On Kriol

I must be a traitor to the cause.  I recognize the need for a unified Kriol spelling and dictionary.  It is a beautiful and exciting language.  One that should be taken seriously.  One that has a place in our writing, our literature, our culture.  We should embrace it!  I still remember the ti me when my aunt told my little sister 'Don't talk like that.  It's ugly.'  My eyes almost fell out of my head.  Don't talk like that?  Here we are surrounded on all sides by such seductive forces that would devour our very Belizean-ness if you let it, and you're gonna tell a little girl who's only barely begun to develop attachments to a rewarding culture to abandon her language?

Or should I say langwij.  Which is one of the few Kriol words with which I have no problem with the spelling.  This is why I say I must be a traitor.  As much as I love the language, and the need to cement it as a part of our culture, I can't stand the chosen spelling.  For starters, I've always thought the letter 'k' to be vulgar.  I can't explain that one much further, honestly.  The letter 'k' is vulgar in the same way that the numeral '7' is intimidating and the taste of cilantro is a wide open room.  There might be some sort of repressed emotional influence from my childhood involved in it.  When I start seeing a therapist, I'll be sure to find out and let you all know, but until then anytime I see the letter 'k' in a word and its not silent, I'll krinj a little. 

I don't have the same issue with j replacing certain teeth sound combinations, obviously.  I can't, however, be asked to sit back and allow one combination to replace another.  That, to me, is asinine.  I speak creole I talk kriol, and I say 'truth' and 'tru-tru-story.'  I have never said 'chrute' or 'chru-ting'.  The sound is sharper.  Acute.  It doesn't slide like 'ch'.  Its an abrupt change of sound direction.  A nice, jarring 'tr'.

Okay, so maybe this is all just a bit ridiculous.  But keep in mind, if you're defining something you have to go by its original understanding.  Belizeans didn't invent the word Creole (We did invent Kriol, though.) it already existed in the world and had its own meaning.

Adjective

S: (adj) Creole (of or relating to a language that arises from contact between two other languages and has features of both)

I want to focus here on the phrase 'features of both'.  In this case that means that there are indeed a great plethora of African words in the Kriol language, words that don't have written spellings today and so we must give them one: Juk, nyam, ect.  But it also means that some of the words we're saying are English words.  Why should we change them?  Why should we go from saying 'Belizean Constitution' to 'Bileez Kanstitooshan'.  Why would we abandon  the etymology of a word older than us?  What part of the word 'Constitution' is too difficult for the Belizean tongue to pronounce?  To me there's something insulting about it. 

Now that I've ranted, this is the part where I admit that I have been writing quite a bit in Creole lately.  The stories that have been coming to me lately have been coming to me in Creole.  They start off in English, sure.  That's as far as setting goes.  But when it comes to relating certain aspects of the story, of the character, of the event, then there is no English substitution.  Its the beauty of the language that's required to paint a more vivid picture.  And the more that I use the language in my writing, the more I need it.  I don't write in the official Kriol spelling.  Sometimes its just a lot simpler to employ English words and Creole grammar.  Sometimes, I don't want to ruin something by throwing in a nasty 'K'.  But sometimes...sometimes I really wish I had that dictionary.  Sometimes yuh need wah lee pig tail inna yuh beans.