Dear Editor,
Please allow me this opportunity to comment on an article I read on page 3 of The Daily Herald of Thursday, December15.
It mentions that the Minister of Education, Culture and Sports Silveria Jacobs would like to see what she calls “S’ maatin” English recognized as the local language of Sint Maarten.
This is a dialect, please Madam Minister, leave it as it is. There is only one English, that is proper English, yes, call it the language of the British colonials, call it whatever you want to call it, but it is recognized the world over. Please do not give our young children, now starting out in life, the wrong impression. Do not tell them that it’s okay to speak badly, and hide it behind “our English”. That will not work, it will only cause them disappointment and embarrassment down the road.
You may recall that in the 1960’s there were people in the USA who wanted the street language spoken among a certain class of American Blacks, to be recognized as the language of all the black people; they called it “Ebonics”. It did not survive as a language as some wanted.
With many Black Americans struggling to get out of poverty, out of the ghettos of the various cities, young black families striving to achieve an upper-middle-class life style, they needed to make sure that their children got into colleges and universities and were able to move up the ladder to a better life. They recognized that they could not accomplish this if those children could not write a letter to a college, nor sit through an interview. They would never get a job speaking so-called “Black English”.
We Caribbean people have always had our own dialects. Every island has its own, some have more than one and there are certain words and phrases within some dialects, which are distinctive to locations within the islands. Our dialects are a source of inspiration and education and our notable authors and performers have written poems, short stories, songs and novels, making ample use of our various dialects, but when it comes down to it, we, they, all of us, in order to properly communicate and make ourselves understood outside the borders of our various islands, we all speak proper English.
Over the years, I’ve seen and heard Dutch Antilleans try, many of them with much difficulty, to speak and write proper English, and I can now appreciate how difficult it is for people, whose mother tongue is not English, to be able to learn to speak and write the language well.
Minister Jacobs points out that every business person on Curaçao speaks Papiamentu, this may be true, but it is a recognized language, not a dialect. Many of Curaçao’s citizens do not bother with speaking Dutch, they have been taught in school in their own language.
Our children on Sint Marten and the other Dutch islands as well, start life already on the deficit side as far as language is concerned, they are born under the Dutch flag, but do not speak nor write that language well enough to compete with Dutch children born in the European part of the kingdom. Some can speak Papiamentu, but not write it; some speak Spanish, but cannot write it nor even recognize the words when it’s given to them to read; some can understand French, but can neither write nor speak it well enough, and many can speak English, but do not write nor read it well enough.
Sint Maarten, like Statia and Saba, although they fly the Dutch Flag, they live and breathe in English; to put it more succinctly, American English, not even the Queen’s English. I find it hard to believe that our “operating language” is still an issue in this day, age and socio/economic circumstances. I’m concerned about our children and their ability to live today and survive in the world of tomorrow.
They should not be led down a blind alley, thinking that the creation or promotion of a fractured dialect will pass for some new form of English. In my opinion, bad English is just that, bad English.
We live under the Dutch flag, but our people, in their daily lives, operate in English. We live with neighbours from virtually every corner of the world; on any given day you will walk the streets of Philipsburg and encounter people who are from China, Pakistan, India, Croatia, France, Italy, Greece, Algeria, Nigeria and other countries of Africa and Russia. We will meet our Caribbean cousins from every island in the region, also people from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Peru and other South Americans along with our Spanish- speaking friends from the Dominican Republic, Cuba and the other Spanish-speaking countries around us.
My friends on Sint Maarten, who are native Sint Maarteners, have no interest in having their children taught “S” maatin” English; those from the various Caribbean countries were equally dismayed when they heard about the Minister’s idea.
So please, let us focus on one singular language by which we can all communicate and thus, be understood; let us teach our children to speak English properly. It is the language of Tourism, the language of International Trade, the language of Finance, the internationally-recognized language with which we can all identify. It is the first language which our children will hear when they pop out of the womb. Let us teach it to our children, the correct way.
However, in so doing, let us not lose sight of our individual identities, our own traditions, our very colourful and wonderful ethnic and cultural diversity, and yes, our native dialects. We will continue to think, write and perform, using our dialects and this is right; we should never lose sight of this, because it is our cultural identity, but let us not cause our children to lose whatever opportunities may be available to them, internally or externally, now or in the future, because they cannot speak nor be understood when they speak.
One Woman’s opinion
Ebbie Schmidt
