Alexandria Miller  0:01  
welcome to strictly facts a guide to Caribbean history and culture hosted by me Alexandria miller strictly facts teaches the history politics and activism of Caribbean and connects these themes to contemporary music and popular culture whappen people and welcome back to another episode of strictly facts a guide to Caribbean history and culture our episode today tackles an ongoing conversation the history and importance of Caribbean languages i have so many memories just thinking of how language has impacted my life whether it's been how i use our language mostly in my household and not typically outside of my household or when you know Tessanne in 2013 when she joined the voice and you know after her audition portion when they were talking to her about what she does and she goes you know singing is my bread and butter and i just remember thinking of how immense that was for Tessanne to you know be using her accent on what in my mind back then was you know big big foreign tv right and how proud i felt to hear her accent or other times like you know when Rihanna released work in 2016 bad song you know love the dancehall inspiration of the video but then there was a lot of you know conversation around what language she was having and some people not being able to understand what she was saying and i had a friend in college say to me you know alex what is she saying cuz you're Jamaican you speak Jamaican patois and i was like yes she's speaking obviously with an accent but as we all know Rihanna is not Jamaican as you know minus what some of the twitter things were were a while ago Rihanna is from Barbados so obviously it's important to make it clear that as a region we don't all have the same language conventions we're not all speaking Jamaican patois so we're going to dive in a bit to the history of Caribbean language a bit with my guest today so with us today we have Dr. Joseph Farquharson and i will turn it over to Dr. Farquharson into introduce himself so please let us know who you are what you do and obviously what Caribbean country you represent

Joseph Farquharson  2:18  
hi Alexandria thanks for having me on the show i am a senior lecturer in linguistics at the university of the west indies in mona that is in Jamaica and i'm located in the department of language linguistics and philosophy i think also important i wear another hat and that is as coordinator of the Jamaican language unit and the Jamaican language unit is a language planning agency kind of unique in that it was one of the first such set up in the english official Caribbean and the whole goal of the unit is for the planning and development of the Jamaican language so moving the Jamaican language from where it is now to be even greater than it is and that's a tough task because it is great now i wanted to flip the script a bit though you mentioned your background and i just wanted to know well what is your background you mentioned to me being from Jamaica but what's the story there

Alexandria Miller  3:31  
oh well the listeners would know but yes definitely happy to tell you more so i am not Jamaican born i was born in the us but my family is beautiful thank you i appreciate it i do have my citizenship so i would hope so and yes so you know Jamaica is very much so home for me but you did mention your work with the Jamaican language unit so i want to ask you you know how you got interested in doing this research

Joseph Farquharson  4:02  
okay so i've been interested in languages for a very long time since high school in high school i did Spanish english was also one of my favorite subjects and i think by sixth form i realized that i had a knack for language and i also had a teacher who had done linguistics introduced us to linguistics and i thought hey here's something that i can do and so by the time i got to sixth form i started checking out the UWI's linguistics program you know what they offered and i thought okay yes this is definitely the thing for me i was interested in the Jamaican language and that's what you refer to as as Jamaican patois and i know that there were people at UWI who were interested in this thing who were pushing for it to become official and who were saying you know it is a language it has structure etc and i remember even as far back as my high school days i had very positive attitudes towards the language i was entering JCDC festival competitions doing standard english pieces but also their Jamaican dialect what they call Jamaican dialect pieces and i was also writing articles in the newspapers responding to people say you know it is a language and we should be proud of our language proud of who we are and so that's where it came from so a very long standing interest in language related issues so that i'm coordinator for the Jamaican language unit is really by chance i can't say was destined for this is really by chance that i happen to be in the right place at the right time and so my head of department asked me to be coordinator i've been doing that for the past two years now august coming will be two full years

Alexandria Miller  6:07  
wonderful well you know all things fall into place as they are supposed to do so i definitely believe you're supposed to be there but as you mentioned you know there's a lot of different words to describe languages especially patois in particular so some people refer to it as a possibly a creole or a dialect or you know also a language but then also patois you know sort of comes with this negative connotation and i've heard it be described as quote unquote broken english so could you talk a bit about how you describe Caribbean languages some of those juxtapositions between those words and why have Caribbean languages been described as broken

Joseph Farquharson  6:48  
okay so we have been evolving and this of course this whole journey starts during slavery and colonization that for most people of European descent the language developed by slaves by enslaved africans and mostly used by them and i'm saying mostly used by them because the the languages that we identify as as Jamaican patois, as Bajan dialect, as Trini dialects etc all of those were used not only by blacks but also by white people there's a sentimental there both among laypeople and also among some scholars too that enslaved africans develop these languages to hide things from slave masters you know so they wouldn't know what they were saying and i keep on saying to them if that was the case enslaved africans did a very poor job of it because whites in these territories were talking these languages pretty much from the get go and they were interacting with africans in the language especially if they interacted very closely with with with africans or people of African descent and so we're thinking about your overseer or busha on the plantation that person definitely could fit in in Jamaican patois or Bajan dialect because they had more intimate communication and spend much more time with africans but i said it starts there about or whole positioning on these languages has been evolving so in the 17th century in the 18th century 19th century a lot of people thought well okay so was the attempt of africans to speak english and they, they are feeling terribly at it and so it is broken english and that was the sentiment for quite a quite a while and then in the 20th century especially the early part of the 20th century people started to realize patterns between what was happening in Jamaica, what was happening Trinidad and Tobago, what was happening elsewhere and a general term was taken from from english a term that english had taken from french and that is patois to to refer to it and i think why to the current if i understand the history well a lot of people had been looking at Haiti and because Haitian creole was so well established and they saw Haitian creole as patois and there was an understanding that there were so many similarities in terms of structure and socio history between Haiti and Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados that the started using the term patois. Then came 1940s. And that was now the period of people like Louis Bennett Coverley, of Eric Coverly, and a whole set of people who were responsible for the birth of the new nation. And so there was agitation then, for us to kind of carve out our own identity, and assert or own independence. But a lot of that sense of self didn't take place with a wholesale rejection of European etc. What they tried to do was to kind of carve out a part of that European space as their own. And so they created you could say, a local version of that European identity. And so in that period, what you got was a notion of these languages as being dialects of the European language. And so you got what in Jamaica became to make a dialect or Jamaican dialectic, Trini dialect, etc. Because people saw black Jamaicans are speaking essentially a version of, of English. The problem with that is it still subscribed to the view that these were broken forms of English not not good enough, until the 1950s 1960s, when serious linguistic work started to take place. And here I'm talking about scholars such as Frederic Cassidy, who I believe was born in Jamaica, but he's American or of American parentage, I believe. But he was born in Jamaica, spent a good while in Jamaica, and then left, he came back in adulthood to study the language. By that time, too, we had Robert Le Page, who is an English man who had taken up a position at the University College of the West Indies, which is what UWI was at that time. And as Cassidy came to study the language Le Page had started to develop an interest in language because although he was employed to teach Chaucer Middle English literature, he found what he heard around the much more fascinating than what was in medieval poetry. And so he set out to study that. And then came other local scholars like Barry Bailey, and other on the region, other scholars started to emerge. Like Richard Allsop, like Walter Edwards, and Le Page himself even after he had left Jamaica was responsible for providing scholarships at York University in, in England, things University of York, for Caribbean people to study linguistics, and go back home and study their own languages. And so an entire generation of Caribbean linguists were educated at York in the UK under Robert LePage, Robert LePage is credited, I believe he's responsible for the shift to referring to the languages as Creoles. And so, that was the birth of Jamaican Creole and Barbadian Creole. And that held sway for a while, and Le Page was using a system which was born in the in the period of colonialism and slavery, that people and things born in the West Indies were referred to as Creoles. So you had white Creoles and black Creoles so a lot of people think that Creole only refer to black people know why people born in the West Indies were also referred to as Creole. So if you will read Edward Long's the 18th century history of Jamaica, he referred to the white Creoles and how they were adopting the mannerisms of the blacks and he also referred to black Creoles there were Creole hens, there were Creole, I believe horses, etc. So whatever was born or reared in the West Indies was Creole and lip it said, Okay, these things were these languages were born in the West Indies. So they have Creoles Jamaican Creole, Trinidadian Creole, etc, and that kind of stuck and then I believe somewhere in the 60s or 70s Mervyn Alleyne trinibagonian linguist, who spent most of his working life in Jamaica suggested Well, why are we worrying with all these labors? patois and Creole and broken English broken French? Why don't we just use the national adjectives for them? You know, so the Spanish people call their language Spanish the French people call their language French In the language of Jamaicans the chief language is Jamaican makes perfect sense. And so there is a movement these days of just using that. So for Haitian Creole, many linguists just say Haitian now or we say j, so not Jamaican patois. Now, that whole thing of why the naming is important is because 56 years ago, when a lot of people said patois, you could kind of hear a, you know, the bile behind it. They were thinking of it as this low class, broken thing. But truth be told, from about the 70s there about, especially with the success of Jamaican music outside of Jamaica, a lot of Jamaicans started to own the language. And so when they used patois, it didn't have this the same undertone. And so admittedly, when a lot of people say Jamaican patois Now, they don't really mean anything bad by it. But we still think we would be further emancipated by just dropping all of these additional labels, and just calling the language as Bajan, Jamaican, Guyanese, that was a very long answer.

Alexandria Miller  16:21  
No, no, it was very, it answered a lot of continuing questions I had as well. But I, I agree, I think it's important, especially when thinking of the colonial project, right it functions to allow us or to make us think that we are secondary, and always appealing to England. So by using these words, it you know, emphasizes that in our minds in our psyches, and things like that, of that nature, that we are secondary. So I definitely agree with, you know, just saying Jamaican as a language. But I do want to point to something you talked about earlier, which was the African roots of Jamaican, so could you say more about those roots? And perhaps, you know, maybe give us some examples about tracing some of these connections.

Joseph Farquharson  17:04  
Okay, so, that, too, has been a debate not only among people, lay people but also among scholars and among linguists about the African contribution to these languages that are normally designated as Creoles. So are the African languages essentially, with English words? Or are we looking at English with African, you know, words, and struct what what is this? And the same thing to, for for Haitian or for Palenquero, or in Colombia, or Papiamento. How were they made? And there's no easy answer to that 70 or so years of dedicated researcher has given us some answers, but has not solved the issue completely. And the field is kind of split three ways, between scholars who believe that they are essentially European languages with some African influences. And the term that is used for those linguists is superstratist. So the European languages are called superstrate languages, because they are that layer or stratum that was added layer later. So the the languages of the enslaved Africans would be the substrate languages or the substratum. So that's the lower layer level. And there we're looking at the languages that people are introduced to and the sequence in which they are introduced to them. So the languages that they come with, would form the the the base layer or the the lowest layer, the foundation there, and that's why it's the substratum and then the languages that get added on later are the superstrate or super strata. Now, there is also the matter of prestige. So substrate and superstrate also tells us something about the prestige of these languages. So the substrate languages are generally the languages of the subjugated people. And the prestige that goes with them is the same kind of prestige that goes to subjugated people. And then the superstrate languages are, are higher in prestige. So there are those who believe these things are really European languages with some influences, but minimal influence from the substrate languages. Those are the superstratist. then there are those linguists who believe these things are really African languages that have kind of put on European garb. And so they're hiding their Africanness but if you dig you will find that you're dealing with African structures, those people are substratists. And then they are Universalists who say, you know, both camps are talking nonsense. What you get in Creole languages are universal features because they see Creoles as being brand new kind of BORN AGAIN languages. That's what one linguists Michel DE GRAFF refers to them as, or this is how he characterizes how Universalist see them as born again, languages. So first they weren't and then you know, voila, they appear out of thin air. And the universalists say, Oh, well, these languages come from Universal properties of languages. Essentially, one way in which that works is that speakers finding themselves in a multilingual context where they can't understand each other, they are going to create something that can help them to communicate among themselves. And that is going to draw on some universal features. So what is it that all languages need need to have, and then it goes for the skin and bones, the bare bones to put this new language together. So with regard to the African features, we have learned quite a few things. Many of the Creole languages in this region, the Atlantic region, and here I'm not just talking about the Caribbean, but also Africa. So you have Guinea Bissau Creole, you have Nigerian, what's referred to as Nigerian Pidgin English, Kenyan pidgin English, Pichi that spoken in Fernando Po, all of these have a shared history in European slavery, they tend to have a lot of features that are typical of many West African languages. So the have serial verb construction, serial verb constructions are constructions, which have verbs in a sequence, but without anything joining them. So it's not like English, where you say go and see if so, and so on has come. you say, Go look, if there's nothing joining the go and the look, you get things like mi madda sen' come call me, when you have sen', come, and call all together without any conjunction joining them, you get things like, send, go and send come, we are talking about the direction of the sending, and the go versus the come will tell you what direction it is, but it's towards the speaker or away from the speaker. So serial verb constructions are probably good evidence for African influence. There is also how we organize what is called the copula system. And let me see if I can do that very quickly. So if you think about an English sentence, like I am a teacher, where you get in Jamaica mi a teacher, you get that "a" in there, which is kinda like an equal sign this is the equative marker. And what that little thing "a" is saying is that what is on its left is equal to what is on its right, so teacher equals Me, me equals teacher me a teacher, yeah, then English says I am a teacher, then English has another construction I am sick and in Jamaican we say "mi sick". Now that sort of what we call a predicative structure, Jamaican doesn't use a marker so in the case where we had mi a teacher and you had that "a" in there, we don't have anything there's zero there's nothing in there between the subject and this predicate, whereas English says I am sick so English I am a teacher. The English had I am sick Jamaican uses me as a teacher but me zero sick me sick. Two different strategies. The English has the structure I am at home, or let me use I am at school, mi deh school, where you have this marker no deh that indicates the location so whatever it's to the right of deh is the location of the thing or person to the left of deh so me deh school or me deh a school. Three different strategies. Where English uses English, I am a teacher, I am sick, I am at school. Whereas Jamaican. And this happens I think pretty much the same way in Haitian if my memory serves me well in in Tobagonian Creole or (unclear), it operates the same way and there are Several West African languages that organize their grammar in that way. There's another thing too when we want to emphasize or highlight something, we have this marker "a" in Trinidadian that is, is to say, "A Joseph a talk to yuh", "A Joseph a talk to yuh" where that a, is helping to highlight the Joseph. Let me use another sentence because I want it to I can move something up in the sentence and show you how the highlighting or the emphasis takes place. So you can say Joseph put the book pon the table, you can say a di book Joseph put pon the table where you move up the book. But you could also say, a pon di the table Joseph put the book where you move up pon di table there. So whatever is highlighted or emphasized is moved up right behind that thing that we call the focus marker "a". Other thing happens though, is that when you focus or when you highlight a verb, it doesn't only get moved, but it gets copied. So you get "a put Joseph put the book pon di table, that doesn't happen with the other things. Yeah, and they are African languages that do this. Some do it slightly differently, that the repetition they get is reduplication. So they might have something like a put put Joseph di put pon di table. So the copy might not happen in the same way. But there is this notion that something is copied. And to there is a sense that the version of the verb that gets moved up is more like noun, it is more nominal. And that is why like, a di walk di walk mek mi tired. Yeah, or di walk di walk tired me out, where you can have something that is a verb, occurring with di, which is an article that normally occurs with nouns and so now some of these structures are evidence for the influence of Africa, in these languages.

Alexandria Miller  27:14  
Wow, I'm really appreciative that you took us through those, those grammatical structures, because I think it's something that is definitely not talked about and helps obviously highlight our connections to our ancestors. Another question I had was just to talk a bit about some regional and both regional across the Caribbean as well as interstate or you know, interstate similarities and differences. So my people are from what we would say country, and I remember being in college and talking to some of my friends who were from Town (Kingston) and they would be like, No, no, no, Alex, that, that is different. I've never heard that phrase or that word before. Obviously, I always have a big Saint Bess and Clarendon every time. But yes. Could you talk through a bit about some of those, you know, similarities and differences in our population?

Joseph Farquharson  28:11  
Okay, there was something you said earlier, when you said there are people who consider Jamaican to be broken English or Trini or any of these languages as broken English. And one of the reasons why people view them as broken versions of English is because they have the wrong starting point. They are looking at standard English as the starting point. So the belief is that enslaved Africans heard Standard English, tried to learn Standard English and failed. That's not true. Standard English was there it was in the environment. But what most enslaved Africans were exposed to, was not standard English, but various non standard dialects of English, because the people they interacted with were indentured white servants. Criminals, who were sent to the West Indies to work off their sentences. And so these weren't people speaking the king's English or the Queen's English. These were people speaking, non standard dialects of English. So that's where we need to start. And so we are looking at people who didn't necessarily say, I am going to school, but they might have said, I does go to school, which is what the Trinis might say. And so when you're looking for the origin of these languages, we have to start looking in the right place. So you spoke about words many of the words that we have Across the Caribbean come from these dialects of English. Some of them are archaisms, that they have died out in English, some of them don't exist in standard English, or they are used in a different way with a different meaning in standard English, but they have been preserved in the Caribbean. So let me give you an archaism and a dialect originalism in England, that survived in Jamaica, and that is attaclapse, attaclapse is a comeuppance or retribution. So somebody might tell you that, you know, you know, if you are playing the fool, is you're bothering the person, they'll tell you, those who are on man, your attaclapse a come, you know, you will soon get your  comeuppance or, if somebody is just doing bare badness, you can say, you know, them a go meet them attaclapse, something like English, Waterloo, you know, to meet your Waterloo, that word attaclapse is from an English dialectal term after clap, or after claps. Which means the same thing. How do you get from after to atta? You might know that not all Jamaicans say after some people say after some people say afta some people say atta, like our atta mi neva tell yuh fi dweet, atta mi neva tell yuh fi dweet, atta him go do dat the same way you get from after or after claps to attaclapse. So you have these forms. And I was saying that we need to start in the right place. So we are not starting with standard English. And breaking that down. We are starting with non standard dialect. I was listening to a YouTube video a couple years ago two British women talking. And one of them said, you know, well, you know, it's possible that we'll have to Goodle it, we'll have to Goodle it. Not Google Goodle. And what that is, is a hyper correction. And that tells me that for the da la combination in her in her dialect, or at least those words in standard English that would have da la, she pronounces them as ga la. So she would say miggle, for middle,

Alexandria Miller  32:35  
which we also say,

Joseph Farquharson  32:38  
possibly, she does that too, for little and likkle. So many of these things that people think oh, it's because Africans were not educated and they couldn't manage English No, our foreeparents had nothing to do with it. They learned what they heard. They did some things that are time so so for those things that I told you where we're more than that influenced by Africa, yes. But some of the things we pronunciation and so on, leave my ancestors alone.

Alexandria Miller  33:11  
I love that. I love that. Something that we've also been talking about is regional differences. So you know, what immediately comes to mind are like sing songs in languages. So could you talk a bit about how sing songs and you know, accents come about?

Joseph Farquharson  33:30  
Okay, that reminded me that there was a part of your previous question that I didn't address. And that had to do with regional variation within a particular territory. That regional variation is due to various factors. So it's due to which white people came when and where they settled. And so you might have had concentrations of people. So you might have had concentrations of Scottish people in a particular area versus concentrations of Irish people in another area. Also, it has to do with the general history of the peopling of the territory. So what a lot of lay people don't know, is that for the peopling of Jamaica during the English period, it wasn't just about Africans being taken directly from Africa. But Jamaica was peopled in the very early days by

colonists from St. Kitts, because St. Kitts was held by the British before St. Kitts and Nevis before Jamaica. colonists came from Barbados, and in fact the army that took Jamaica from the Spanish. That army was put together in the Eastern Caribbean. And then after they helped Jamaica, more people came from the Eastern Caribbean And somewhere in the 1660s, I believe it was people from Nevis came over and they settled in eastern Jamaica, in St. Thomas. Now, one thing that's interesting about Nevis is that the form of the past tense marker is min. So where other people might have been or biin or ben or en, they use min. Nevis uses it, they settled in St. Thomas, St. Thomas uses or this small pocket in Saint Thomas uses it, which means we are looking at something that is the result of that particular migration. Then, colonists from Suriname came over in the late 1660s. And I think the early 1670s, and they settled in western Jamaica, in a place called Suriname quarters. I'm from Western Jamaica. Now, the interesting thing is that in western Jamaica, the form of the progressive marker is deh, so mi deh cook mi deh walk, where in eastern Jamaica, they would say mi a walk. in Suriname, you get in the language Suriname you do get deh. And a the reduce form as progressive markers. They say me me deh come or me a come. And we have both forms in western Jamaica. And so you can look at these regional varieties and link them to the way in which the country was populated. And that gives us some sort of insight. So even if we didn't have any historical records, the language itself could have given us some clue that something different is happening here. Of course, later on, there was an addition in Jamaica, as well as Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago of East Indians. And they added words, I don't think we have really explored yet the extent to which they have influenced the, the the grammar, the syntax of these languages. But in Trinidad, I know people point out the sing song nature of Trini Creole, so so Trini, people does talk like this. And that's possibly due to the East Indian influence. So we would need probably to go to places like Westmoreland, and study the Jamaican in Westmoreland or in Clarendon, and see if we get the same sort of what English called prosody coming across. Now accent? To answer your question, most of what we recognize as accent is due to different vowel qualities. And you'd be amazed at the differences in in how a particular vowel comes out. So what for you might be an AH could be produced a lot of different ways. So some people might say, ah, some people might ah, some people might say a, some people might say, sometimes it's slight. But if you put quite a few of those differences together, it creates a different sound. And so this is why even within let's say the US, you get different sounds in people who say air, and people who say man, or the people who say Barbie, or sacs for socks, etc. And they will sound different from the people who say socks. So that's largely the result of differences in vowels and vowel qualities. consonants come in some time, because if you have a flap, if you say water instead of water, that will also create a difference between your speech and the speech of others. The same thing operates in the Caribbean. So I know in some places in Jamaica, there are people who think that their neighbors saying, you know, hear me a car, do you get this thing, some variety? There is a theory. It's it's a playful sort of theory that says that accents and positive tend to mimic the landscape. And so if your land is flat, your accent will be flat. But if your landscape is one with hills and mountains, then you will speak in a way. I haven't tested it. But well, we didn't.

Alexandria Miller  39:42  
We should. I think that was very interesting to me. Wow. Yeah. I don't know. That was just so much to process. But I think yeah, that last theory sounds very interesting. I want to take us a bit towards more, not just recent conversations because as you said, these conversations have been Going around for a while this sort of national language discussion. I remember, a few years ago, there was this viral video of a man as a I believe he was a flight attendant giving the sort of flight instructions or you know, when they were going to seat them, etc. Yeah, he's Jamaican, and he was giving it in Jamaican. And then, you know, there are also like, festivals in Europe, I won't say the name of it, because it's an explicit expletive. But, you know,

Joseph Farquharson  40:32  
the nice with,

Alexandria Miller  40:34  
we'll see if my mom how my mom would feel about that. But there are some festivals that, you know, use Jamaican expletives as the name of the festival, whereas you know, you're a beer

Unknown Speaker  40:45  
too. Is it a beer?

Alexandria Miller  40:47  
Yeah, I think so. There's a Yeah, but that, but then again, you know, if a Jamaican performer was to say that on stage, they would be fined. Right? In Jamaica could, yeah, in Jamaica. Sorry. So I think this whole conversation of like, you know, why our language hasn't been celebrated on the island is blurred, you know, to an extent as you've gone through has been very sad to a certain degree. But, you know, again, it's taking this new form, especially our music through our culture. So could you talk through what you think of that, per se, and also maybe the impact of music culture migration as well, on our language,

Joseph Farquharson  41:30  
okay, so I used to be very impatient. And of course, impatience is a prime feature or characteristic of new converts, new converts, I'm patient with people who can't see the light, you know, so I used to be very impatient. But as I mature, I become more tolerant of those who have not yet seen the light, because what I see really, in terms of the reaction of many people to Creole language is, or specifically to Jamaica, is equivalent to you know, battered person syndrome. Because there is, this history of hurt, that is associated with the language, through the general culture, through schooling, and how it is that we are taught language, we are taught language, we are taught English in a way that is replacive, that in order to learn English, you have to erase Jamaican, and so that has left a lot of hurt, which is why a lot of people can understand. And here is a more fine tuned analogy. There are lots of people who were beaten, and beaten mercilessly, when they were young, when they were children, by their parents, and they hated it. It scarred them, it scarred them in deep ways. And while they were going through it, they didn't see it as an action of love. But then when, you know, when they get older, they now become converted, you know, it's, it was the best thing that could have ever happened to them, this is the way to go. And this is why the status quo never changes. Because people who experienced deep hurt and trauma sometimes don't understand the root of that trauma. And they now become the gatekeepers, and the enforcers of those same systems that cause them hurt. So I just wanted to say that to frame the discussion. That's where we're starting. So now I am becoming more patient. And because I understand, it's not easy for a lot of people to see what they were told what they were taught all their lives was not a language should not be taught could only be used to curse etc. It takes a while to get over that. And so the work that that we are doing within the department of language, linguistics and philosophy within the various linguistics departments across the University of the West Indies, within the Jamaican language unit or the Guyana languages unit, the work that we are doing one that is very slow, but one that understand that we need to do all of this groundwork with the speakers themselves or many of them who still see the languages as not adequate. So that's where I'd like to start the languages. And here I should focus on Jamaican because Jamaican is the prime example of this have improved by leaps and bounds since say the 1970s and a big part of that is migration and music and i could just say migration because it's the migration of bodies and the migration of music and the migration of music with bodies or through bodies and so one lots of Jamaicans started migrating in the 19 late 1940s the 50s and onwards and they brought the language with them and even in situations where they didn't think the language was good enough and they wanted to forget it there were forces operating against them and my particular take on it is that as we turned up in their whole societies as people that who are different and facing racism they needed something to rally around and many of them found that those things that they could rally around where language and music for the first one they took their cue from other minority communities let's say like the Portuguese and Canada or the Chinese in Canada etc the Italians in New York that they were using their languages for in group purposes and this was a mark of identity for them and so all of those Jamaicans who really spoke Jamaican but ended up in New York or Florida thinking or we speaking english and when they got there New Yorkers or Floridians couldn't understand them they thought oh whoa oh so we really do speak something that is different that is not english and something started to happen they realized that they know had a language for in group use in the same way as a Portuguese as a Chinese and then there was the music and it's interesting because Jamaican music popular music of the 1960s and i've written on this reggae rocksteady is very english there is more english than Jamaican in it but by the middle of the 1970s and i think largely because the cause of Rastafari and because of the black power movement the the music started now to infuse more Jamaican elements and that was transported to the diaspora and children born in the diaspora to Jamaican parents started clinging to this music and were their parents didn't want to talk to them in Jamaica they were learning the language on their own by listening to the music and that still happens today just that whereas in the 1960s and 70s you had to go out and you had to buy an LP you had you know you had to get records and then later on you had to get cassettes and and you know record them now you could just go on youtube and you get

Alexandria Miller  48:19  
it all on our phones

Joseph Farquharson  48:21  
yeah and so they have greater access to the language and i think the technology has helped the music to move beyond our borders and in the same time because the language moves with the music it has given the language a platform tool and so even where Jamaicans themselves don't want to acknowledge the language people in Africa people in Europe people in Asia are saying well this thing sounds good and they want the music but they also want the language that goes along with the music and so we are finding that we are really playing catch up we are not where we should be there are persons who want our music and our language but because of the attitudes that we have had towards them we have not really organized in such a way to prepare these things for export and when i say export i'm now speaking in explicit business terms not just of the thing going out there but us preparing and packaging it for them for expert so that we can earn from that

Alexandria Miller  49:35  
definitely i think that point brings to mind you know you talked a bit earlier about how your unit is and other units i'm sure are working to change the minds of people in our islands or you know in our states are you also doing work to sort of standardize these languages for export

Joseph Farquharson  49:53  
well let's say the work of standardization is not so much about export okay communities that standardize their languages generally standardize them for the home population

yeah but when you standardize it makes export easier because there is a homogenous product that you know have to export and that has been the chief challenge as Ugandans and Ghanians and Nigerians want to learn the language what is it that we give to them as the language that has been the challenge so the work of standardization is a is a long one and it's one that started decades ago so forgive me call the linguist Frederic Cassidy who i mentioned had created a writing system for the language and that writing system is very simple cause it tries to be very regular and uses one symbol always to represent the same sound and so you don't get this thing as an english where you have s and s can be pronounced in different ways depending where you happen to meet it so as at the beginning of sing is s as in the middle of pleasure is scu in the middle of caesar is the shu s at the beginning of sugar is sho that's four different songs for the one the one letter the system that Cassidy put together is simple that you even if you are hearing a word for the very first time you will be able to spell it because the system is regular like that that's the system that we have been working with as linguists it was updated by the Jamaican language unit about a little over a decade ago and it's now called the Cassidy JLU system and many other territories out there which is what Jamaicans don't know have taken this system and have modified it but there's so in Saint Andreas they're using a modified version in Guyana they're using a modified version etc so they are again we are a leader in the field does that we don't know that we are leaders yeah so finding a common and the generally accepted writing system is one issue of standardization the translation of the new testament into Jamaica was a very big step in that direction because the new testament uses the Cassidy JLU system so you know have this big this large body of data now i'm speaking as a linguist of literature let's say that is in the writing system and so that's a big step we have translations of books such as the little prince Alice in wonderland by Dr Tamirand Nnena De Lisser she's a lecturer at the university of Guyana she has translated these stories into Jamaican and they use the Cassidy JLU writing system so we need more materials in the system or the challenge too is what variety do you use which variety will get selected Jamaican like any other language has differences you know between urban and rural between east and west between male and female between young people and old people how are we going to decide well power generally decides these things or helps to decide these things so what they did for the Jamaica new testament is that they chose the variety and this is especially with regard to the markers for past tense and progressive etc they chose the variety that is common to kingston and its environs so they use deh for past and and they use a for progressive and why they do that is simple a lot of the people who make decisions about the country are in this region so you don't want to give them something where they're going to say a wah that and they reject it so they try to strike a compromise by using deh and a but in some areas they you they do use words and phrases that are not so typical of kingston and so we're trying to meet everybody but to create a sort of variety that no body would feel left out completely and so these are very depth sort of have choices that you have to have to make in the work of standardization. And it's an ongoing process. But again, the more people come on board is the more that work of standardization because more people start using it for different things, and then have questions, chances are, in the end, we are going to end up with some sort of compromise variety, both in terms of the writing system, and also in terms of what markers Do you use, etc, but use is the primary thing that we are going for now. And after we start using it, and the issues arise, then we have to find a solution for those.

Alexandria Miller  55:44  
So you know, coming to bring all together everything that you just said, what are your hopes for Jamaican for, you know, Guyanese for Trinidadian, going forward,

Joseph Farquharson  55:56  
up. So my hope, of course, is to see these countries Finally, as not just de facto bilingual, because that is the reality on the ground, but also officially bilingual, where the leaders, the bureaucrats understand that the the Creole languages in these territories are not hindrances. They are actually wonderful resources. Again, coming back to the case of Jamaican Jamaican English, which is what I'm speaking now, is not really marketable beyond the shores of Jamaica. Anybody out there who wants to learn English, they go and learn British English or American English. What is desirable outside of Jamaica is Jamaican, the Jamaican language, same thing for persons outside who are of the Caribbean were interested in soca. What they're interested in is Trinidadian, not Trinidadian English. And so we have to understand the value of these intangible resources. And so develop them that the populations can benefit. And then it's not. It's not only about the direct economic benefit, but it's the immediate social and psychological benefits that eventually become economic benefits. Because think about your being able to train and develop your people in the language that they are most comfortable in. This is not to exclude any other language. Because when people feel more secure about themselves, they feel much more comfortable in taking on the world. So somebody who is more linguistically secure, is that person who is going to go out and want to learn English, want to learn Russian, want to learn Swahili, want to learn Polish, etc. Because there is this confidence in self that they have, nothing is going to shake their foundation, as opposed to the current method where you try to destroy that foundation, and have people skip to the next step. They ignore what you know, ignore what is comfortable to you, and learn this. So it's getting us to that point, where we can see the benefits of acknowledging what we have. And then using what we have, as a building block as a stepping stone to get us to the next step. And then people will now start doing all sorts of creative things with the language, things that they thought could not be done before. And therein lies the other opportunities that will spring out of it. Because now, we are treating these languages as if they can only do x languages do what their speakers want to do. Yeah. And when we start using them to do let's say, rocket science, when you start using them to talk about black holes in quantum physics, that creates a body of knowledge or an additional body of knowledge. And then with the creation of that body of knowledge, we get an audience, we get a market, we get consumers, etc. And think about more people on the ground understanding what these things are, if they are given to them in their heart language.

Alexandria Miller  59:56  
Yeah, it builds access to everybody. That's wonderful. said thank you so much for that. Well, as a final question wouldn't be strictly facts without it. We have a very interesting what I call the strictly facts sounds segment. So what are some of your, you know, the favorite creative works that highlight the connection between Caribbean language and our popular culture?

Joseph Farquharson  1:00:20  
Okay, so I would say, for me, and I'm biased as a linguist, it's those works that address language very directly. There are works that that use language in, in a kind of new and interesting way. So if you think about, let's say, the epistolary novel Aunt Jen, by Professor Paulette Ramsay of the University of the West Indies, she has this young protagonist writing letters to her mother, and the voice is very much a Jamaican or a Jamaican Creole voice. And so it's almost as if the letters were written in Jamaican Creole, that's pushing the boundary of the language. And so it's when people do new and exciting stuff with the language for myself, I want to write, I want to write short stories, and I want to write novels, myself, in the language. And when I say in the language, I mean, no English, or if I do English, it's, it would be English in the mouth of a character who doesn't speak Jamaican at all, but the narration would be in Jamaican only. And most of the characters would be speaking in Jamaica. And when I say Jamaican, I mean, you know, "him look down di road and him see, the boy, the mother and so and so forth." And I think we have a good tradition of of that in storytelling. It's just that our storytelling has largely been been oral, because we are chiefly an oral society. But if I look at those works, that mentioned language explicitly, I would say Louis Bennett's "Noh Likkle Twang". Because it gives you some insight of people's perspective on language, especially in relation to migration, and how you should you could indicate social improvement through adopting another language or adopting another accent. And then there's also by the mighty conqueror, a song called Trinidad dictionary. And because one of my areas is lexicography, that one is particularly important for me, because it kind of throws out a challenge to lexicographers and says, hey, look, all of these dictionaries out there are incomplete because they don't include or Caribbean words for Mighty Conqueror. It was Trinidad Trinidadian words. I thought that was a very nice perspective on things to say, Look, your thing, no matter how great you think it is, is not yet finished, because you have not yet represented us.

Alexandria Miller  1:03:21  
Beautifully said. Weh yuh a guh? stay tuned for strictly back sounds where we connect our history to popular culture. That was such an amazing discussion with Dr. Farquharson on Caribbean languages and the importance of nationalizing and uplifting them. For this strictly facts sound segment we borrow two of Dr. Farquharson's recommendations. Louise Bennett’s Noh LikkleTwang and Mighty Conqueror’s Trinidad Dictionary. Miss Lou is no stranger to Strictly Facts, especially from our third episode where we discuss her poem, Colonization inReverse. This time, we bring to our clash her poem “Noh Likkle Twang” which chastises a boy who returns to Jamaica from a six month stay in America for not returning with a twang, or in other words, a more foreign accent. Miss Lou here uses her poem to highlight how the Jamaican language has been demeaned, and how twanging is often more celebrated and may also lead to a better quality of life. Another as I mentioned, is the 1960s song Trinidad dictionary by calypsonian. Leroy Paul, more commonly known as mighty conquer, mighty conquer celebrates the Trinidadian language by naming a number of local phrases and sayings that only a native Trinidadian would understand. He later sings he hopes there's a time when the government will teach students in this language, emphasizing this longer struggle for national recognition. And he also repeats that he thinks Webster should have come to Trinidad before completing the Webster's dictionary. So Our last selection is Tobagonian poet, writer, and lawyer M. NourbeSe Philip’s poem “Discourse on the Logic of Language” from her book “She Tries Her Tongue.” In it, she writes about the hostile relationship between English as what she calls the father tongue, or a foreign language, and the mother tongue, the innate languages of her African ancestors. There were so many pieces on Caribbean language that we couldn't fit them all into the strictly facts sound segment. So as always, be sure to check out the strictly facts syllabus to get links to these pieces, and so many more, including Dr. Farquharson's work, more poems, more songs, more creative, Caribbean cultural work, and also the Caribbean dictionaries we discussed in this episode. Thank you so much for joining us. Let everyone know where they can find you on social media and all that stuff as well as you know the work of the Jamaican language unit.

Joseph Farquharson  1:06:03  
Okay, so first and foremost for the Jamaican language unit. We are on Instagram and YouTube. I think we are on Twitter too. But my team members found Twitter too hostile as I think because they were using Twitter heavily during the petition that we had about two years ago to make the language official. What Instagram we use quite a lot. They post stories they post Proverbs, etc. And also YouTube, we have a YouTube channel. And in both places, we are Broadcast Jamaican written in the Cassidy JLU writing system. So that is BRAADKYAAS "broadcast Jamaican"  JAMIEKAN "BRAADKYAAS JAMIEKAN" so you can go over to our YouTube channel and subscribe for me. I'm on Twitter, I'm on IG @ jtfarquharson that's JTFARQUHARSON. So that's Twitter and IG. But please do follow and subscribe to BRAADKYAAS JAMIEKAN on our various social media platforms there. There's there's a lot of interesting stuff there. And from time to time we have discussions on language.

Alexandria Miller  1:07:24  
Definitely we'll have links to everything in our Notes for this episode as well as on our strictly facts syllabus. So thank you again Dr. Farquharson and Likkle more everyone. Thanks for tuning in is strictly facts. Visit strictly facts podcast.com for more information for each episode, follow us on strictlyfactspod on Instagram and Facebook and strictlyfactspd on Twitter.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai