Dear Editor,
Stabroek News (September 25, 2024) editorial captioned, Creolese Chroniclers, was a wonderful and a healthy read. I look forward to reading more like it. I consider the editorial to be the showpiece of a newspaper. So, I commend you for putting Creolese as your showpiece in the September 25, 2024 edition. I can only imagine what the energies were like on the various social media platforms. What a fine time Guyanese, and other Caribbean people, must have had as they tumbled through their excitement on the new entries for the current edition of the Oxford English Dictionary [OED]. I could feel their pride, and sense of belonging as they agreed and disagreed with some interpretations of our rosy linguistic heritage. Since I am not on social media, please afford me some space to add – mi bitnaaf (my bit and a half).
One, Creolese is not a dialect. In today’s world, Creolese is considered a language. Yes, there is a view that a language is a collection of dialects. But, my point is – it is not A dialect (emphasis is on -a). Two, I used the phrase, Guyanese Creolese, until I was corrected by a linguist, to say, Guyanese Creole. Just as Jamaican Creole is called Jamaican or Pidgin (Pigin) and the most popular Surinamese Creole is called Sarana Tongo, so Guyanese Creole is called Creolese. To say or write, Guyanese Creolese, makes it redundant. Each territory where the ancestors of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade dwelled, has a name for their Creole Language. Ours is Creolese.
Three, you acknowledged the work of some pioneers who kept the interest in Creole going. One name is missing, “Uncle Stapie”. He wrote a column in the then Argosy newspaper on various aspects of Creolese. And, I wish to add another. One who has made, and continues to make significant contributions on the linguistic front. That person is the wife of Professor Richard Allsopp, Professor Jeannette Allsopp. She is the official consultant in Caribbean English for the updated Third Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, and she was the person who provided the current entries for OED. I would like to publicly thank her. She is a Lexico-grapher and Linguist, Guyanese-born, and now resident in Barbados. She is the main editor for the recently published School Edition of the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage.
Finally, I fell in love with your sentence, “The lively online exchanges – bereft of the political slant for once – ranged from….” I found it instructive that the usage of language can cut across the political divide, and maybe, just maybe, form one of the many bridges to mend that divide.” Editor, I pray that Creolese makes it on the ballot for the upcoming General and Regional Elections. For too long, we have allowed politicians to speak Creolese only when they go to the villages at election time to beg for votes. Otherwise, they scold, and admonish us to “speak properly”. For too long we have allowed the business agencies to use Creolese in their advertisements to capture our attention, and take our monies.
And, just as we accept Creolese in onstage drama, and when sung in kaiso (Calypso), hopefully, that cyberspace excitement for a language with words older than the English Language can be maintained, and one day Guyanese Creole, as well as the other Creoles of the English-speaking Caribbean, can be placed side by side with the English Language. In other words, made into an official language. Now, I also pray that as we “see” words belonging to our language in the prestigious OED, we can fully embrace our bilingualism (English and Creolese), and multilingualism (English, Creolese, and Indigenous Languages). My “two cents”.
Sincerely,
Janice Imhoff
(Guyanese Creole Advocate)