Kyk-Over-Al is one of this country’s oldest and most respected literary journals. Guyana Review reprints the second part of an essay by Richard Allsopp that was first published in Kyk-Over-Al, Vol. 3, No. 11, December 1950.
The Language We Speak, II
By Richard Allsopp
In the issue of December 1949 (Volume 2, No. 9) this subject was, as was pointed out then, no more than broached and, by way of introduction, I attempted to establish an awareness of locutions most of which have an exclusive local existence or usage. The reader is referred to that article before proceeding with this one, though this one may, if so desired, be read independently.
That discussion (Essay I) ended with a warning that among the many phrases to be considered, first came origins of the terms chosen to classify the words: Localisms, Africanisms, Indianisms, etc. In other words we agreed that there are several tributaries of varying sizes flowing into the main stream of our conglomerate vocabulary, this main stream being English. But if we were to attempt to go up each tributary separately so as to get at the origins of the whole, interesting (if laborious) journeys though these may be, we would be sure to miss much that their development has in common, as well as the important question of the influence these currents have on each other when they meet in the main stream.
I find this explanation necessary as it seems at first fair to expect that we keep the classifications outlined in (I) and continue to examine them separately. That is not our purpose here but, of course, we shall need to refer to them if in the “water” we are examining we find elements obviously belonging to one or more of these tributaries. One more proviso. This is an up-close look inside, at its character, not an examination of origins nor an examination of development; these two being technical and distinct from what we are doing there. We are still as in (I) looking, and when we find are content to observe.
One certainty I think is that all the tendencies I can so far discover are known linguistic tendencies with parallels in other dialects and languages of the world. If our speech is doing or has done anything new in the field of Language I have not noticed it yet.
Image Words
Among the first things that strike a listener to the speech or a person sitting on a shop-bridge describing to his friend a cricket match, a fight, an accident, an embarrassing episode, or any incident in which human emotions are involved is the number of sound-words and gestures that go to give life to the description. Many of these words are invented as the speaker proceeds but no one is at a loss for meaning. Such words and expressions are:
Blapp, bidip, bupsen, baxen, bram, budum, etc. (falls, collisions explosions, blows of various kinds); ply, palow, etc. (bicycle tyre bursting, lashes etc); waxen, widding, wooie, etc. (ball hit through the air); “she hice (lift) he up hipbam;” “the car move off vuh-vuhm!!!
Some run into three or more reduplicated syllables; the sounds are made to suit the nature of the description. We shall never have a complete list, and it will be many decades before they begin disappearing if they ever do. They are also most noticeable among people of African descent and perhaps reflect the uncodified nature of the original dialects of our ancestors who handed down the “spirit” of imagery in their adaptations of English.
It is dangerous to carry the interpretation of a superficial observation too far but, “in searching for an explanation of this habit (which is not common to English people) it seems to me admissible that if four or five of us hear the same sound, we all tend to hear it differently. But if we four or five speak together only one mature and codified language like English, Hindustani, Portuguese, etc., we would not “hear” differently, but simply use the accepted sound word provided in that language like-“bang, boom, crash, wallop” in the case of English; or we may not use a sound-word at all. If, however, we all speak an uncodified dialect we would indeed “hear” differently (and perhaps more accurately) and in relaying the sound later on would each describe differently the sound we “heard”. Hence the multiple and unpredictable inventions.
Even if the sounds did disappear or dwindle to a small “accepted” number, we are unlikely to lose the gestures that go with any of these image-words. If it is true that some languages (French for instance) are unlikely to be spoken without gestures then it is certainly truer of the local, indeed every West Indian dialect. The word describing a hard fall would be accompanied by a vigorous downsweep of the arm with the index finger loosely flailing the thumb; the word describing a cricket ball sailing through the air would be accompanied by a swift outward stretching of the whole arm, fingers tightly together while the face carried an expression somewhat akin to horror; and so on − the bursting of the tyre, the lifting and the moving off, all would have accompanying gestures of eye, lip, arms, fingers and sometimes body and leg. The speaker needs a spacious platform for an “emotional dance” of descriptive language, that hails chiefly from Africa. What the other races in B.G. [British Guiana] have acquired of this art is chiefly from contact with the African.
Gesture is so essential a part of our dialect that it has to be given due recognition in any examination, and I have taken it here because it expresses the feeling which is at the root of the huge mass of image words. Some gestures are so powerful that they are able to stand by themselves with full meaning. Examples are the kissing of the palm of one’s hand, the casting of the hat on the ground, and that unwritable half-gesture, half expression produced by sucking the teeth as we say.
These are all three by appearance African. The first is a form of oath-taking that need not be accompanied by for-true-to-God which is its meaning. It calls to mind the North African and Middle East custom of greeting a friend by touching the heart, lips and forehead (in that order) as a mark of sincerity. In the second, we can with a little imagination see the African casting down his head-dress, thereby indicating that he would put it down or in some way lay his life at the mercy of the other speaker so sure was he of what he said. I have sometimes seen this done in Georgetown as a mark of assurance without another word from the actor. In standard English we would simply say, without gesture or intention. “I’d lay my head on a block.” As for sucking the teeth, words exist in West and East African languages which contain a sound produced by sucking air in between the teeth. What connection this may have with sulking or defiance however, as it does in our dialect, I do not know.
But the influence of gesture does not end there. The African’s sense, it seems, of physical manifestation is so strong that he has introduced a class of expression which we might put next above the folk-level image-word, and in which a physical, one might almost say personified, aspect is added to any ordinary act; or if it is already there, it is emphasised. For example:
-the policeman hang out behind him (sped after)
– jail catch him now (he has landed in jail)
– he out hand and hit him
– a push-off (an advance of payment to enable a workman to start work).
– A ground-eater (a ball that streaks along, “eats up” the ground)
– biggitive (having a bloated opinion of oneself)
Finally, the popularity and number of image-words remind us that to the minds of people consciously grasping a knowledge of a language, as the enslaved African slave did, or even striving to develop that knowledge, as the Indian, Chinese and Portuguese labourers subsequently did, the concrete rather than the abstract would appeal. A baby learning to speak and a boy learning French experience the same thing. Hence:
– the image-word would find more favour than the word that offers no immediate picture;
– the image being present the present `tense’ (or infinitive form of the verb, simply labeling its meaning) would be the most practical to use, apart from being perhaps the first grasped and semantically the easiest to retain. Hence its persistence today in the talk of most people from labourer to legislator in place of the past and other tenses.
– The future too is expressed by the present of the verb “to go,”-I . goin’ come, he goin dead, you goin’ see, etc.
– The passive voice is almost completely replaced by the active in present tense form and we hear, instead of “a house is being built around the corner “They got a house buil ‘in’ roung the corner.”
Make-do, or Key Words
After long thought I can still find no exactly appropriate term in English to describe the next class of words we shall look at. I put them next in order to the image-words, because although they are in this case regular English words, they are used in a way that would make them incomprehensible if not unrecognisable to the ear accustomed to regular international English.
Again it seems that the early Guianese learners of English (regardless of race, I think, this time) being, as labourers, anxious to convey an essential meaning and receive one in return − especially in some grave circumstance − seized hold of the most essential word in a sentence, the one that held the meaning, and got that out forcefully and early enough in the sentence to catch the hearer’s attention before failure to communicate should bring trouble. Naturally, expressions forged under such pressure were strong enough to remain and be used again and again both in similar and in less pressing circumstances until they became ordinary conversational vocabulary. In fact many have been proof against time and are with us still, so that
instead of-
1. They have been unfair to the fellow.
2. If he were so mad (crass) as to leave that gate open he would be knocked off.
3. Be careful not to get dirt on the steps that I’ve just washed down.
4. Put the fire out quickly.
5.Schol has just been dismissed
we hear-
1.They unfair the boy.
2.If he mad leave the gate open, is knock-off he get.
3.Look, don’t dirty the steps what I just wash down.
4.Out the fire!!
5.School just over
In the first three examples the vital adjectives become verbs and in one case an adjective becomes a nominative noun (knock-off). In 4 and 5, adverbs upon which the meanings depend have become verbs. The verb or action word being the most vital element of any sentence, these compulsive learners filled the place of the verb with what was for them the most vital word, be it adjective or adverb.
The next thing to note is that after this vital word had been given prominence the structure of the remainder of the sentence did not matter very much. Small details like:
(a) whether the word is a verb at all, or
(b) the way a verb ought really to be used, or
(c) the use of the correct preposition, or
(d) the differentiation of words near in meaning, etc,
were given little attention (unless they vitally affected the meaning of the sentence as described in the examples above). This made for so much ease of expression that the habit has survived with sufficient root to appear in a harvest of newspaper errors even in 1950. The following examples, with the exception of (b), have been taken from the local newspapers:
(a) “the efforts of the police were negatived”
“cricketers with reputations to upkeep”
(b) “you ain’t see the bicycle riding” (= coming)
“no potatoes ain’t putting in this pot” (= will be put).
(c) “he came with the ship” (= by)
“he dreamt his father” (= dreamt of)
“they had a quarrel over the last holidays” (= during).
(d) “keeping pigs and cows“ (= rearing pigs and cattle).
It may also be noted in the examples of (b) that transitive or “physical action” verbs are again preferred to intransitive or passive forms.
