The English Language in British Guiana: Richard Allsopp

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The English Language in British Guiana 59

seems no way of testing such a hypothesis, especially in view of a


'masking' alternative one: If consonant clusters are a deterrent to
loss of the intermediate vowel, then the clusters including -ly and
-ness, are even more difficult by just one consonant. Since this
hypothesis tallies well not only with the 19 adjectives but also with
the derivatives in -edly and -edness, there is no need to suppose
that rarity need have been a factor.
The other three, however, are all at least partially verifiable.
What is not yet verifiable is the 'strength' of each one when they act
in concert, for it seems probable that the resistance of these 19
adjectives is due largely to a combination of these factors, since
more than half are subject to more than one of them, even if the
effect of the second be confined only to two stops or a stop and an
affricate, that is, if we look at only the minimal effect of it.

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But there we must let the matter rest. For the efficacy of these
factors can be partially established, but their efficacy relative to
each other (that is, how much of each is required to preserve the
syllabic pronunciation) is something we have as yet no means of
measuring, and unless one invokes an axiom that 'Every effect has
only one cause' it is an interplay of causes that is to be reckoned
with here.

The English Language


in British Guiana
RICHARD ALLSOPP
THERE is no 'native' language in British Guiana. The language used
is English. It is necessary to open any discussion on the above
subject with these two firm and clear statements since so few people
in England and the English-speaking world seem to be aware of these
basic facts, (which are also applicable to the whole British Caribbean
area); and unawareness of them is a matter of surprise and perhaps
justified annoyance to British Guianese and other West Indians
travelling or living abroad. But as soon as that information has
served its initial purpose one has to modify it immediately. First
let it be noticed that the verb chosen in the above statement is
'used'. This is because the spoken form of the language at some
levels is so strongly modified as to justify its consideration as a
foreign language, but as the same thing can probably be said about
60 R. ALLSOPP

some dialects of English in Britain and America, it would seem


quite fair to consider Guianese English at these levels as another
dialect of English; this assumption should be read into the title
of this article which is intended to deal mainly with the spoken
form of the English language in British Guiana.
Some brief geography would seem first useful. British Guiana
is that single British territory in South America which seems to
anchor the chain of West Indian islands that stray out North and
West into the Atlantic. South America has absolutely no linguistic
influence on it, and it is completely cut off by forests and general
lack of communications from the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch
speakers who flank it on the West, South and East respectively.
These languages are consequently as 'foreign' in British Guiana as
they are in England. Of the population of half-a-million, 95% are

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concentrated in the narrow 20-mile wide coastal strip, the remainder
being scattered in the vast untrodden interior. According to the
1946 census, this remainder consists largely of the 4.3% American-
Indian inhabitants, for whom the name Amerindian has been coined
in the United States. Having only the most tenuous contact with
the rest of the population, they speak a wide variety of different
native languages, and their comprehension and use of English
varies considerably with circumstances. In any discussion on
languages in British Guiana, they may quite fairly be relegated to
an appendix and, except for those who, having intermingled with
the rest of the population speak like them, they will be left out of
this article. The only other significant non-English feature of the
British Guiana language picture is the fact that nearly half the
total population is East Indian, i.e., coming originally from India.
Very few Indian-born immigrants still exist, but there are some,
and for them spoken English is a difficulty, though their under-
standing of it is quite sufficient for ordinary communication. The
Immigration Agent-General, with whom the writer discussed this
question a few years ago, thought that this small class would very
shortly disappear. It is a significant fact that in the first General
Elections held with universal adult suffrage in 1953, polling-stations
displayed voting instructions in English at the doors, and in Nagri
and Urdu in the booths, whereas in the 1957 elections, Enghsh was
used throughout. In neither case was any official or Party publi-
cation printed in anything but English and this passed without any
comment. The actual influence of Hindi on the lower levels of spoken
English in British Guiana may not, however, be lightly disregarded,
and is, in the writer's view, a matter awaiting proper investigation.
This last statement is not in any way meant to imply criticism of
the conscious efforts being made by two or three Hindu religious
The English Language in British Guiana 61

bodies through schools and Temples, and now by the Indian Council
for Cultural Relationships, to retain or regain the knowledge of
Hindi among East Indians1. These organizations have a hard time
achieving their immediate purpose, which is to prevent the complete
disappearance of Hindi among East Indians, and they are far from
affecting the English language picture in British Guiana. The real
influence of Hindi referred to above lies further back in time and
further down the social scale, in circumstances where large numbers
of the earlier generations of Hindu labourers mixed with African
and perhaps also Portuguese labourers on sugar estates and in
country areas generally. This influence is on the whole not much
recognized, and is difficult to estimate in the present language
picture.

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What then is the present language picture? Perhaps the easiest
way to illustrate it would be to consider the simple statement'I told
him' as a piece of Standard English spoken with Received Pronun-
ciation and indicating that the person speaking has said something
at some time in the past to some other person, a known male.
This identical piece of information would be expressed in the
following different ways in British Guiana:
1. I told him. [ai tovld him]
la. I told him [ai told him]
2. I tol' 'im. [aitol im]
3. I tell 'im. [aiIEI im]
3a. AL tell 'im. [a CEI im]
4. 1 tell e. [ai CEI i]
4a. A. tell e. [a tel 1]
5. Me tell e. [mi eel 1]
5a. Me tell am. [mi tel am]
(The phonetic transcript is 'narrow' International Phonetic Associa-
tion as used by Ida Ward. 2 )
It is as well to remind the reader that he should not be misled by
the occurrence of a Standard English present tense form of the verb
in the samples 3 to 5a. These refer to past time just as much as
No. 1 does. Speakers using the form 'tell' for past time would use
the form 'tellin' [tElin], as a finite verb, for the present tense.
Users of the above forms will be found to be distributed as
follows, it being understood that there are no sharp dividing lines
between these social and functional strata, except at the extremes,
that is, between 1 and the rest and between 5a and the rest:
'The Indian Council for Cultural Relationships runs adult classes open to
all interested persons.
Hda C. Ward: TTie Phonetics of English1, Heffer. 4th ed., 1945.
62 R. ALLSOPP

1. Britons, and a small number of persons usually in adminis-


trative positions consciously imitating 'white talk' for social
reasons.
1 a. The important middle-class administrative element in Govern-
ment and Commerce. Usually having secondary and some-
times university education. More travelled and often more
class-conscious.
2. Ordinary educated middle-class, clerical and professional,
usually having secondary education.
3 & 3a. Careful speech of] Non-clerical employees, working apd
r
(labouring classes. Have had primary
A o A r, i J u r |but very little or no secondary
y
4 & 4a. Relaxed speech of J e d u c a t i o n

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5. Mostly rural labouring class, but also such people as hucksters,
carters, milksellers, street-pedlars, &c., in towns. Under-
schooled, semi-literate and illiterate.
5a. Almost exclusively East Indian labouring class as at 5.
This stratification is not advanced without some misgiving and
can no doubt be modified or altered in places, but it is certainly
broadly acceptable. The term 'careful' applied to the speech of
categories 3 and 3a is not to be taken literally. It is intended to
differentiate from the speech of 4 and 4a belonging to the same
group, rather than to imply that the speakers of this group are
incapable of sustained speech of the type at 2 if they wish. Such
an implication would be misleading. In fact it can be asserted of
all the groups from 2 to 5 (not 5a), that they tend gradually to
approach the one or ones above. An individual speaker in any
of the categories from 2 to 5 can usually 'change his category'
upward if he feels that the occasion warrants it. When this possibility
is compared with the unlikelihood of, say, a London labourer,
even if he tried, speaking like the educated English middleclass, it
will be seen how liquid the language situation is in British Guiana.
The speakers in 5a are the only ones of whom it might be said that
they cannot and do not try to break out of their speech category on
any occasion.
Numerically also, categories 2 to 5a form the great bulk of the
population, so that in all general considerations the others may
almost be left out of account. Such considerations emphatically
include the teaching of English in schools. Clearly, of the samples
given above, the most interesting for students and teachers of
English are those from 2 to 5a, and more especially 3 to 5a. The
broad term used to cover these categories from 3 to 5a is 'Creolese',
though when it was first introduced (apparently about the turn of
the century) by local observers, it was meant to apply only perhaps
The English Language in British Guiana 63

to the last three categories of speech sampled above, 4, 5 and 5a.


Briefly, the term 'creole' was first applied in the slave-plantation era
to white people born in the colonies, then apparently to breeds of
cattle and horses produced in the colonies, and then to the children
of slaves; later it was also applied to the children of those East
Indian indentured labourers who were born in the colonies and
who were employed in what were called 'Creole Gangs' doing light
work on the estates at 3d. per day. As these children grew up,
they gradually left behind them the language of their fathers and
used the species of basic communicative English used by their
parents and the peoples of all races and origins around them. To
this language and its elaborated development, the name Creolese
was given. It is the language that all but a very small percentage
of the whole corpus of children being educated in British Guiana

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hear in their homes and all around them; what is more important,
it is the language they use freely out of the classroom and, given a
chance, in it as well. It colours their thinking and naturally affects
the English they write even in adulthood. This is more than most
Guianese would grant.
The rest of this article will accordingly be given over to a descrip-
tion, in note form, of this 'Creolese'. Most of this description has
already appeared in an article by the present writer in 'Kyk-Over-AJ'
(Vol. 5, No. 17), a Guianese literary magazine, and is republished
here by kind permission of the Editor.
BACKGROUND OF CREOLESE

1. On to a variety of West African dialects brought by slaves was


grafted first of all Dutch, Dutchmen being slave-masters in British
Guiana for some 200 years until 1802. Dutch still remained
sufficiently prominent in 1838 for it to be the subject of a complaint
in a Report on Negro Education presented to Lord Glenelg,
Secretary of State for the Colonies and for War.
2. Short periods of French (1782-4) and English domination jostled
each other and interrupted Dutch supremacy until the final arrival
of the British in 1803; from then on, English began to supersede
other languages and dialects.
3. After the abolition of slavery and during the period of East Indian
indentured labour (1845-1917), Hindi words were added. English,
grafted on to the East India tongues, produced new patterns which
in turn affected the generality of the Creolese picture.
4. Immigrant labour from China (mainly 1853-79) and Portugal
(mainly 1841-82), had the same effect as had the East Indian.
(Portuguese are still not considered 'white' in British Guiana.)
5. African gold- and diamond-seekers venturing into the interior
64 R. ALLSOPP

brought back Amerindian words, mostly nouns, and introduced


them into the language: some of these are still in general circulation.
The population as shewn in the 1946 census is divided as indicated
below (there will not be much change in these proportions today
except for a probable increase in the percentage of East Indians):
Percentage
Amerindians 4.3
Negro 38.2
Mixed 10.0
East Indian 43.5
European other than Portuguese . 0.6
Portuguese 2.3
Chinese 0.9

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Other Asiatics, and Not Stated 0.2

100.0

All these contribute to Creolese and, on the whole, all use it,
except for the Europeans and Amerindians.
CHARACTERISTICS OF CREOLESE

1. Creolesc is solely a medium of oral expression, and is never used


for written communication, but newspapers sometimes carry jocular
articles in the idiom and expressions or proverbs occasionally
appear in the body of a printed English text.
2. Standard English is the framework and container of Creolese,
but its sources and speech-patterns are additionally derived from
the sources indicated (with examples) below:
British dialects: (Northern English) cuffuffle (vb.); (Scottish) gie
(vb.); (Irish) lep (vb.).
Church English: beforetime (adv.); whosoever; drownded
(<drowned).
United States English: guy (n.); presently (=at present); also
some influence on tonal stress.
African dialects: bakra (n.); nyam (vb.); kabba-kabba (adj.).
Dutch: koker (n.); paal off (vb.); the [d] for [S] in dat, de
(=that, the); broad open vowels as in baas (=boss).
French: mousse (n.) crapaud (n.); and probably a few grammatical
patterns (e.g., all two=both).
Hindi: A number of nouns connected with food, ceremonies and
dress: also basic structural influences, both grammatical
(e.g., pronoun 'me' as a nominative form) and lexical ('the
time meet'='has arrived').
The English Language in British Guiana 65

Portuguese (only a small contribution): mustee (n. and adj.,


<mestico=a half-breed).
Chinese (another small contribution): chow-mien (n.); kowtow
(vb.);
Amerindian Languages: matapee (n.); pywarri (n.).
3. Gesture, especially of the hands and face but also of other parts
of the body, is an inseparable quality of Creolese: crisp, vivid
imagery is a corollary to this.
4. Intonation, by coincidence, somewhat resembles that of Welsh
people; it can, however, have lower (and also much higher) pitches,
and much heavier stress: in some circumstances there arc much
longer drawls than one is likely to hear anywhere in the British Isles.
5. Vowels are pure and broad as a rule, there being very few

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diphthongs in the pronunciation. Among consonants, 'th' becomes
'd' or Y, -ing becomes -in, while V is pronounced before another
consonant (bird, heart), and often finally as well (car, door).
6. There are many aphetic and clipped forms, and the dropping
of the final consonant or syllabic is encountered.
7. Plural and genitive inflections in nouns are dropped, as are
person and tense inflections in verbs, e.g., De neighbour dog kill
de cat=thc neighbour's dog killed the cat.
8. The verb is often the word containing the important idea in the
sentence, thus, dey unfair de boy=they have been unfair to the boy.
9. Adjectives are repeated for superlative effect. Reduplication is a
feature applied to descriptive nouns as well: e.g., tupid-tupid=
very stupid: a shak-shak=a rattle.
10. Prepositions are unimportant They are often omitted or
limited in use, e.g., A goin Buxton tomarra=I am going to Buxton
tomorrow.
11. A great abundance of descriptive sound words are added for
effect: E fall dung biddip! An de bottles go kreng-geddeng! i.e.,
he fell down and the bottles were smashed.
Such then are the main features of Creolese. It is obviously just
as unhelpful to say that Creolese is bad English as it would be to
say that English is bad Creolese. As in the case of any dialect, a
realistic attitude towards it ought to be decided upon, for it has its
merits (even if they do have to be carefully sought and reared).
One such merit, as anyone familiar with Creolese would agree, is
its capacity for imagery and brief but telling description; it must
also be said in passing that much of what has been said here would
apply with a few changes to any. other West Indian dialect It
appears to be assumed, however, that what is considered good
normal English language is within easy reach of the average school-
child, who has only consciously to shove aside Creolese in ordet
66 L. A. HILL

to achieve it; although, and especially in recent years, examination


results have been belying this assumption, it is nevertheless an
unhappy commentary that no effort is being sponsored to provide
a scientific analysis of this Creolese language; only thus can a
proper base for directing the competent teaching of English in
British Guiana be discovered.

A Wrong Diagnosis

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L. A. HILL
READERS OF English Language Teaching may be interested to hear
of a recent case in which phonetics solved a problem which
at first seemed to be a syntactical one. Some English people
talking with a Japanese noticed that he appeared to be saying 'she'
when referring to a male person. As this Japanese could speak a
lot of English, they came to the conclusion that the Japanese
language must make no distinctions between male and female in
pronouns, and that teachers of English in Japan must have the
peculiar habit of emphasizing the feminine in their teaching (most
students of English who have trouble with 'he' and 'she' tend to
use 'he' instead of 'she', and not vice versa).
As a matter of fact, however, the Japanese concerned was not
saying 'she' but [qi] ([c] is a voiceless palatal fricative of the type
used by many English people for the first sound of huge and human).
In Japanese, [5] and [h] are allophones of the same phoneme,
i.e. they belong to the same family (see D. Jones: THE PHONEME:
ITS NATURE AND USE, Heffer's, para. 22): [9] appears only before
[i], and [h] only before [a], [e] and [o]. To the Japanese speaker,
[c] and [h] seem to be the same sound, just as [k] in [kl:] and
[k] in [ka:] seem to be the same sound to the ordinary English
speaker. When the Japanese speaker hears English [hen], [hal],
[hou] and [hi:], he identifies the [h] sound in the first three with
his own [h] allophone before [a], [e] and [o], and that in [hi:]
with his [5] allophone before [I]. He therefore pronounces [hen],
[hal], [hou], [Si:].
The English listener, who is not accustomed to a [5] before an
[1:] sound, in his turn identifies it with the nearest sound in his own
system, which is a [f]. Since it happens that the resultant [Ti:]

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