At some point, almost every time I perform, I make reference to the value and beauty of our various Caribbean dialects. It wasn’t always so. Growing up in Guyana, I suffered from the prevalent Caribbean confusion of seeing our dialects in a negative light, and only gradually over the years did I come to see my own ignorance on the matter: that in fact, our dialects are powerful and lyrical language communication, operating with very strict rules, and providing, in certain circumstances, the absolutely best way for us to communicate with each other. In fact, that is precisely the point I will often make, between playing the songs, and I use examples, from the various dialects, to build my case.
I have pointed to the various words or constructions, wholly our own, that we have created, and to the very clear logic underneath what at first seems like a contortion, and, to be fair, to how confusing we can be to someone hearing us for the first time. For example, I’m living in Vreed-en-Hoop and someone in town asks: “Where do you live?” I reply, “Oh I live over the river.” Hello? When time permits in these shows, I sometimes go into the different constructions in the various Caribbean dialects, and how lexicon varies from one territory to another, and even within a territory. While this is basically “serious business, Jack” as the Bajan comedian Mac Fingall, would term it, I present it as a playful exercise that provokes laughter and, most interesting to me, it often results in persons coming up to me afterwards with one humorous dialect incident or another.
Interesting for me, as well, is that in the course of presenting these dialect examples I have gradually come to notice the amount of contraction, or summarizing, at play in the way we speak them and how efficient therefore they are as a means of rapid communication.
Frequently, the reduction comes from the invention of particular words. In the Guyanese dialect, for example, we say “pastray” to refer to someone assuming a relaxed or almost prone position. Consider how many words in Standard English are being eliminated in that example by the use of the word “pastray”, and, just as pertinently, how the word instantly creates for the speaker and the listener a particular aura or sentiment completely missing from the more formal expression. It is often overlooked that there is a valuable psychological benefit to the speakers involved in dialect expression – a recognition of something unique to us and fully understood in its nuances only to us or to someone who has lived a long while among us. I’m particularly drawn to the unique uses of our own invention as in the contraction of “against” into “gainse” when we refer to a very rich food that we attack with gusto only to find our appetite checked by the richness of the cooking ; it “gainse” we. Referring to this reaction, the Caymanian will say the food “stallin’”, which is itself another example of contraction.
Another aspect of our dialects is the fact that when we morph an English word into a dialect construction, we often have the function in mind, so that “constipation” becomes “cork” or “bung”, and we also use the technique of word repetition to indicate degree rather than create a new phrase, as for example “sof, sof” meaning “very soft” and “hot, hot, hot” as in the now world-famous calypso by the late great Arrow from Montserrat. We also have expressions that confuse, as in this “curry sweet bad,” which uses a negative word to mean something very positive, and another form of confusion can occur when a person unfamiliar with the lingo hears our unique word combinations. I recall standing by a friend at a house party in Canada who sampled the BBQ and said to me, “This chicken eat nice.” A Canadian lady in the circle said, “Excuse me…what did the chicken eat?” Explanations that followed didn’t make much sense to the lady and who can blame her? She was listening to a foreign construction.
Additionally, when one combines the natural Caribbean inclination to be “jokey” (itself a word of our invention), the dialect can soar. A Trini and I are chatting in a carnival fete with a young lady who, for some odd reason, had quite bad teeth, several with cavities showing some blackness. As the young lady walked away from us out of earshot, the Trini said to me, “Hear na, padna; dat woman mout like it bun down, oui.”
In the dialect, as well, we turn nouns into verbs and vice versa. Tradewinds bassman Terry Dyal, very slim in build, always had trouble buying his 26-waist pants size off the rack. He strolls in one day with a big smile over a classy pair of jeans he had gained on sale. I looked at the label and said, “But this can’t fit you; it’s a size 30.” Terry replied, “I know. I’ll have to get somebody to smallen it.” Before that day, I never knew “small” could become a verb. Years later, in Cayman, I heard a Jamaican loading furniture on a truck make the same construction. Leaning on his understanding of the form of “drain” and “drainage”, he told me as he was tying the furniture down, “Yuh see sah, mi ah use di rope fi prevent fallage.”
Of course, the big drawback with these oral creations is the difficulty one can have spelling them. Hence the story, from many years ago, of a Trinidadian politician Chanka Marajh at election time telling the crowd, “Vote fuh me. Chanka Marajh go gie alyou bread. B-R-E-D bread.” Someone in the crowd shouted out, “Chanka, yuh fuhget de A.” In a flash, Chanka leaned into the microphone and said, “Tanks fuh de correction. Vote fuh me. Chanka Marajh go gie alyou bread. B-R-E-D-A bread.”
Before I go, whatever happened to “pijjywing” and “poochpanch”? Those are two classic Guyanese creations that I don’t hear anymore. Given some of the behaviours on our political scene these days, one would think such words would be in greater demand than ever.
