Carolyn Cooper, Contributor
Cooper
Prime Minister Golding spoke straight from his heart when he was asked how the nation was going to honour our Olympic champions: 'Nuff tings a go gwaan.' Then in response to Jacques Rogge's reprimanding of Usain Bolt for celebrating victory in typical Jamaican style, the PM's passionate assessment was: "Is pure red eye and 'grudgefulness'."
In classic dancehall fashion, our prime minister dismissively sent a message to all bad-mind people: "Tell dem to tek weh demself." Incidentally, that's ungrammatical Jamaican. It should have been 'fi' instead of 'to'. And in the sentence above it should have been 'a' instead of 'is.' And then 'grudgefulness' adds an over-correct English 'ness' which wouldn't usually be there in Jamaican. These are good examples of English interference in Jamaican grammar. Bilingual speakers sometimes get their languages mixed up, especially when they are in a highly emotional state.
I'm quite proud of Prime Minister Golding for speaking his mind in public in his heart language - ungrammatical or not. Rogge draw Bruce tongue. And he responded appropriately. Just like Sister P. But what is good for the goose is not good for the gander. Look how much trouble Sister P got into for committing the first-degree crime of speaking from her heart! She is royally dissed as educationally subnormal.
Now, I know some of you will be vexed with me. "Weh mek she a bring een politics inna Olympics?" But if you think Rogge's criticism of Bolt's winning performance wasn't politics you don't really understand wat a gwaan. And if you think our attitudes to language in Jamaica aren't political, you won't ever understand why both Peter Phillips and Bruce Golding think they are congenitally superior to Sister P.
Usain Bolt doing the 'Gully Creepa' while celebrating after winning the 200m finals. - AP
born to lead
As schoolboys, Bruce and Peter attended Jamaica College where they inherited a sense of entitlement. They were educated into believing that men are born to lead. It is their natural right. At JC, Bruce and Peter learned the art of debating with worthy opponents. In adult life they now know who is a worthy opponent and who is a dunce. But that's another story.
Nuff tings haffi gwaan for our triumphant athletes. They have reminded us in magnificent style that wi big an wi broad! Jamaicans can perform superlatively on any world-class stage: Bird's Nest or Grand Gala. And it's not only in athletics and the creative arts that we excel. It's every sphere of life - regrettably, even crime.
Louise Bennett, herself a donette gorgon performer, wrote a wicked poem, Nayga Yard, celebrating the prowess of Jamaicans in a whole range of fields. But Miss Lou explicitly makes the point that because the vast majority of Jamaicans are black, the outstanding performers in any field are also likely to be black:
Call fi Jamaica fastes sprinters,
Gal or bwoy, an den
De foremost artis, doctor, scholar -
Nayga reign again!
Nayga Yard was first published in October 1948 in the nationalist newspaper, Public Opinion. Writing in the middle of the 20th century, Miss Lou needed to affirm the intelligence, creativity and just plain common sense of black Jamaicans at a time when backward people believed that 'nutten black no good'. In her rousing poem Miss Lou declares: "So, nayga people, carry awn; Leggo yuh talents broad."
UWI AT 60
The year 1948 was a momentous one in which Jamaicans did "carry awn and leggo wi talents broad". We sent our first team to the Olympics, held in London. Jamaica was still a colony of Britain and so the flag that was flown for Herb McKenley's gold medal was the Union Jack, not the black, green and gold. But it really didn't matter; Jamaica was number one in the world.
It was also the year of badman Ivanhoe 'Rhygin' Martin's dramatic escape from prison. His story is immortalised in the film The Harder They Come. If is badness, we will win gold medal. As Miss Lou put it so humorously in Nayga Yard:
Go eena prison, poor house, jail,
Asylum - wah yuh see?
Nayga dah reign predominant!
De place belongs to we!
The University of the West Indies admitted the very first students at the Mona campus in 1948. Like Jamaica's team to the Olympics, the newly established university flew the flag of Britain as a College of the University of London. In 60 years the UWI has trained Jamaica's "foremost artis, doctor, scholar." And our premier regional university has certainly contributed to the social and economic development of the wider Caribbean.
BAREFOOT LANGUAGE
Linguists at UWI have helped us understand that the languages created by "nayga people" across the African diaspora are not to be dismissed as "corruptions" of European languages. They are evidence of the cultural creativity of inventive people who adapted unfamiliar languages to suit their own tongues.
The Jamaican novelist John Hearne once derided the heart language of the majority of Jamaicans - including our PM - as a "barefoot" language. Since languages don't wear shoes, it's clear that Hearne was really talking about barefoot people who in the old colonial days would have been described as "ole nayga". For Hearne, shoes signify "civilisation", or what Rogge would define as "culture".
One of the first things Usain did after winning his gold medal was to take off his shoes. He went right back to his rural roots. An 'im never linger fi gully creep. Fast forward to his urban dancehall present. Barefoot people are not supposed to become Olympic champions. We are supposed to stay in rural Jamaica or in depressed inner-city garrisons. We mustn't fly past our nest.
All of our athletes at Beijing, even those who didn't win medals, have brilliantly declared the bare truth: we are not going to let anybody clip our wings. We will fly past our nest but we will never forget where we are coming from. We will always honour our home culture on any world stage.
When Usain said to Asafa, "Yeow! Run! Record!" he was speaking straight from his heart in his mother tongue. Jamaican is a gold-medal language. We can't afford to be ashamed of our language and our identity. Like the poor-people 'hard food' that has enhanced our athletes' performance, our roots culture is what is really nourishing us. Fast food does not create fast athletes. Slow food does. And it is our 'barefoot' language that is propelling us to achieve in every single arena.
ETANA'S 'WRONG ADDRESS'
Etana's brilliant debut album, The Strong One, reminds us of the powerful role of our musicians in helping us understand the social contradictions that can stop us from flying high. Deep-rooted prejudice and deadly social injustice are the themes of the haunting Wrong Address:
Tried to get a job today
But when dem see the application
Dem say if this is where you really reside
Please step outside
She asked them why and they replied
We don't want no trouble
We don't want no trouble no day
Cause, lady, where you come from
People die there every day
So for our safety, that's where you should stay.
The real trouble is that most inner-city young people these days are not prepared to stay in the tight spaces that other people have decided is where they belong. They are rising up and they are demanding equal rights and justice. Unlike the young lady in Wrong Address, many of these youths haven't passed any exams and don't have any certificates. But they have easy access to guns. So it suits us to give them jobs instead.
RESPECT
One of the "nuff things" I would like to see "gwaan" is our giving new respect to our mother tongue. Jamaican should not only be the language of the PM's spontaneous expression of Olympic excitement. It should also be acknowledged as the language in which most Jamaicans live and move and have our being. It is at the very core of our identity as a people.
And our national language has become an international language. Not quite like English but we're getting there. Just ask those Japanese who don't speak English but are quite competent in Jamaican. Of course, the international appeal of our Jamaican language does not mean that we don't have to be fluent in other languages. Far from it.
We must ensure that every single Jamaican child is taught English efficiently. I have to keep reminding my simple-minded critics that I teach English for a living. The fact that I value my mother tongue doesn't make me devalue other languages.
Creole Day
What a thing it would be if our prime minister could make it his business to formally address Parliament in his mother tongue at least once a year when International Creole Day is celebrated across the world. And it would be very revealing if budget speeches could be given in both English and Jamaican so that everybody could understand all of the technical language. But this might just be too dangerous. After all, knowledge is power.
Until we admit that a child's home language plays a fundamental role in shaping intellectual development, nutten nah go gwaan fi whole heap a pikni who fa teacher a tell dem seh dem chat bad an cyaan learn nutten. An dat a wa wi ha fi change. Or all a dem Olympic medal naa go mean nutten much.
Carolyn Cooper is professor of literary and cultural studies and director of the Institute of Caribbean Studies at UWI, Mona.
