#511: Help in Creole (fwd) Vedrine replies to Allen

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: Emmanuel W. Vedrine <evedrine@hotmail.com>



French does a make a distinction between "e ferme" vs. "e ouvert" whereas 
Kreyol doesn't and that the "accent aigu /ansantegi" comes into question. 
However, by respecting the way someone writes their name (in the case of 
using "aksantegi", I don't think we should take complete liberty to change 
that (as I said before) though in spoken Kreyol we (bilinguals) already know 
that we may not be pronouncing it with a French accent, but in written form 
it's like we were to follow a norm though I argue the Kreyol is a phonetic 
language. It's also good for quick reference (e.g, in research, through the 
web... [ref. to some one's name] in order to avoid confusion.

Some newspapers (sometimes) would write one version in parentheses but, hey 
I don't think we are going to look for five feet to the cat or "chercher 
midi a quatorze heure". And I mentioned before in the case of "Bon Nouvèl" 
(trying to help with a literacy program, dealing with Haitians who are 
monolingual or who have little knowledge of French). I can try to understand 
their philosophy (in terms of kreyolizing proper names), but still the 
question is: is this this a norm to follow or will be followed by all 
writers who writing in the vernacular language?

In closing, the issue was about "e aksantegi" and "e" (as oral vowel in 
Kreyol)


- E.W.Vedrine


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