October marks International Creole Heritage Month, a celebration of Creole languages around the world.
In Saint Lucia and Dominica, annual events honor the islands’ rich linguistic and culinary cuisine, an intricate fusion of French, British and African cultural influences that have given the islands their distinct identity.
A month of food festivals and cultural performances culminates in National day (Creole Day), respectively the last Friday and the last Sunday of October.
At home, Respect seeks to rehabilitate the Patois language through cultural events and academic research to save the language from permanent loss.
There has been a notable resurgence of interest in French patois over the past decade, largely led by language teachers and researchers and cultural enthusiasts, with Messe Kwéyol (Creole Mass) at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Paramin and Talparo RC Church, as well as patois classes offered throughout the country.
Patois speaker, teacher and cultural enthusiast Michelle Mora-Foderingham spoke to him Cycle news about the importance of fostering interest in Creole culture and the Patois language and this year’s installment of the annual Tout Bagay Patois concert It’s a Portuguese thing! (It’s a Patois Thing!), airing live today at 5 p.m.
Mora-Foderingham said her interest in learning Patois came from her father, who was fluent in the language.
Exposure to a variety of languages in her youth – Bhojpurifrom her mother’s East Indian family, Spanish from her grandparents and French from Martiniquan and friends from Guadeloupe who settled here in the 1980s – fueled her personal curiosity about foreign languages and cultures, prompting trips to the French Caribbean and enrollment in French classes at Alliance Française. in Trinidad.
“These were the languages [the adults] they talked when they didn’t want the kids to know what they were talking about,” Mora-Foderingham said.
Tik Tok sensation Stephon Felmine with Michelle Mora-Foderingham
Before he died in 2016, her father regretted not teaching her the language she spoke. This gave Mora-Foderingham the determination to get involved in initiatives to prevent further extinction of the language and culture.
Mora-Foderingham contacted Nnamdi Hodge, a renowned Patois teacher and scholar, and began learning with him. She praised Hodge and Dr. Jo-Anne S. Ferreira, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of the West Indies, St Augustinefor their tireless research and development of initiatives to ensure that the Creole language and culture would continue to live on in the 21st century.
For their efforts, Mora-Foderingham, Hodge and Dr Ferreira are featured in the documentary Martinique la 1ère 2016 Trinidad: Recent Creole Speakers(Trinidad: The Last Patois Speakers), which covers the native speakers of the language living in Param and the ways it is kept alive.
“Once a language is no longer spoken by children as their mother tongue, this is a sign of language death,” Dr Ferreira said in the documentary.
Mora-Foderingham understood this first hand and started offering classes at Talparo RC Primary School in 2016.
She engaged Trinbagonian Tik Toker Stephen Felmine– known for his “Letter of the Day” videos – to do a daily series on Patois words.
Mora-Foderingham was impressed by Felmine’s work and his passion for culture.
“There are things you can’t express in standard English that would be lost if you didn’t express them in Creole,” she said.
She said many of us already speak Patois through the use of everyday Trinbagonian phrases such as bad language, cradle (pronounced “give”, meaning Spanish Jack) and zandolee.
“Even the structure of our Trini English is full of kalkas (words or expressions literally translated from other languages),” she recalled, giving I love youfrom the French it’s hot-literally, “It makes them hot” – as an example. “A lot of it is filtered out [Trinbagonian parlance].”
Talparo RC students in traditional Madras fabric
Mora-Foderingham spoke of the British policy of “anglicization” implemented in the 1800s to eradicate the French language and its derivatives, which were then widely spoken in the country, as the catalyst for much of the disappearance of patois.
It then descended to the rural districts and became known as a dirty talk (“pig’s tongue”) causing speakers of the language to be ridiculed when they came to the city areas.
“When you speak to the elders in Patois, they come alive,” she said. “There’s a kind of bond you create with them.”
Mora-Foderingham aims to restore a sense of pride in the language and remove the shame once associated with speaking Patois.
“A lot of people call it ‘broken French,’ but there’s nothing broken about Patois,” she said. “After generations, it has developed into a full language.”
She referred to the first Creole grammar guide, Theory and Practice of Creole Grammarwritten by San Fernando native educator John Jacob Thomas and published in the 1860s and the work of the pan-Creole organization Banzil Kwéyòl as a precursor to the standardization of writing, spelling and teaching of Creole languages.
Mora-Foderingham expressed pride in the work being done with the children and praised Talparo RC teachers for their collaborative spirit in making the classes a success.
“A lot of young people … are becoming more and more Americanized,” she said, recalling an occasion in which she used the phrase ‘crapaud smoke yuh pipe’ with a class of young children and none of them knew what she meant. he said.
“It’s okay to find out what’s going on in the world…but we shouldn’t be ashamed of what’s ours,” she said. “There are several things that make us Trinbagonians [and] we need to preserve and revitalize them.”
Mora-Foderingham hopes that Patois classes will be included in the national curriculum.
The concert, which includes folk songs, calypso and spoken word, will be broadcast live at 5pm via Trinidad Patois Speakers Facebook page and features special guests Soca Elvis, Stephon Felmine, jazz vocalist Janelle Montigue and David Bereaux.
