The Caribbean is full of words with fascinating origins and stories – including those about our favorite holiday foods. University of the West Indies linguistics lecturer Dr Jo-Anne S Ferreira shares some insights and why what some consider linguistic ‘corruption’ is really preservation and innovation – as told to Caroline Taylor
WPerhaps it can trace the history of food names such as guava, pawpaw/papaya, cacao as among the earliest that the Spanish encountered in the Americas and spread to their Western European compatriots. Others like the banana came from West Africa; while mango came from India (Tamil and other languages).
French Creole heritage unites Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, Trinidad & Tobago, Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Haiti and parts of Brazil, Venezuela and the United States; while the Bhojpuri/Hindustani heritage unites Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad. So there is a lot of variation in our words for foods (and flora).
Garlic pork – popular at Christmas – was called calvinadage or carvindage in Trinidad, or vinadosh in St Vincent & Grenadines, coming from the meat came from garlic of Madeira.
pastel – another Christmas favorite – is from pastel (used throughout the Spanish Caribbean) but was written in a French manner in Trinidad & Tobago.
Paim – an ever-popular folk dessert – is another Patois word, probably meaning cornbread, and also known as conkie, blue drawers, dukanoo (a word of will), tie-a sheet in Barbados, Jamaica, Antigua & Barbuda and other parts of the region.
handful of cream is a drink that comes from Venezuela – where it is said to have been created in 1871 by Eliodoro González P..
Like many other Spanish and Trinidadian names and words (eg bachaco, planozo, shoes, caimito and the pronunciations of Saint John and Farfan), handful of cream became creolized or patois French punch a cream (the cream punch or punch and cream in formal Patois spelling).
Those of Spanish influence or descent will say handful of creamand those with more Creole/French patois exposure will say punch a cream (probably with an English pronunciation).
Some want to write it as French (with an accent) or English as possible, though handful of cream it is spanish. There is also from the fist in the French West Indies, and you poncho in Haiti – but a different drink.
I can’t say where handful of cream came from anyone other than someone trying to use some knowledge of non-native French and Spanish.
The bottom line is that language contact causes language change and lexical development. All these words – barbecue, canoe, cassava, cay, guava, hammock, hurricane, mangrove, potato, savannah and tobacco – entered English via Spanish during colonization and are respected because these are useful names for concepts that largely did not exist in Europe.
However, we have English words, straight from England – like hoss, mines, only, to transport (someone), to full, to rende (to tear), to learn (to learn), to take out (a light), at a loss , to leave (to leave) and to study (to weigh) – which are considered low, archaic/obsolete and/or regional elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
We think these are Caribbean “corruptions”. We preserve, innovate and borrow, like all language users. I guess it depends on who gets the loan…
