LING2040 Languages in Contact 8: Creole orthography, literacy and literature

1. Contact languages and development (see Sebba, Ch. 8)

Problems of contact languages in newly independent countries:

  • literacy
  • orthography
  • medium of instruction

2. Literacy

2.1 The case of Cape Verde Creole

  • Fomer Portuguese colony off coast of W.Africa; independent since 1975
  • Portuguese-lexifier creole developed in 16th Century
  • 430,000 speakers in Cape Verde Islands, also 100,000  in Portugal, 350,000 in USA
  • Portuguese as colonial language
  • c. 37% literate in Portuguese, 7-80% understand spoken Portuguese
  • 1999 Cape Verde's Constitution revised to bring Creole into "every segment of society."

-> Creole to be used for elementary education, lower courts, hospitals, some radio broadcasts

Cabo Verde becomes Kaboverde, creole Kabuverdianu as national language to be used in media, education etc. Problems:

  • each island has a different dialect
  • some structurally closer to Portuguese, e.g. Gender agreement, passive forms in Barlavento variety:

mnina   malkriada                       Es traboj foj sid fejt pa min
girl  bad-mannered-FEM            this job was been made for me
"a bad-mannered girl"               "This job was done by me"

Santiago variety adopted as standard: most basilectal, reflects African roots of the population

Continuum:  Portuguese > Barlavento Kabuverdianu> Sotavento Kabuverdianu

Alfabeto Unificado para a Escrita do Crioulo ("Unified alphabet for writing of creole") - a compromise between phonemic orthography and traditional etymological spelling; still awaiting approval

2.2 Mauritius

Seychelles: creole (Seychellois = Seselwa) as medium of instruction for primary education (4 years)

Mauritius: independent since 1968; English as official language, English/French as medium of instruction

          Ledikasyon pu travayer ("Education for workers"): an organization promoting literacy in Mauritian creole

Mauritian Creole Phonemes:

p    b    f    v
t     d    s    z
k    g
m    n    l
w    y    r
i     e    a    o    u    (oral vowels)
    en    an   on       (nasal vowels)

Nasal vowels

fen (< French faim) 'hunger'
manze  (<French manger) 'to eat'
bon  (<French bon) 'good'

Problem: if we use 'vowel + n' to represent nasal vowels (following French orthography, as in roman 'novel'), we need a different symbol to show syllables ending with the consonant [n]. Solutions:
(a) use 'nne' as in French orthography e.g. banne la roue "the tyres" .
(b) use 'nn', e.g.  enn roman "a novel", bann mo "words", as used in the Catholic Bible, Dev's plays, and the LPT dictionaries

Consequence: words ending in -en, -an and -on are potentially ambiguous between nasal consonant and nasalized vowel!

3.  Principles of orthography

3.1 etymological spelling: words from lexifier language written as if they were English, French etc.

e.g. Mauritian proverbs recorded by Lafcadio Hearn (1885)

    Faut pas  cassé  so  maie  avant  li  fine  mir
     [fo  pa  kase     so   mai:   ava~  li  fin   mi:]
     must not break one's corn before it PFV ripe
    'Don't pluck your corn before it's ripe'

Advantages:

  • familiarity to those educated in French, to French-speaking tourists etc
  • tradition: this has been usual practice since creole began to be written down in the 198th Century
  • similar orthographic system, e.g. for both French and creole
  • orthographic knowledge can be transferred to/from lexifier language

Disadvantages:

  • misrepresentation: e.g. Mauritian cassé  "break" looks like a French past participle ("broken") , but in fact represents the bare form of the verb ("to break", "breaks", etc);
  • learnability: English, French as difficult orthographic systems (with high incidence of dyslexia)
  • politics: etymological spelling links the "new" language of the independent state to that of the former colonial power

3.2 phonemic spelling: one-to-one match between phonemes and orthographic symbols

e.g. Mauritian kase [k'ase] "break"

Advantages:

  • linguistic accuracy
  • learnability: expected to lead to much lower rates of dyslexia
  • distinctiveness from the lexifier language (German Abstand, "distance")

Disadvantages:

  • lack of phonological awareness among speakers
  • resistance from speakers: "why would you want to respell a word like 'flower' as 'flowa'?"
  • Jesus spelt as Zezi as in the Catholic Bible

Example: Haitian Creole: see Sebba, 249-252

Phonemic system devised by English speakers for Haitian annoyed some native speakers--particularly the "Germanic letters" k and w

French:    qui  "who",    Haitian:    ki

3.3 Ethnophonemic spelling

  • a compromise proposed by missionary linguist Kenneth Pike: "ethnophonemic" orthography aims to be phonemic while respecting orthographic preferences of native speakers
  • The LPT orthography is a compromise, incorporating vowel + n for nasal vowels but otherwise keeping distance from French, e.g. k  in place of c for [k], as in Lavoix kreol "The creole voice" (a newspaper representing the "creoles")
  • In practice writers commonly mix French and phonemic orthographic conventions:

Nou éna tous la volonté pou avancer, si nou ti en Europe, nou ti pou capav alle pli loin. Mais nou Mauriciens, nou bizin continié fer zéfor. Récompense la pou vini.
"We all have the will to go forward, if we were in Europe, we could have gone further. But we Mauritians, we have to continue our efforts. The reward will come."
(From French newspaper Le mauricien, quoting an actor's exact words)

4. From Literacy to literature

Depi lontan mo ti anvi ekrir enn roman an Morisien me mo ti mank konfians dan momem
since long I ANT wish write  a  novel  in  Mauritian  but  I ANT lack confidence in myself
"I had wanted to write a novel in Mauritian for a long time, but I lacked confidence in myself"

 e  mo  pa   ti   sir    ki    lang    la      ti     ase     evolie     pou  reponn lapel
and I not ANT sure that language that ANT enough evolved to respond call
"and I was not sure if this language was sufficiently developed to respond to the call." (Dev Virahsawmy)

  • Plays by Dev Virahsawmy: Li (see Sebba, p. 142); Toufann ('The typhoon", based on Shakespeare's The Tempest)
  • Short stories by Jean Maingard, Richard Sedley Assonne
  • Poems by Ramesh Ramdoyal, Jocelyn Louise, Khal
  • Novels: Misyon Garcon “Boy” by Lindsey Collen

Hawaiian Pidgin as vehicle of literature (see Romaine 2005; also project by Carol Chan)

  • Lee Tonouchi (Da Pidgin Guerilla): da word (first chapter distributed)
  • Darrell Lum: short stories, drama
  • Lois-Ann Yamanaka: poetry

Turtles from Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre by Lois-Ann Yamanaka

On the wall in Bernard's Taxidermy Shop
is two big, green turtles. They all shiny.
Bernie, he use varnish make um look wet.
Bernie say, before he could catch turtles
for the shell or for the meat, but now,
he say not suppose to catch turtles
or else the police going arrest you.
He say, when you catch a turtle,
the turtle he cry a tear
from his big, wet eye.
Bernie seen um when he went fish
down South Point side.

He ask if I ever taste turtle meat.
He say, Ono you know.
I tell my wife cook
the frozen turtle meat one night
and you come over try some.
Ask your mama first.
I thinking about the tear from the turtle eye.
I tell Bernie I no like.

References:

Baptista, Marlyse. 2002. The Syntax of Cape Verdean Creole by. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Ledikasyon Pu Travayer. Langaz Kreol Zordi: Papers on Kreol. Port Louis: LPT.
Ledikasyon Pu Travayer,. 2004. Diksyoner Kreol-Angle: Prototype Mauritian Creole-English Dictionary. Port Louis: LPT.
Mendes, Mafalda, Nicolas Quint, Fátima Ragageles & Aires Semedo. 2002. Dicionário Prático Português-Caboverdiano (Variante de Santiago). Verbalis.
Rajah-Carrim, Aaliya. 2008. Choosing a spelling system for Mauritian Creole. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Volume 23, Number 2, 2008 , pp. 193-226.

Romaine, Suzanne. Orthographic practices in the standardization of pidgins and creoles: Pidgin in Hawai'i as anti-language and anti-standard. In Creole Language in Creole Literatures: Special Issue of the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Vol. 20:1, 2005.
Virahsawmy, Dev. Aprann Lir ek Ekrir Morisien. ['Learn to read and wirte Mauritian': CD-ROM including rules for spelling and grammar, poems with audio files, and the script for his play Li]