The Art of Survival: Language
By Nyles Pollonais
Whether we accept it or not, we have entered a renaissance. It is a period of time in which we reckon with our old truths while we tune our beliefs to the beat of our new world -but more than this, it is a large-scale enlightenment. We struggle with this change as humans, but struggle is nothing new to those who have lived under oppression’s sole. What we, the people of struggle, have learned in between and amongst these abrupt changes is that there is an art to survival. And presently, as things seem so uncertain, I take a look at my own history to find clues on how, as my grandma would call them, “the old” people, survived in the midst of forced division, slavery, and overt racism. In this article, I take a look at English Caribbean Creole. In its structure and use, I seek to gain insight into the survival tactics of the old people and to shun the shame of our shared history. The art of communication is essential in survival, and we aren’t new to this.
Para para mek okro dry ah tree, my grandmother told me over the phone as I tried to decipher what she meant, realizing I wasn’t as keen as I thought. I had an idea that the children of immigrant people innately inherit the parent’s language and recreate it in new social environments to foster community and to recognize a shared history and tradition. What some might call “broken English” is often what the speakers linguistically rely on as the bridge between the gaps in language. The first-generation children pick up on these deviations from the language they are expected to master, but in practice are never able to fully recreate the authentic experience, partly because the original speakers are also removed from their original environments. The children instead create a new language, a sort of neo-creole of their own with influences from their current social settings. Haitian Creole, Brazilian Portuguese, and Neorican Spanish (in North America) are examples of broken versions of their former formal colonial counterparts that are viewed as mostly legitimate languages around the world.
In the English language and in the former colonies of the British, however, it appeared and continues to appear that only stigma and ridicule exist for speakers of this background - the only historical exception would be Jamaica during Bob Marley’s rise to international stardom and America with the rise of Rap music (Yes, Neo-creole exists in Black America as well as the Caribbean, just go to the South). As a way to test my idea, I went back in time with my family members to see if I could figure out key phrases from their pasts and to brush up on some things I’d been missing since the start of the physical distancing mandates.
The complexities of colonialist history allowed for the nuances in the languages of the former British colonies in the Caribbean. Countries would be colonized and re-colonized by the varying multilingual European nations in the heat of war, or by treaty, requiring the colonized, often people of various backgrounds, to pick up on these language shifts while maintaining a universal method of communication between themselves.
The next phrase my grandmother shared with me held the history of Guyana, South America in its seemingly simple execution; ‘int of Beneba mek Keshiba tek notice. In Guyana and Trinidad, post-abolition, the British brought Indians under indentured-servitude to the colonies to boost economic production once slowed by the freeing of the enslaved Africans. As a result, traditions, languages, cultures, and religions were shared in these new communities among the groups of people, including the natives and the colonizers. In this phrase specifically, I noticed the Indo origins of the names used and wondered if it could be a hint to finding the meaning of the colloquialism. Unfortunately, it did not. The meaning, however, was rather simple: The husband, Beneba, hinted to his wife, Keshiba, something that he did not want said outright, as a way to let her know inconspicuously — and she took notice. My grandmother used these phrases in discussion with her sisters, adopted from “the old people,” in varying social settings to understand the interactions of their counterparts, and in turn developed their own sayings and phrases for their creole.
““Also, the word ‘to’ can be translated into fi or fuh only when added to the beginning of the verb to become the infinitive form. The words then merge in pronunciation like in Spanish when adding the preposition ‘a’ before the noun ‘el’ creating ‘al.’ Example ‘me wan fi-mek brekfass or ‘I want to make breakfast.’ To the virgin ear, its mumble-talk, but we knew better.””
It’s important to take note of the spelling of the words in these phrases as they allude to deeper meanings. Words like mek and tek are derivative of the words ‘make’ and ‘take,’ but are pronounced and used in a unique manner that requires the new spelling. They can be used in that form and spelling as past tense verbs as listeners would rely on intonation to denote the intended time period. Also, the word ‘to’ can be translated into fi or fuh only when added to the beginning of the verb to become the infinitive form. The words then merge in pronunciation like in Spanish when adding the preposition ‘a’ before the noun ‘el’ creating ‘al.’ Example ‘me wan fi-mek brekfass or ‘I want to make breakfast.’ To the virgin ear, its mumble-talk, but we knew better.
Another key word used in Caribbean creole is ‘deh’ which is derivative of ‘there’ and used to denote location, near, far, general, and specific. At times, speakers would use the word twice to emphasize something about the meaning or location of the item or person to which they are referring. She deh, deh is saying that a female person is in the general vicinity of somewhere that she is known to be or supposed to be, for example at her home or away in college. Bai, pass di ting deh or “hey, pass me that thing there” is a way an adult would ask you to get them something like a remote or spoon, but this time, ‘deh’ is a specific location. Additionally, the word ‘that’ can be translated into Neo-Creole as di, duh, or dat depending on the speaker, emotion, word placement, and item. The ability of the verbs to transcend tense and the uses of deh, di, duh, and dat seems universal within Caribbean creoles and is still used in the Neo-Creole spoken among the children of the descendants.
To continue my language quest, I reached out to my cousins’ grandmother, someone who I consider a grandmother of my own, my 92-year-old Jamaican Grandma Charmaine. I was raised with her and many other Jamaicans growing up in New York, so picking up on the patois wasn’t too difficult, although Jamaican creole is its own beast, bumbaclaat! The Jamaican influence on Neo-Creole is an important aspect of the current language especially with the popularity of Reggae and Dancehall music, so we jumped right into it. She called her younger days ‘the dark days’ as a way to highlight the industrialized differences of our current world and smiled with nostalgia. Me Unkle wud seh, cum ya bwoy, leh we go down ah yaad meaning “my uncle would say, come let’s go home.” Me is used instead of ‘my’ because of historical British pronunciations. Yaad derivative of ‘yard’ is used in their creole instead of ‘home.’ To be a Yaadie is to be a Jamaican born in Jamaica. Cum ya is ‘come here.’
If you’ve noticed, so far in the writing of the Creole, words that use the letter H, (ting/thing, ‘int/hint, ya’/here) are written without it because in most Caribbean Creole and in Neo-Creole it is dropped in pronunciation and traditionally that is the same in Jamaican patois. These are only small examples of the syntactic and grammatical nuances between the English language and Caribbean Neo Creole, but a necessary foundation in the understanding of our language. These simple changes, created a world of difference, and a language of our own.
Coming back into the future with my research, I stopped around the 80s with my mom to learn about her experiences in New York interacting with the many English-native Caribbean Creole speakers. She brought up a very important intersectional aspect to language that I had overlooked — the classism of language. She said, “Growing up in Guyana, South America, if you were fairly wealthy, you had access to a strict British education that allowed for higher social mobility. If, however, you were less fortunate and did not have access to a proper education, you more likely used creole to survive as it was the most commonly used method of communication in daily life.”
My family was meticulous about education and made sure that proper English was known and practiced, but still used creole, frequently, as I’m sure many other families did. She told me about interactions she had with my grandfather in Brooklyn when he’d ask her, ah weh yah go/where are you going or ah wah yah do/what are you doing? Ah weh yah... translates roughly into ‘to where are you (going or coming)...’ and ah wah yah... into ‘of what are you (insert gerund)…’ This language used in the household was accessed as a lifeline often when my mother’s generation would intermingle on the streets of New York back in the day.
On the streets of Brooklyn today, you’ll often come across 3-4 different languages being spoken as you walk about a 2 block radius from any part of the borough. Where I’m from, take a walk and you’ll hear English on the street, Spanish at the market, Arabic at the deli, Haitian at the laundromat, and Hebrew by the gym. New York has always been a salad bowl of different peoples and growing up in the 80s and 90s, my mom mentioned just how important Neo-Creole was for her generation. “In the street it had more power.” She’d spoken about the not-so-positive interactions she and many other Caribbean descendants had with the Americans and the other immigrants. “They’d [the Americans] call us the banana boat kids, and the Haitians had it the worst because of their French-Creole.” As a means of survival in these trying times, immigrant descendants of the Caribbean found solidarity in the commonalities of their English based creoles. “It was like street-talk, but it was also family-talk. It was a way for us to connect, and to bond in the midst of our situations. We traded things between the groups and even adopted sayings and words from our Puerto Rican and Dominican friends,” she stated. This was essentially the creation and the foundation of today’s Caribbean Neo-Creole, maintained, tuned, and spoken by the descendants in America.
In my generation, specifically, we do our best to continue the traditions that we were raised with. Whenever I interact with other English-speaking Caribbean descendants who are able to speak a form of Neo-Creole, the connection or language pathway is automatically established as well as a potential commonality for friendship. Emotion, also, plays a huge role as to when to speak the language. At times of heightened emotional response, Neo-Creole speakers are more likely to use and rely on that language as their primary choice. Wah gwan/what’s up, ah wah yah seh /how are you (literally, what you say) is often the first thing I’d choose to say to a close friend of this background upon first seeing them.
Our survival depends on us learning from the mistakes as well as the successes of our ancestors. Creating a form of communication understandable by your people, but incomprehensible to everyone else is an impressive method of survival. Moving forward, we must learn to adapt these key tactics in our movements against hatred and bigotry. I hope to do more work on the intricacies of Neo-Creole and to see where it will go in the future, but this is only the start of The Art of Survival. Ultimately, I believe that if studied, and used on a wider level that we can and should attempt to formalize and legitimize the language for anthropological and linguistic reasons. Essentially, the language will be lost if we don’t use it, or para para mek okro dry ah tree/distance allows the okro to over ripen on the plant, causing it to be wasted. Let us not allow the ways of our ancestors to pass with time. As my great-grandmother would say, stan’ saftly deh bai.
Note: I was unable to speak with my Trinidadian grandmother in time for this article, but if you're interested you can follow up with me and we’ll buss a lime/hangout and discuss the Trinibagonian influence in depth.
Meet the Writer
Nyles Pollonais graduated from New York University in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. He is a writer, entrepreneur, musician, and future educator who spends most of his time focusing on political theory and current events. He encourages you to take a look at his company, Binary Aeon, and the work they're doing to protect individual data rights and online privacy.
