Our Language Stigma

The public debate surrounding the proposed translation of the bible into Jamaican dialect continues unabated. It is disconcerting, to me at least, how much controversy this initiative has generated, almost overshadowing such pressing issues as the deepening recession in the USA, the effects of high fuel and food prices on Jamaican lives, precipitating a downturn in the tourist and entertainment sectors. We even see the issue of global warming and its effects finally taking centre stage in major international fora like the recent G-8 conference in Japan. Yet in Jamaica, it remains on the fringes of government and political focus. Ol’ time people use to seh, when America sneeze, wi ketch pneumonia. Already however, its becoming manifest that when America sneezes (air pollution), we are doomed to be flooded by increased frequency and more intense hurricanes, as well as rising seas.

The debate has taken a new twist since Prime Minister Golding’s recent remarks to a graduating class. He commented to the effect that, we would have no need to translate the bible, if the education system had not failed. This has generated a howl of protests from patriots of all stripes. Everywhere I go, live or virtually, people are expressing the view that the Prime Minister’s interjection on this topic reveals an unfortunate prejudice against and a belittling of our native tongue.

Whereas PM Golding was primarily making a critical point that students need to master English in order to succeed in the post-school working world, to juxtapose the two as cause and effect was to delegitimise our culture. Looked at in reverse, is PM Golding really saying that if we all had a complete mastery of the English Language, Patois speaking would be extinct? Would we wish to see the total destruction of the colourful Jamaica language? Is our language an irrelevant, negative cultural hangover from a previous dispensation? Maybe we should ban all roots plays and indigenous poetry and even our folk songs. Anthropologists confirm that language is central to our customs, collective cohesion and society. It is also critical to the presentation of our traditions and ancestral memory. We best interpret and translate life through our natural language.

As our sporting, artistic and cultural prowess have gained worldwide prominence, so too have the use of our language become widespread. I have met many Japanese, Mexicans, Spanish and Africans who can barely speak a sentence of comprehensible English, yet they can adequately communicate in Jamaican Patois. From Banana Boat Song (Harry Belafonte) to Oh Carolina (Folkes Brothers) through Guava Jelly (Bob Marley) to Gimmi De Light (Sean Paul), our music has effectively incorporated Jamaican language, conjuring up unique Jamaican images with which the world has identified, thereby creating international hit songs from our artistes. Moreover, we now have foreign artistes like Fugees, Black Eyed Peas and Kanye West seemingly enhancing their hit potential by using our dialect in their songs. Maybe if we were not so ashamed of our language and were teaching English through the use of the local dialect, the education system might have been more successful. As Ragga says, “if you want to take someone on a journey, you have got to begin where they are.”

Then again, maybe the education system is achieving what it was designed to accomplish. To paraphrase Errol Hewitt, writing in the Sunday Gleaner on July 13, “in Jamaica, talent expertise and experience…is closed out because of the selfish and ascriptive nature of our society, which ignores merit, [especially if it comes from the underclass] and embraces mediocrity in order to maintain the status quo.” This is the precise dichotomy facing us as a nation.

The divide between the classes and the tribes become more acute with each passing day. With the civic and political leadership remaining the preserve of the entrenched, facilitated by the ineffective education system, the only routes left open for the social and economic wellbeing of others is cultural, sporting and criminal activities, oft times becoming interrelated.

This has had a deleterious impact in our communities and cheapened the value of life in our society. No wonder, to quote Kevin O’Brien Chang (Sunday Gleaner, July 13, 2008), “our homicide rate in 1965 was 3.7 per 100,000 (but by) 2007 it was nearly 60 per 100,000”.

Incredibly, O’Brien Chang- with his blinkers on- goes on to state that “this may be the greatest explosion of civil violence any nation without significant ethnic, tribal, linguistic, ideological or religious differences has ever experienced.” Huh? Are we living in and talking about the same Jamaica here? This totally denies our reality and just goes to show how far some of us have been able to insulate ourselves from the brutal, tribalistic society in which the average Jamaica has to struggle for survival.

Then again, I may be wrong. As David Brooks said, writing in the New York Times on June 24, 2008, “life is complicated. The reason we have democracy is that no one side is right all the time. The only people who are dangerous are those who can’t admit, even to themselves, that obvious fact.”

Email: che.campbell@gmail.com