Nass­er Khan

It is of­ten said, by for­eign­ers es­pe­cial­ly, that our lan­guage is unique and colour­ful and has a beau­ti­ful "sing-song" sound to it. No doubt, with the in­flux of vis­i­tors and del­e­gates for the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) our Tri­ni lin­go will be a pop­u­lar con­ver­sa­tion piece, pun in­tend­ed.

We are known for our unique brand of di­alect, slangs and pi­cong, a good na­tured (for the most part) form of heck­ling and ban­ter­ing. In fact, there are even two very pop­u­lar pub­lished dic­tio­nar­ies that list all the words, phras­es and say­ings that are unique­ly "Trini­bag­on­ian." "Yuh ex­pekin ah flood or wha?" ("Are you ex­pect­ing a flood?) is how a Trinida­di­an or To­bag­on­ian may ad­dress an­oth­er, but an Amer­i­can or Eng­lish­man may ask the same thing ex­cept "Aren't those pants (or trousers) a bit short?" T&T's his­to­ry of colo­nial­ism with pe­ri­ods of French, Span­ish and Eng­lish (and some Amer­i­can) dom­i­nance has meant that some rem­nants of those cul­tures and lan­guage have stayed in what­ev­er forms that have helped to con­tribute to our 'lin­go and pi­cong' of which we are so very proud.

Al­so, the East In­di­an in­flu­ence and lan­guage as well as the West African lan­guages have added their share to the mix. In spite of all that, T&T has pro­duced some of the great­est au­thors/writ­ers in the Eng­lish lan­guage. One such rem­nant, Pa­tois, a form of 'bro­ken' French for the most part, re­mains as a liv­ing lan­guage in some com­mu­ni­ties and fam­i­lies. One of the vil­lages where it is still spo­ken is Paramin, and among oth­ers are Va­len­cia, Blan­chisseuse, Morne La Croix, To­co, Av­o­cat and Bourg Mu­la­tress, be­cause most of the French planters who ar­rived chose to set­tle in these ar­eas of the is­land. Imag­ine a vis­i­tor to our an­nu­al Car­ni­val hear­ing, "You can't play sailor and 'fraid pow­der!"

He'll prob­a­bly give you the most quizzi­cal of looks since he has not a clue that all you are try­ing to tell him... "If you por­tray a sailor in a mas band at Car­ni­val time one of the cus­toms is to spray each oth­er with ba­by pow­der and, there­fore, you should not be afraid of it hap­pen­ing." One can say, like Eng­lish which is a di­alect com­posed of bro­ken Latin, Eng­lish, Greek, French, An­gle, Sax­on and Ger­man, that "Trin­bag­o­ni­ans," too, have their own lan­guage, the base of which is Eng­lish with words, phras­es and syn­tax bor­rowed from African, East In­di­an, Amerindi­an, French, Span­ish, Por­tuguese, Chi­nese, Ara­bic and oth­er lan­guages.

"When you saanay a bir­if­fle of trav­es­aou peo­ple, the pep­per­pot, the callaloo that emerges apt­ly rep­re­sents the pas­sion­ate, dy­nam­ic, ef­fer­ves­cent spir­it of our peo­ple"...this ac­cord­ing to John Mendes whose book Cote Ci Cote La is a well re­searched Tri­ni dic­tio­nary.

So next time a Tri­ni tells you, "Doh trou­ble trou­ble 'til trou­ble trou­ble yuh," know that he is on­ly try­ing to warn you that you should not go look­ing for trou­ble, and that you should not do things that will lead you in­to trou­ble...it's go­ing to come your way soon­er or lat­er.