A Different, not an Incorrect, Way of Speaking, Pt 6
Bas Panday may be in a spot of trouble these days, but one of the things about him as politician that endears him to people is his ability to bond with a Trinbagonian audience by talking with them, even about serious matters, in Creole. When he uses Creole (mixing it with English, it is as if he is talking with, or across to, his audience - instead of to, or down to, them - and one effect is a diminishing of metaphysical distance between him and them, a sporadic habitation of their space, he and them speaking the same language when there.
Bas waiting for Robbie
He told an audience earlier this week, 'Ah waitin for Robinson. Ah waitin to question him in court!' And, despite the widening of his spot of trouble and the dwindling of his credibility as a consequence, he bonded with his audience in the same linguistic space.
Was he talking incorrectly and 'corruptly'? (What a word in the context of these days!) Let me rephrase the question: Was he using incorrect and 'corrupt' speech? (Can't get away from it, Bas!) He wasn't, as I have tried to scientifically teach in previous columns. But, ironically, Bas may think he was.
He told me as much a year or two ago when we shared the head table of a credit union function at the Trinidad Hilton. He asked me about 'this nonsense of teaching CreoleŽ in the schools, whether it wasn't a misguided idea, whether Creole was genuine language, and why didn't teachers focus on teaching real English instead. I seized the opportunity to explain certain things about Creole in particular and language in general. I told him that no one was suggesting, not yet anyway, that Creole be taught in the schools, but rather that it be taken into account when English was being taught since the vast majority of students start and continue school using a lot of Creole, which is their home and community language. I told him that Creole is indeed a language with its own rules though it shares a vocabulary with English, and I gave him a few examples of Creole's rule-based, systematic status. He listened with such appreciation that I suggested that he invite me to talk to him and his cabinet colleagues on the matter in an educational workshop.
He promised me nothing, but I expected a call, which I am yet to receive. Perhaps he was not that enthused, seeing workshop themes such as cabinet teambuilding and joint responsibility as far more important. Perhaps he was distracted by heavy matters of state - like providing water for all by 2000, rehabilitating our roads, ensuring universal secondary education, signing deals in relation to desalination and excess electricity, and reining in runaway horses in the state enterprises. Or perhaps it is because Robbie took away the prime ministership from him, handing it to Pat Manning whose party didn't win the last elections?
The call may still come, but in the meantime I must occupy, as the good book says. And so, I shall spend a little time in this column explaining the Creole grammar contained in Bas' salivating statement of anticipation about Robbie in court.
Ah waitin for Robinson, he said. Ah waitin to question him in court. Some people, like my good friends Colin and Stephan, and even Bas himself, would say that Bas spoke corrupt English. After all, he changed 'I' to 'Ah' (twice) and 'waiting' to 'waitin', and left out 'am' from the auxiliary or helping verb 'to be'. Bas' speech is therefore corrupt in pronunciation (he made the two-vowel or diphthongal sound in 'I' shorter by removing the second vowel, and he bit off the 'g' sound in 'waiting') as well as grammar (he took away the auxiliary verb from before 'waiting'. Corrupt!
And yet, if you study the words Bas uttered, in themselves and not from the perspective of what you've been taught about English grammar, you will find some interesting things. One, 'Ah' is the unstressed form of the first person subject pronoun while 'I' is the stressed form; Creole pronouns have stressed and unstressed forms (another example: shi vs. she). (By the way, 'Ah' is also English. Consider 'Ah mean, Bas is a shrewd politician'). Two, omission of the 'g' in the participle 'waiting' is systematic in Creole; consider also 'Bas talking/foolin/jokin/tremblin'. (By the way, 'g'-omission is also heard in informal Standard English (listen carefully!). Three, omission or, better, absence of the auxiliary is also systematic in Creole; consider 'Bas tremblin', 'Stephan fumin', 'Panday and the UNC suin', 'I leavin', 'Newsday irresponsible', 'Oma vex', 'The vagrants hungry'.
One of the defining features of language is systematicity or regularity of structure, and Creole obliges, just as (Standard) English. It is a different, not an incorrect, way of speaking.
One more thing on auxiliary absence. Have you noticed that even though Creole doesn't have an auxiliary in the sense explained here, it has 'is' and 'was', as in 'I is a man' and 'We was limin'? Why pick out these two from English vocabulary and reject 'am', 'are', and 'were'? Food for thought, ent?
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