Janine Mendes-Franco (World Voices) writes “St. Lucia plans to implement the educating of Kwéyòl in colleges — however is it sufficient to revitalise the language?” stressing that “Mom tongue develops a toddler’s private, social and cultural id.” Listed below are excerpts:
English could be the official language of St. Lucia, however Kwéyòl — typically known as Patois or Patwa — is broadly spoken; its distinctive intonation makes its means into the gorgeous lilt of the St. Lucian accent, even when persons are talking English. So frequent is using Kwéyòl (a language that may be a mixture of syntax from West African languages and Seventeenth-century regional French vocabulary, a mirrored image of the Caribbean area’s colonial previous), that many authorities communiqués and even media newscasts are carried out in each Kwéyòl and English. Now, the main target is on formally educating the language in St. Lucian colleges.
Information of this most up-to-date initiative has been garnering public consideration for a few years now, however on-line dialogue in regards to the significance of mainstreaming the Kwéyòl language has been occurring for for much longer, region-wide, with some St. Lucians worrying in regards to the language dying out inside two generations if not handed on to the nation’s youth.
In a WhatsApp dialog, Hubert Devonish, linguist and Professor Emeritus on the College of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, put the initiative in context. After the St. Lucia Labour Social gathering (SLP) received the nation’s first post-independence elections in 1979 and Kenny Anthony turned the nation’s minister of training, a seminar was held to plan an ordinary writing system for Kwéyòl. That is the system, Professor Devonish says, that “turned established and can almost definitely be utilized in formal training now underneath the brand new coverage.”
Politics being what it’s, nevertheless, progress was stalled when administrations modified, and even when the SLP was re-elected within the mid Nineteen Nineties, this time with Anthony as prime minister, not a lot was carried out across the difficulty of language. Whereas the present SLP authorities plans to alter all that, Professor Devonish famous: “In 1980, nearly all of youngsters getting into the varsity system [had] Kwéyòl as a primary language. And nearly all of the others had some competence within the language. Forty-two years on, in line with the language training coverage, lower than 20 p.c of kids getting into college have Kwéyòl as a local or house language. A coverage which, had it been adopted and carried out 40 years in the past would have supplied efficient training within the youngsters’s first language is now one which goes to must take the type of educating Kwéyòl as a second language for almost all of the youngsters in colleges.”
Higher late than by no means? Professor Devonish isn’t so positive. Historical past, he says, is “full of instances the place the introduction into training of a low status language kills it fairly than helps and promotes it as a language of on a regular basis utilization”:
Although the introduction of Kwéyòl into the varsity system might play an necessary position within the revival and revitalisation of the language, this isn’t the place the battle will probably be received. Except there’s a dedication on the a part of abnormal individuals to make use of it of their properties, with their youngsters, in on a regular basis life, in jokes, at play and at work, even when it’s hectic and uncomfortable as a result of they don’t seem to be but relaxed with utilizing the language in these contexts, the varsity might find yourself being the graveyard for the language.
[. . .] Nationwide id, significantly in relation to language, is a lived id. Utilizing an endangered language (and that’s what Kwéyòl is true now in St. Lucia) at school, is simply helpful as a part of a collection of different nationwide measures to assist the language and isn’t an alternative choice to such measures.
The embracing of Kwéyòl in St. Lucia has, to a point, included integrating the language into the humanities and tradition; the nation even has two bilingual Kwéyòl-English dictionaries (additionally obtainable as an app) [. . .].
[. . .] Opinions in regards to the worth of Jamaican Patois might be charged. When there was speak of constructing Spanish the island’s official second language again in 2016, there was an outcry, with many individuals feeling that Patois had, as common, been discounted.
What in regards to the impression that Creole languages are broadly thought-about to be second-class languages? Trinbagonian linguist Jo-Anne Ferreira defined the origin of that notion, significantly with regard to the French-lexicon Creoles, in an e-mail interview: “Haiti, and French Guiana, Guadeloupe and Martinique (the latter three being the départements français d’Amérique or DFA) have rejected the correct title Patois and the label patois, as a result of patois in French and in France refers to a set of regional, rural kinds of the French language. (Sadly, socioeconomics and sociopolitics typically trigger rural to be equated with ignorant and inferior.) Haitian and French Caribbean Creole audio system (and others) usually don’t use the title Patois (to keep away from confusion with French patois), just because French-lexicon Creole just isn’t French — the languages simply share vocabulary sources. They reject the identification of their speech as a ‘patois’ of French. They go for the label Kreyòl/Créole which marks their speech as belonging to a language separate from French. (In France, Créole is definitely France’s #1 langue régionale, not a dialect or patois of French!) The naming of the language as Kreyòl/Créole avoids non-existent hyperlinks to and pointless (and odious) comparisons with French (particularly for these territories which nonetheless have some ties to French and France)* avoids stigmatisation, and is about language equality, not superiority or inferiority. (*Be aware that Trinidad, Grenada, and Venezuela deal with Patois as an autonym, with no disrespect, due to completely different sociohistorical and sociolinguistic realities, with much less of a connection to France.)”
Professor Devonish added: “Haitian Creole is spoken by two-thirds of the [Caribbean Community] CARICOM inhabitants and is an official language of two-thirds of that inhabitants. Thus, French-lexicon Creole is the preeminent language inside that buying and selling bloc, no matter our personal perceptions would possibly inform us.”
In line with its assist for multilingualism as a software for inclusion, social integration and the sustainable growth objective of high quality training, The United Nations Instructional, Scientific and Cultural Group (UNESCO) helps St. Lucia with an implementation plan for its language training coverage. Working periods with stakeholders like academics, curriculum designers, researchers, and many others. are carded for July.
For full article, see https://globalvoices.org/2022/05/30/st-lucia-plans-to-implement-the-teaching-of-kweyol-in-schools-but-is-it-enough-to-revitalise-the-language/