Dear Editor,

In the article, "Patois as a language or broken language" in your newspaper on July 4, Geof Brown presented a reasonable case regarding the legitimacy of patois as a language and that in principle the Education Ministry has an official policy on the use of creole as a language in the earlier years of instruction.

Indeed, Mr Brown, the language that is spoken by the majority of Jamaican people is not given official recognition.

Many people are still kept in the dark because we continue to assume that we can teach effectively and communicate clearly with people whose only language is patois. We need to give official recognition to patois and have a clear policy, primarily informed by developing a strategy to teach patois speakers at early childhood, primary, and where necessary, at some secondary levels, the language they need to use as a tool of learning and understanding the wider world. It is criminal to teach people in a language they do not speak.
There is a trend in this country to reject anything that is black. This matter of creole, which was revived by the Patois Bible discussion, is a race issue. In one of his articles, Dr Carl Stone reminds us that black Jamaicans as individuals have developed enormous self-confidence over the years, but lack strong ethnic allegiance on the false premise that loyalty to the country requires that the black man should deny his sense of allegiance to black ethnic membership.

In The Jamaican Independence Constitution of 1962, published in Caribbean Studies Vol 3 # 1, James B Kelley (1963) notes that communication in Jamaica is fundamentally affected by the language problem. The masses of the population speak as their native tongue a dialect known as creole. This fact excluded the majority of Jamaicans from the discussions regarding constitutional development in Jamaica. The masses speak creole and the elite speak Standard English, sometimes with a marked Jamaican accent. A large number of the elite class reject anything connected with Africa and the negro race - which does not help them to feel any affinity towards the majority of their fellow countrymen. This, according to the writer, hinders the building of a healthy type of national spirit and real patriotism based on a genuine love of country and the development of a real sense of identity. The white and black elites in this country developed a negative attitude against obeah, myal (revivalism), the early Rastafari and even the folk and popular Jamaican music; it is the same attitude with which they respond to the issue regarding our creole.

Louis EA Moyston
thearchives01@yahoo.com

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