Dear Editor,
We are responding to a letter by Ms Ryhaan Shah who wrote in response to a letter by Ms Joan Cambridge, a participant in the UG course ‘Introduction to Writing in Guyanese Creole’ (‘Teaching Creolese at UG sounds like a pagaly idea’ SN, June 17).
Our course has no ‘social cohesion’ agenda. It is designed to increase literacy development in Guyanese Creole. One of its aims is to enable an uninterrupted transition from Guyanese Creole speech to writing, and Guyanese Creole writing to speech. It is open to applicants with tertiary education as well as those who have had little formal education. All are required to sit together in the same class and learn to read and write Guyanese Creole regardless of the variety, using an established orthography (writing system).
Our chief learning outcomes are:
- critical examination of some of past and current methods used for writing Guyanese Creole, and of the problems with these approaches;
- mastery of the established writing system for Guyanese Creole ‒ the Cassidy-Le Page system created for Jamaican Creole, adapted by George Cave and later by Hubert Devonish for Guyanese Creole;
- awareness of the phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic systems of Guyanese Creole, and the enhancement of metalinguistic skills;
- critical thinking in transcribing and translating; and
- the creation of original Guyanese Creole texts.
That Guyanese from different parts of Guyana, of different ethnic origins and different social groups speak different varieties of Guyanese Creole is a fact that every Guyanese child exposed to difference is instinctively aware of. The move by speakers of any language to seek a written standard is indeed possible, as has been done for English, which also exists in many varieties. For English, standardization happened centuries after the first written English text. While we recognize that standardized language may become necessary for certain restricted forms of discourse in an increasingly complex society, we wish to state firmly that standardization is not one of our aims in this course. We stand by the maxim that a vibrant society celebrates and encourages variety, creativity and originality.
We should add that an ‘authoritarian slant’ exists wherever any Ministry of Education seeks to ‘constrict’ Creole-speaking children to the use of English, while they are still learning it while constraining their ‘spontaneous, free-ranging, creative expressions’ in Guyanese Creole. We stand firm against any such practice.
But we thank you for providing us with a sample of the variety of Guyanese Creole that you are competent in, written in your own personal writing system. Here is an example of a transcription into the established one we are using in this course:
Your system: “Abee dese estate people gat abee own way fi tawk Creolese an abee wan fi know ah who kine Creolese dem ah teach ah UG. . .”
The Established System: “Abi diiz esteet piipl gat abi oon wee fi taak Kriiyoliiz an abi waahn fi noo a huu kain Kriiyoliiz dem a tiich a UG.”
And thank you, of course, for writing in Guyanese Creole thus courageously resisting the many voices in our society coming from privileged but narrow minds whose fear of change has made them hell bent against giving our Creole-speaking children half a chance at full literacy.
Yours faithfully,
Tamirand De Lisser
Charlene Wilkinson
Lecturers for the course