22631: Hugues Saint-Fort on the rape and orthography debates (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Hugues Saint-Fort <Hugo274@aol.com>

Let me say first of all that there is indeed a serious rape issue or
sexual harassment in Haiti. I will not deny it and it seems to me that
most of my fellow Haitians on the list as well as several foreigners
who know Haiti did not either. How could it be otherwise in such a
patriarchal society overwhelmed by poverty, unemployment, political
repression, dysfunctional justice system...  All these parameters tend
to make Haiti worst than other societies also influenced by sexual
violence committed by men. Is it true? I do not know.

Guy Antoine's arguments are formidable, measured and extremely
persuasive. He even went a bit further when he conducted an informal
survey among some Haitians on Kathy Grey's claims. That was the right
thing to do in such a situation, even if the survey was very limited.

Michel DeGraff's posts come from a brilliant linguist highly respected
from all his peers. The problem is that I seriously doubt that Kathy
Grey read carefully these important responses. Judging by the points
she chose to respond to in general, I think we are wasting our time
when we carefully build an argument to answer Ms. Grey. Apparently,
she doesn't care about the essence of our argument except if our point
gives her some opportunity to advance her own "agenda" or point of view.

So, the question is: Should we continue to respond to her revolting
overgeneralizations or to claims like Haitian culture is sick and
inferior? My answer is Yes; we should. Because, we are not
communicating only with Kathy Grey. Hundreds of people are reading us
now. In a sense, I am more interested in talking to them now than
responding to Kathy Grey because, no disrespect, she is not paying
attention to what we are saying. In fact, there have been three
interventions that prove my point: one by Charles Arthur, another by
ANONYMOUS (the one who says that Michel DeGraff is "a chelbe Haitian
linguist at MIT") and the third by Vishnusurf. We should pay attention
to these types of interventions to rectify their mistakes.(By the way,
Jean Saint-Vil's answer to Charles Arthur is a model of answer!)

Now, let's talk about that controversy on Haitian Creole (HC)
spelling. As a trained linguist (Ph.D., Universite Rene Descartes,
Paris V, Sorbonne), I am amazed at how people can be so judgmental
about a language that is not native to them. Even with my native
language (HC) and taking into account my native intuitions, I am
always careful when I say something regarding Haitian linguistic
usage, grammaticality of a sentence, etc. I would be excessively
careful before passing judgment on any syntactical, lexical or
morphological fact of the English language, because IT IS NOT MY
NATIVE LANGUAGE. Yet, Ms Grey, who is a native speaker of English,
thinks that she can teach us, native speakers of HC very well aware
of
the official orthography of our native language, how to write HC
and
even, (that is incredible!) how to pronounce HC words. This is what
she writes:

  "The honorific to which I am entitled is Mambo, both in Creole and in
  English. Both "m's" are pronounced, thus: MAM-bo. The "a" is short and
  the "o" is long. "Manbo" is incorrect both in Creole and in English,
  the "n" is not pronounced (in the case of English) and the word is NOT
  pronounced "MAH-bo"(in the case of Creole or French
  orthography). There is plenty of incorrect orthography floating around
  in some people's attempts at contemporary Haitian Creole and this is
  but one example." (see post 22483, 6/24/2004).

It is incredible that, after all Guy Antoine's and Michel DeGraff's
comments and sound explanations, Ms. Grey keeps writing "Mambo" as
such, "Racine" as such, "sans" as such. I read for the first time the
other day a message that was sent to Ms Grey by Michel DeGraff in May
2000, at a time when I was not a member of the Corbett list, and I
shook my head in disbelief. The facts are so clear: since January 31,
1980, the Haitian Legislative Chamber has promulgated a decree that
indicates how HC shall be written. Ms. Grey has been living in Haiti
since 1987, according to her post 22224, 6/3/2004, so she must have
heard of that legislative decree, and the least she could do is to
respect and follow that law. Instead, she "decides that another
spelling is what [she] want[s] to use, and disregard[s] [the Haitian
decree]."

How should I call such an attitude?

Hugues