22605: Anonymous: On mambo and related topics

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

BOB: ANONYMOUS>>> PLEASE>>>

months ago i vowed never to post comments on this list again, though i
regularly do stop to see what you folks are bickering and pontificating
about
these days... from time to time...

and this must be anonymous, since even my kids have received vulgar emails
from
people who disagreed with what i sometimes used to post.. and they even
half
figured out the creole and asked me what "koko marenn ou" means... bref...

min komaBO... i am breaking that vow today, while buzzed, at least for a
couple
of sentences...

though not a linguist, i have studied linguistics and my creole is fairly
fluent, so i will venture to say this:

it is very difficult not to pronounce manbo as mambo...
go ahead and try... whether blan or haitian... go ahead... the lips quite
naturally come together between the N and the B so as to sound like MB and
not
as NB...  if you really want to pronounce manbo as maNBo, you have to
concentrate to keep your lips apart between the n and the b... i do,
anyway...
and that is not how people talk...

the accent, i would agree here with Prof. DeGraff (pretty ballsy on my
part,
considering that he is a chelbe haitian linguist at MIT and i am just a
blan
who happened to live in haiti for a while; perhaps i am even one of the
incompetent foreigners who have tried to learn and write about his
hallowed
culture) normally would go over the O and not the A... but emotions do
change
the way that we pronounce things -- there must be a term in linguistics
for
that... not "diacriticals," but something that the rest of us, especially
the
analphabet among us, could never even begin to understand... and why
should we?

the maNbo - maMbo debate is related to why in english we have these words:
"important" and "inept"

i think so, anyway... but then again, i am not a linguist... like
augustine
said, "i know what time is, but if you ask me, i don't know... "

it's the way in which our mouths work, plain and simple...

besides, what does it maTTer (pronounced: madher) to the vast majority of
Vodouists (sorry, bob, but "Voodooists" just won't do) who really don't
spell
or read much and who more than likely refer to their religion anyway as
sevis
lwa, or something like that (sorry, i cannot get the accents on my
keyboard,
but isn't there a movement among creole linguists [and hopefully too
french
linguists] to rid the language of accents anyway)?

i understand that the official spelling is manbo... fine... but that is
not the
phonetics of the word at all... just like "tough" in english is not
spelled
TUF...

and i don't think it is a question of where on god's green earth you
became a
human being... i find it downright materialistically anatomical that we in
fact say "maMbo"... whatever the "official" spelling...

so please give mambo racine a break... she is NOT a racist, and she has
NEVER
claimed that haitian culture is "inferior" to any other culture... if she
tought it inferior, then why would she allow her own life to become so
inundated by Vodou?  the true answer to that question, i suspect, is that
the
lwa have convoked her, plain and simple... they are not racists, the
lwas...
they call whom they may... and they probably detest haitian xenophobia...
mezanmi...

i believe that it is because mambo racine knows haitian culture so
intimately
and that she cares about haiti so deeply that she has raised the issue of
sexual violence... (i know this should be a separate post, but breaking a
vow
once in one day is enough)...  i have known her for a long time, consider
her a
friend and a deeply knowledgeable maMbo... given the astute logic and
articulate diction of her retorts, i know that she doesn't need me to say
these
things... but i have to wonder how many of her detractors would not have
even
flinched had a haitian maNbo said the things that she said... if that is
the
case, then isn't THAT a bit racist?

in closing, the most reliable statistics on violence in haiti indicate
that 70%
of haitian women experience physical violence at the hands of men, and
that "on
average", every haitian woman can expect to become a victim of gendered
violence at least once in her life.

that is something to scream about, and that is indeed symptomatic of a
"sick,
sick, sick, country"  (she said "country"... not "culture" not "people"
not
"blacks")

(she also said "sick"... not "inferior")

kembe pa lage,
yon blan ki pa kon ayin...