15992: Fouche: Re: 15956: Sanba: On Creole Language (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: "[iso-8859-1] Rachel Fouché" <vze4xd3t@verizon.net>

> I am willing to suggest that Fouché's condition to communicate with the
world is not specific to >Creole-speaking people. The US citizen who needs
to communicate with a foreign partner either >learns the partner's language
or uses an interpreter. The motive is interest. I can garantee that had
>Haiti reach a level of development (forget about politics and power) more
and more businessmen, >women or their offsprings are going to learn CREOLE
and its easiest way of spelling. Not to >mention that right now the CIA have
some of its agents learn Creole, as they do for Chinese, >Spanish, French,
Russian, you name it.

In many middle-class Haitian families, Creole simply isn't a "real"
language.  I remember being treated to a long-winded diatribe from my father
about the reason why the Haiti Observateur only had one page in Creole when
I was growing up.  French -- and to a lesser degree, English -- were more
sophisticated languages, while Creole was more for gossip and "unimportant
things."  To reinforce the "negative" aspects of speaking Creole, my
relatives only spoke Creole to "us kids" when they were angry or we were
going to be punished.

I am certainly not unique in this respect from my Haitian-American cohorts
who speak English and/or French well, but struggle through communicating
effectively in Creole.  Until Creole is truly respected as valid mode of
communication like French and English, there will always be two Haitis:  the
educated, "multilingual" elite whose ranks in Haiti slowly dwindle and the
mass of uneducated "monolingual" poor.

> To the issue of multi languages family, the debate can flare up; and it
would be great. Except if we >do not want to discover the best way to
proceed.

With respect to the multi-lingual Haitian family, parents must learn to
teach Creole to their children, both spoken and written.  Everyone in my
family is literate in French and/or English.  But if I asked the members of
my family who are fluent in Creole to read something in standardized Kreyol,
many would struggle through it -- and in reality they are illiterate in
Kreyol.  The written language component is essential to break the notion
that Creole is a "gossip" language.

> The other point I would like Miss Fouche to elaborate a little bit on, is
her notion of Kreyòl (thank >you for spelling it in perfect Kreyòl)being
still under development. I think that it's the same for any >language, isn't
it?

I did not mean to infer that Kreyol was unique as a language in evolution;
all languages are, although the French historically have tried to restrict
the level of this evolution internally.  My point, which I did not make well
enough, was that the grammar between Haitian Creole, French, and English are
different and distinct -- and to ignore the impact of grammar in language
acquisition for all three languages is detrimental to Haitian youth.

Rachel Fouché
(who sometimes spells her own name correctly -- just as she uses "Creole"
and "Kreyol" interchangeably)