Dear Editor,
Please help me share my experience at an International Mother Language Day (IMLD) presentation at the Umana Yana last Thursday; an experience I shall never forget. It was rich – heady, inspirational; however, I was not a participant. My involvement was more out of body – desperately searching and failing to find myself in the future prospect for Guyanese languages.
The child in awe and wonder looking at this could not see herself anywhere in that breathtakingly intellectual exercise last Thursday; celebrating self – defining identity – expressing me, saying my name in a language I own.
How can I adequately express the wonder of it all? As if in a hollow (from which the Umana Yana had lifted off with all the rest of Guyana’s mother languages – Arawak, Akawaio, Arecuna, Carib, Macushi, Patamuna, Wai Wai, Wapichan and Warrau, on board; all making inspired joyous noises while soaring into the future) – I sat hoping, waiting in vain to see some reflection of me in this Mother Language Day celebration. Then the realisation that I’d been left behind dawned on me; it occurred that in this United Nations-designated Indigenous Language Year, I/we are the least of the apostles; “you’re definitely not going to be allowed to represent here,” I told myself.
They blamed it on insufficient time – that facile foil for gullible fools. But hell, couldn’t they sense my silent screams down in that hollow? They could have at least acknowledged me there as not just a discard. A few words could’ve been said of me, for me; even if they were not going to permit me too – to express myself in the language of my ancestors – in African-based Kriiliiz.
Only Amerindian languages were celebrated by the University of Guyana’s Language Unit on International Mother Language Day 2019; and English alone was used in translations.
In this Year of Indigenous Languages, this was an appalling slap in the face of Gaiyniiz Kriiliiz (Guyanese Creolese), the only “mother tongue” that most Guyanese understand. In its varied expressions, it pervades communities throughout the nation – including African and Indian villages. It is our Guyanese lingua franca – spoken even by those who prefer not to be heard speaking it at all.
Gaiyniiz Kriiliiz is Guyana’s first language. English is her second. Was that flagrant disrespect of which I was an eyewitness at IMLD a portentous revelation of a new twist in History’s tiresome plot?
Before moving forward, we should be pursuing in our national discourse, a clear definition of “Indigenous Languages” as unambiguous as the facts about Guyana’s “Indigenous Peoples.”
Yours faithfully,
Joan Cambridge
Speaking for
Gaiyniiz Kriiliiz (Guyanese Creolese)
