I love dialects. An Irishman in full cry, particularly under some drink, can be a pure joy, even though we may not understand half of what he’s saying; it’s a musical experience. A Glasgow man, as they call themselves, delivering a droll report on say, a soccer game, or a political issue, can actually have you leaning forward to catch the next piece of lilt. It’s truly wonderful stuff. Among Caribbean speakers, my favourites are Jamaican and Guyanese. The latter, of course, for my own connection to it, but in fact if you pin me down, I must concede that the Jamaican dialect is king. Not only for the delightful roll of it, and for the wonderfully imaginative and musical words they concoct – like ‘jinal’ meaning ‘trickster’ – but also for the idiomatic phrases they construct that can convey sly nuances in a few words. A prime example is ‘ah wha gwan’ which means essentially ‘what’s going on’ and is therefore commonly used as a greeting between Jamaicans, but depending on the circumstances, it goes much further. With two people suspicious of each other, it can mean ‘what’s the real story’ or, as in bad news from the doctor, ‘what’s the problem’? My favourite ‘ah wha gwan’ is when it is used to mean ‘that makes no sense whatsoever.’
Using the last interpretation, here are some current real-life situations to which it would apply. In the USA, the Republican Party campaigned in the mid-term elections urging reduction of the deficit and severe cuts in government spending. “It will be tough,” said one of the budding legislators, “but we will do it.” So when these folks arrive in Washington, sharpened pencils in hand, what’s the first thing they do? They fire approximately 2,000 staff members employed by former Democratic congressmen, and promptly turn around and hire 2,500 staff members for the incoming Republicans. They also throw a lavish party for the newcomers with a ticket price of $2,500 per person. As my friend in Mandeville would say, “Ah wha gwan?”
Watching a local television programme here, I heard an engineer with this one: There are some low-lying open areas in Guyana – one up the East Coast around Hope; another on the East Bank around Diamond – that previously served as reservoirs or catchment areas in rainy seasons to mitigate flooding. For many years, in period of heavy rain, those areas would become shallow lakes holding thousands of gallons of water. Recently, with the increased demand for housing, we’re looking for areas for housing schemes. So guess where we put two of them? You guessed it: right in those catchment areas at Hope and Diamond that we know will be the first to flood.” How did that happen? Ah wha gwan?
Most of my television watching is in the sports field where commentators can fry your brains with some of the things they come up with. A pet peeve of mine is with the announcers covering NFL games who love to tell you that such and such a team is fortunate to have “vertical runners.” Human beings can run only forwards or backwards or sideways; only cockroaches and lizards, and the occasional gymnastic rat, can run vertically. Even more egregiously, some announcers will vary the terminology to say the player is a “downhill runner” (which is the downhill section of the field?) and this is the same player who five minutes before was being labelled “a vertical runner.” In the name of constative expression, “ah wha gwan”?
In Guyana we have a TV cable provider with a variety of channels, including three of my sport favourites. You pay for this service monthly, and if you’re a day late renewing your subscription the computer cuts you off – fair enough. But when some of the channels turn up blank (as they do) or several channels are scrambled by interference (as they are), how come the subscriber is not compensated for the loss of service? If I’m paying to watch the Kansas City Chiefs in a playoff, and the channel says, “no signal,” doesn’t the TV provider owe me a refund? When I ask that question I get silence. Ah wha gwan?
Like most, I’m a cricket fan, but while I enjoy the pace and entertainment of 20/20 it is distressing to see how many players in this form have become obsessed with the crossbat. In the first place, a crossbat is a very inelegant voop (yes, there is such a thing as an ‘elegant voop’ – check Carl Hooper) and some of our players in the recent regional tournament looked absolutely inept, stepping out of the wicket, unleashing a crossbat, and being inelegantly clean bowled. In the second place, the narrow horizontal bat is far less likely to meet ball than the long vertical bat, so the failure rate goes up. Also, as Dwayne Smith so elegantly showed in that 20/20 tournament, you can hit sixes very nicely thank you with a straight bat. Why then are so many of our cricketers heaving lumber across the line as if they’re in a baseball game? Ah wha gwan?
In the heart of Georgetown there is a very impressive hair-dressing salon with accomplished stylists, modern equipment, everything clean and efficient. However, you have to hold your breath in your approach to the place because of a distinct septic tank smell. Those two conditions – hair-dressing salon and septic tank odour – would seem diametrically opposed, so why are they coexisting? Ah wah gwan? One of the things I love about the region is our use of colour, but sometimes we get carried away. On beautiful Main Street, my favourite street in Georgetown, a business place has erected some fake coconut trees on its premises. Worse yet, these trees are painted red and orange, and I must stress that this is no modest red or orange; these colours literally scream. Come on guys; coconut trees in red and orange? Ah wha gwan? I must get Bernard Ramsay to have a look; it might give him an idea for a Mash band.
Finally, we’re trumpeting the value of tourism, and rightfully so, but ’63 Beach, cited as an area with visitor appeal, is currently a noxious, garbage-strewn place, with broken glass, no toilets, and odours that would cause tourists to wince. Let’s hope our taxi drivers can find excuses not to take visitors there. I can just imagine a Jamaican visitor, persuaded by our tourism blurbs, alighting from the taxi: “Dis ah de beach? Ah wha gwan? Dis na 63; dis ah zero.”
