents of this argument have not realised that this approach has left us with lower proficiency in English, not to speak of the decreasing competence in other subjects taught in that language.

The extent to which teaching in English to predominanty Jamaican-speaking students affects performance on examinations set in English remains to be studied. But it would be surprising if it did not have a negative impact. If instruction in English worked as well as the English-only proponents argue, we would have seen, after all these years of using English as the sole language of instruction, more Jamaicans gaining access to the world through that language. Unfortunately, the records show otherwise.

As a teacher of language (English and French and at one time, Spanish), I have argued in the press and other fora for an approach to language education that appreciates languages as tools that aid in acquiring information and particular cognitive skills. Each language studied provides increased access to information and knowledge but also to the acquisition of a subsequent language. The refusal to recognise Jamaican as a tool through which our children may gain information about the world is tragic, not only because it devalues their primary means of accessing information, but also because it fails to appreciate the role of that language in the successful acquisition of their second, English.

Preoccupations about learning English alone do not make English speakers. The absurdity that the promotion of Jamaican will prevent Jamaican students from learning English is intellectual blackmail. It suggests that Jamaican students, unlike their counterparts in the rest of the world, innately lack the capacity to learn a second language because of the fact that they already speak another. This view has led to an arrogant language education practice that insists on our students accessing knowledge through a language that is not their own.

Linguistics tells us that any normal child, under the appropriate conditions, will learn any language. Let us look towards providing the appropriate conditions for our children to learn English rather than the persistent denigration of Jamaican. While exposure to English is one of the conditions for achieving proficiency in English, there is a difference between linguistic immersion and linguistic submersion.

Without the recognition of Jamaican and its structured use in at least the primary system, we produce students who struggle against the tide of English. When they get to the tertiary system, people like me have the joy (!) of attempting remediation. Alas, by then, it is too late. Ironically, the Anglophiles succeed in reinforcing the position they so stridently argue against.

But perhaps that is what they want. In this extremely classist society, scoffing at people who drop "h" or who hypercorrect remains one of the most potent tools among those for whom class distinctions, marked by language, are critical.


Dr R Anthony Lewis
Lecturer, Communication
and French
University of Technology, Jamaica
[email protected]



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[wolmersboy]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

If you truly believe that patwah or patois is equivalent to English, then why the need to teach it in school? It is understood by all Jamaicans--we are fluent in it by the time most of us start school! I went to school in Jamaica--I immigrated from England. I learned how to speak patois with the best of them but I still did well in English but not as well as some of the guys in my school who were born and raised in Jamaica! I think that our people are smart enough to be fluent in English and patois! After living in/being around Americans for the last 17 years of my life, I still value patois and never miss a chance to speak it to any yardie that I run into.

This whole debate about culture and self-esteem doesn't make much sense to me. Immersing ourselves in patois at school? We already do that!!! My teachers did not speak the Queen's English at Vaz, Shortwood and Wolmers!!! And I'm glad they didn't! [img]/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Speaking of which...if you ever get a chance to go to England you will be shocked! The language spoken on the street is NOT the Queen's English! However, there is no rush to change the textbook's in England over to rhyming cockney slang or any of the other regional dialects found in Great Britain. Even here in Germany, I am beginning to learn that people from different parts of the country use different words and have different accents.

I love patois. I just don't see how making it the official language improves or changes anything for our children in Jamaica's schools. I mean, 30 years from now, when our first female Prime Minister, wants to have a private chat with the Australian Prime Minister, after addressing the U.N., will she need to drag an interpreter along with her because she was totally immersed in patois throughout her school life--and never learned the basics of English?

Patois is a living language. It's not the same now as it was back in 1975. How do you capture that in a book? Will we have "proper" patois and "back-a-bush-patwah"? Which patwah will we teach? Town or country?

Just having a little fun! My main point is that there will always be differences in speech among people. People from Kingston will never sound the same as folks from Clarendon whether we make patois, English or Mandarin the official language. Just because we sound a little different does not make one better than the other. No different with this patois/English debate. One is not better than the other and neither one by themself gives a Jamaican their identity. We are far more than the language we speak. Far more!!!

Big Up all Jamaican.Com Massive!!! [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70409-waytogo.gif[/img]

[Andronian]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

Hi wolmerssboy.

Welcome to the discussion.

I read your all of post and just a few points...

1) The difference between patwa and english is not just the difference between cockney and the Recieved Pronunciation. Yes we pronounce things very differently (often changing consonants and dropping sylabbles) but the grammar is the biggest departure from english. 'A we yu en de' and 'where were you' are entirely different constructions. It's interesting how most of us who grow up around both patwa and english (myself included) fail to recognize how different the two can be.

2)The existence of different varieties of patwa (lol, a 'dialect' with dialects) does not prevent standadization of the language any more than the existence of southern US, new england and Jamaican varieties english prevents english from being written down.

3)The most important point is that many Jamaicans don't understand or speak english all that well. You waste your time and money telling students things they don't understand. If teachers are currently teaching in patwa yet expecting children to write their essays in english we have more problems on our hands. The answer is simple, give patois it's proper place as a means of expression.

4)Comfort with english is a prerequisite to doing well in Jamaican school from the very first grades. This is prejudicial since most students (especially in rural areas) don't come to school with the presumed level of comfort. While they are struggling in english class they are failing other subjects because those are also taught in english. It's double jeopardy to be punished for english class in every other subject as well. English class should be devoted to teaching english from 'first principles' while students are quickly taught to read and write in patois (which they natively understand) in which their other classes may be conducted. More and more english can be phased into the other subject areas in higher grades. There is a difference between immersing people in a language and drowning them in it.

5)Finally, the notion that english is going to disappear if patois is given the proper place in schools is mostly paranoia, in my opinion. It's just a flawed 'slippery slope' argument. In Sweden, for example, english is taught as a subject in schools and exists alongside Swedish (which is what other subjects are taught in). Therefore, most people under a certain age understand english. However, in Jamaica where english has been firmly entrenched through over 300 years of exploitive colonialism english is going to disappear without a trace if patois appears on the printed page. I don't buy it.

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[Dr.Dudd]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

the problem is that English has never been properly taught in the majority of Jamaican schools.
As a matter of fact at one stage (I don't know if it happens today),the more successful students of english were usually taught be teachers imported from UK.
A major problem with Jamaican kids learning the mastrey of English is simply one of the skills of the instructors and the techniques used.
....and please syop posting that posters are suggesting that patois is inferior,or speakers of patois are,because ther is no evidence of this being suggested,by anyone other than when you suggest it in your posts.
All I am intrested in is to use the most appropriate tool for the preparing the jamaican students for the new world order,which is one of economies without boprders.
My forebears,myself and my offspring got that opportunity,mostly when first class education was only available to th eelite,and I would like to see it available to all Jamaicans,especially with the upgtading of high schools,and the opportunities that should bring to them.
It is time we stop having our people being kicked atound and humilated in other countries,and I think a first class education will go a lomg waAy in correcting this.

[Andronian]

Re: Majority favour patois as an official language of Ja

Dr Dudd, the 'new world order' is one of American Imperialism and utter military dominance. I'm sorry to break it to you but some people are not intended to be a part of it regardless of what language they speak.

The Project for the new american century [ http://www.newamericancentury.org/ ] is a Washington-based think tank founded by men currently running the US government.

Its statement of principles: http://www.newamericancentury.org/st...principles.htm

[ QUOTE ]
• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global
responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;


• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;


• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;


• we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.


[/ QUOTE ]

This has no official link to the US government BUT, as I said, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz were founding members. [If you go to the above 'statement of principles' link you'll see their name displayed at the bottom] These are currently among the most powerful men in the US administration and Wolfowitz is now the head of the World Bank.

In a PNAC report from September 2000 that advocates the expansion of the US military, its influence and the removal of regimes not favorable to American interests [http://www.newamericancentury.org/Re...asDefenses.pdf ] it states:

[ QUOTE ]
Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is
likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a
new Pearl Harbor.


[/ QUOTE ]

One year later we had that 'catalyzing event' [9/11] and it has been used as a pretext for two wars, increases in military spending and suppression of rights of American citizens in the shape of the patriot act. This is why some Americans believe that 9/11 was, at the very least, allowed to happen. It was assumed that in their terror, Americans would then give the adminstration a blank cheque to pursue their objectives. That is a disturbing thought but I can't dismiss it entirely.

The truth about globalisation and an 'economy without borders' is that it doesn't really benefit most of the world's population. It is what allows American/European companies to suck oil out of Nigeria, making it among the top 10 oil producing countries, while the majority of the population is dirt poor. Have you every wondered why so many resource rich countries in Africa can't provide the most basic necessities for their people? The reason why people leave their homes and go to America and Europe for 'better lives' is because most of the world resources end up there even if they are originally found in other countries. So the roots of global poverty are far more complicated than whether a country speaks english or not.

However, I advocate learning english and other foreign languages. I have been taught French and Spanish and in both cases teachers made reference to a language I knew already: english. I don't know why we believe that in order to teach english we have to erase all memory of and make no reference to the student's initial tongue: patwa. It is a really stupid approach. At some stage, immersion in a language can help in its acquisition but you have to be given a life jacket first.

[In some places in Jamaica patois is a shadow of its true richness. If you are from those places you mightn't understand.]