What is it like to speak one language and be educated in another? Most of you will never know. Some, such as those who are immigrants from a country where English is not spoken actually have a harder time than us who are in countries where English is spoken, but there is another local tongue. Many others of you who grew up speaking Ebonics will have at least some idea of what I had to go through.
Among ourselves, we speak a Jamaican Creole, also called Patois (pronounced “Patwa”). There are small regional variations, but they almost create no difficulties. The local language gets most of its vocabulary from English, but the grammar is from elsewhere. Many of the words are of West African origin, maybe the grammar has the same source, but there might be some 17th century Spanish influences. When we attend school, however, we are taught in English; from elementary school up. Now, this creates an often very great barrier to the student.
Since we hear English being spoken around us, (radio, foreigners, Jamaicans fluent in the language) we almost never have much problem understanding standard, everyday English, but those of us who rarely use it cannot speak or write it properly. For such persons, formal and academic English is often unintelligible. I once listened to a lecture from one or our university professors and could understand only a few of his sentences; it was so pregnant with inlellectualese and the entire lecture was very academic in structure and language.
When you are used a similar-sounding non-English vocabulary and are required to write and/or speak in English, you often don’t know when you get it wrong. To illustrate: “Develop” is one word in English, yet the equivalent in Creole is two words; “devel up” that give the very same pronunciation, so the Jamaican student will often not know that the expression, “They plan to devel it up into a park” is wrong and makes him/her sound unintelligent.
The differences in grammar, sentence construction and the way ideas and thoughts are conceived and expressed create another big problem. We don’t exactly have a verb “to be” in our Creole, there are three other verbs that are used according to the situation: “A” for identity, “de” (sometimes pronounced “di”) for location and “tan” for condition, characteristic or constancy. The English expression, “Where are you?” is expressed in patois, “A whey yu de?” literally, “Is where you are?”, and that is how it is often said when a Jamaican tries to say it in English. The Jamaican term, “How im tan?” depending on the context, can mean, “How is he (or she)?” or it may mean “What is he (or she) like?” Since the verb is also used for the English verbs “to stand” and “to stay”, the Jamaican may attempt to express that thought as “How him stay?”
As a result of this, many intelligent Jamaicans were receiving very poor grades and at least appeared to be doing very badly in their academics. Now that the problem has been officially recognized by the authorities in the education system, we hope that the correct steps will be taken to solve this problem. In the mean time, teachers who had recognized the problem for what it was were adjusting their teaching methods accordingly and made constant representations to the Ministry of Education. They have finally begun to recognize the problem and have given it the name “Creole Interference”. The training program for our teachers at the colleges and university has been amended accordingly and I now see “Creole Interference” being included teacher seminars.
I’m sure that a similar problem exists in the U.S. education system, but have not yet seen anything yet that shows that it has been recognized there.
recommend
Facebook
Twitter
bookmark 
print
Comments: 65
We have Spanish/English teachers here in our area. These are the languages spoken here the most, in our area at least.
We have the native American language though this is not taught in our public schools, only on the reservation.
I think it would be good for Americans to try and understand others. It sure does not hurt for people to learn to communicate with each other!
Other countries the people know several languages, it is not out of reach for Americans.
We use qualifier words: "Dem" to indicate plural, "Fi" for possession, "Did" for past tense. They also had to very patiently and carefully explain the other tenses as they were expressed in English, plus mood, voice and such.
We learned about "the birds and the bees" straight out of books. The technical and the fun ones. :->)
She read to me at bedtime, as many parents do. She read to me in the middle of the day. One of the family's dinner table traditions was her reading books to us after dinner while we at around the table. This latter meant books that would even interest my father while still interesting my brothers and me. She chose those books carefully and was effective.
When Dr. Seuss published his first book, I was already too old to think it was entirely worth appreciation, but my younger brothers loved it. So did my father, who enjoyed sitting in his favorite huge easy chair with one boy snuggled on each side. Of course, I grew up to greatly appreciate Dr. Seuss and to read him with delight to small children!
My father taught on a rural college campus when I was a child, and I had access to the library, where there was a substantial section of children's literature meant for the elementary ed majors. I spent happy afternoons there, sitting on the floor and leaning against a stack behind me, reading those books. I read my way through everything from the Bobbsey Twins series to the McGuffey's readers right through the grade 12 level by the time I was 8.
Being a reader has always stood me in good stead at many levels. I have been able to learn easily, both by reading about various subjects in English and actually learning foreign languages. It has also resulted in my ability to write.
Reading to a child daily from birth through the elementary school years is one of the greatest gifts you can give any child, not just your own, but also other relatives and even neighbors. Consider volunteering to read to children in a school in an underprivileged neighborhood or at a Y or a library if you don't have children under 10 or 12 in your own family.
etazini - USA - etats unis
piman - hot pepper - piment
zwazo - bird - oiseau
vwazen - neighbor - voisin
pwa - bean, pea - pois
nimewo - number - numero
mwen - myself - moi
makak - monkey - macaque
kle - key - clef
dèyè - behind - derriere
Bondye - Good Lord - Bon Dieu
She observed many of the same things that you note with Creole.
A very good grasp of English is now essential to a person's advancement in the modern world. North America, and in particular the U.S. has the greatest impact on the language today so American English has actually taken on very great importance.
As has been pointed out by myself and Genki, us parents need to step up and do our part. We need to read to our children from infancy so that they develop a love of reading. The actual reading material matters very little in the development of the reading skills, but good books, designed to broaden their horizons must be included.
And reading would help so many people that keep having problems with spelling. Seeing the words makes it so much easier.
I find it interesting that in the U.S. there is an occasional push for English as the "official language" of the country. I enjoy living in Canada, where we have two "official languages" and in Toronto, where there are over thirty accepted in different parts of the city. When I speak to my uncle in northern England, near the Scottish border, I have a hard time understanding him because of his accent and different vocabulary.
One more try:
Oh yes Ian it does grant us the ability to perceive things in more than one ways. I often have to read stuff on Gather more than once because I often need to switch from Jamaican perception to understand some expressions. "You don't do things by half measures" took a while to get. "Much to my chagrin" had to be translated to me. One Gatherer named Bert had to translate almost all of one of his posts before I could comment on it.
We can learn a lot from these kinds of notes. I know I’ve made mistakes in interpreting what someone has written and have to read things over a couple of times. I’m glad both you and the authors are willing to take the time to work through any difficulties.
I always listen to how one uses good or well....it lets me know if they are educated or not ...now it does not matter....great post. thanks.
I have worked with many from out the USA and at times I needed to repeat myself because they didn't understand me. When that happened I repeated what I said a bit differently and at times used what I would call 'picture' words instead of real words.
Patients is necessary at times, and as when I had two on my staff one from the Philippines and the other from Dominican Republic, both spoke Spanish fluently however neither could understand the other in Spanish, therefore they spoke English so they could understand each other, I learned a bit of patients from them.
In Jamaica, I have to sometimes adopt a different form of English to speak to some Chinese. "Doctor paper" for "medical certificate" and to be careful to remember that "interesting" to them sometimes means "interested".
We had a Polish priest at our parish once. He learned English, but it took some time and his words were heavily accented. Imagine trying to not only learn a language, but give an inspiring sermon in that new language!
Got a surprise one day when one of them spoke to me in a strange sounding creole that I understood very well because his vocabulary and grammer were almost identical to Jamaican. He was from Georgia and was speaking Gulla.
The "experts" say it is not so. They score high enough on the tests to be fluent in all aspects, but until you have actually LEARNED another language and put yourself in nothing but that language, I don't think you can say that a test can measure that mastery or adeptness.
Thank you for a great article. I sure hope my response made sense!
I have been teaching EFL/ESL since 1973--as an actual trained professional, not one of those people who think just any native speaker can teach it, including several years in Spain and South Korea, and have been very active in both local and international TESOL professional organizations. A few thoughts...
"Ebonics" is a highly political term. Academic linguists, language specialists and language teachers prefer the term BEV, Black English Vernacular", coined by one of the great linguists at the Univ. of Pennsylvania a few decades ago. (The night is late; his name and the year escape me at the moment.)
I certainly understand issues with learning in a foreign language. I learned Spanish from the very beginning starting in high school. Within a few years, I had attended the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and earned two diplomas. Being a reader helped. I dove into reading in Spanish, including children's books, and including Spanish editions of familiar texts, such as Grimms Fairy Tales and the Bible. It made readng required textx easier, and helped me visualize what I was hearing in classroom lectures.
In any society, it is essential for all citizens to be fully linguistically and socially/sociolinguistically competent in the dominant language. It is also highly valuable to be truly bilingual, and by that I don't mean being a speaker of a language used only at home; I mean being truly competent to the point of not needing interpreter help in both the dominant language *and* the hme language. That is why I fully value building children's literacy and competence in both the home and dominant languages.
However, this is not the job of the public schools, as speakers of Spanish demand unreasonably. It is the job of the families in the local second-language community. I see this happening quite effectively in various stripes of Eastern European communities and among Japanese immigrants in Philadelphia. Their children attend monolingual public school with other children, the afternoons and Saturdays, they attend their L1 schools established, paid for and maintained privately within their communities. These individuals become fully a part of the Philadelphia community, including native-like proficiency in standard American English, such that they are not recognizable as L1 speakers of their home language. They do not need or demand bilingual services in the public system, at cost to overburdened taxpayers. They have a very high percentage of honor students awho go on to college and grad school.
The Italian community also stresses the importance of their children learning English, even to the point of not allowing them to speak Italian at home. Italian children do better in school than HIspani children, who get the lion's share of bilingual services.
I find it unfortunate that Italian children do not end up growing up fully bilingual. I have seen studies indicating that children brought up in the Eastern European and Japanese way develop their intelligence and intellectual flexibility far more effectively than monolingual dominant language speakers and more effectively still than Hispanic children whose community demands the gimmes of public bilingual support. Success in public school and percentages going on to graduate from college should be evidence enough.
In the case of Jamaica, Jamaican Creole (I believe it is called Crio?) is the dominant home/street language, making the situation more like that of Ukraine under Soviet domination than that of immigrant communities in the US. I am glad teachers are recognizing that and making education more accessible to Jamaican children.
Caribbean creoles are, in fact, grammatically West African; whether their vocabularies are from English, French or Spanish varies according to the history of each country. BEV also has West African grammatical features. You bring up the issue in JC of the various ways of expressing "be". One of the major languages in West Africa is what is called a non-copula language, a term linguists use o describe a language where is is correct to say "John tall" because no equivalent for "John is tall" exists. It is not the only non-copula language family in the world. It is the creole root of BEV structures such as "he tall" and "he be happy", where the actual meaning of the "be-idea" is different, as the 3 structures you describe, or as in the difference in Spanish between "ser" and "estar", both "be" in English, but with different meanings in Spanish. Understanding the linguistic underpinnings of community vernaculars should help reduce prejudice of "ignorance" in the linguistically dominant community. African-American children throughout the US need to have their dialect needs met while still having their standard American English skills fully developed.
So do Hispanic children, *with* their parents' support and participation. (That includes not insisting on speaking their first language in the workplace! When working in Spain, I had a good number of fellow English speakers as colleagues, but we understood that using English would be profoundly rude and downright unacceptable, and we did not do it. I have no problem with firing people for doing it in Spanish in a US workplace, a language I speak with near-native fluency, love for its history and wonderful literature, and even hold an MA in Spanish linguistics and wrote my thesis in Spanish!
In grad school (when I studied theoretical linguistics, not the Spanish department program), I had a Jamaican buddy who was planning to ultimately specialize in Jamaican Creole syntax. He was interested in his country becoming truly bilingual at all levels, without there being any elitism attached to English. I have a friend, a Haitian physician, who feels the same way about Hatian Creole and French. Both these friends want their countries to be fully bilingual. In both cases, they see extensive reading among children as key.
after earth shakes