THE University of the West Indies’ Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy got a much needed boost last Thursday with a $1.75-million donation from Carreras Group Limited, to fund two of four projects to be undertaken by the department’s language unit this year.

The donation will be used to fund the production and development of an official guide to the Jamaican language and the compilation of a 500-page glossary of basic Jamaican language – both to be completed by December of this year.

The Jamaican Language Unit, which is headed by Professor Hubert Devonish, is tasked with developing a standard writing system for the Jamaican language, developing technical and administrative terminology in the language and providing public education on the use of the language.

It was established in September 2002 at the request of the Joint-Parliamentary Committee on a Charter of Rights to the Jamaican Constitution, to support the rights of Jamaicans to freedom from discrimination on the grounds of language.

“Our focus is to ensure that persons both home and abroad who only speak the dialect have the same rights of access to the services of state agencies as do speakers of English,” Devonish told the Sunday Observer.

“Poor and uneducated persons who speak patois are treated badly when they go to government places to get information and we want to reduce discrimination in the society,” he added.

The professor said the donation from Carreras “will help in training public servants to deal with monolingual speakers in society and in the Diaspora, to promote improved access to legal and health services, by using the publications as references.”

The final 100-page draft Official Guide to the Jamaican Language will provide information on the use of the standard writing system for patois as well as its morphology and syntax, and advice on the use of specialised vocabulary necessary for public and official contexts.

The 500-word glossary of basic Jamaican language, in the meanwhile, will offer terms needed for communication with the public in areas such as politics, law, health and the environment.

“These would assist public servants who need to translate material from Standard English into dialect in a clear, precise and unambiguous manner,” Professor Devonish explained.

“Our goal is for both publications to be widely disseminated and made available at all levels of the society,” he added.