Cherisse Moe

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, you don’t al­ways need a long ex­pla­na­tion to make a point. Some­times all it takes is a “mon­key know what tree to climb.” To a for­eign­er, it might sound like gib­ber­ish, but we un­der­stand it is an ob­ser­va­tion about hu­man be­hav­iour. Peo­ple are well aware of who they can push around and who they can­not.

If you find your­self get­ting too worked up over an­oth­er per­son’s prob­lem, you might hear a “doh drink tea for oth­er peo­ple fever” and case closed. This is the beau­ty of Trin­ba­go talk. A few words can car­ry a whole sit­u­a­tion—ad­vice, warn­ing, hu­mour and a lit­tle pi­cong—with­out any­body hav­ing to spell it out.

But some of the old­er gen­er­a­tion be­lieve lo­cal par­lance may be dy­ing out. At 77 years old, San Fer­nan­do na­tive Jan­ice Forde has heard lo­cal say­ings all her life. Look­ing back at how things used to be be­fore screens took over, she tells Guardian Me­dia, “What hap­pened long ago was that we com­mu­ni­cat­ed by talk­ing and ob­ser­va­tion; the young­sters nowa­days? They don’t talk. They look at tele­vi­sion all day and re­ly on the net­works to com­mu­ni­cate for them, so the old­er slangs would not even be rel­e­vant to them,” she rea­sons. “They would not un­der­stand what we are say­ing as they don’t think, they just talk, be­cause in their minds the sys­tem is smarter than the old peo­ple.”

A life­time of talk

The old­er folks just had a way of ex­press­ing them­selves that comes in handy in any sit­u­a­tion. Hear a friend drop “take front be­fore front takes you” and you move out of harm’s way be­fore it reach­es you. That right there is just smart liv­ing.

Some ex­pres­sions even come with a warn­ing. ‘All skin teeth eh laugh’ de­liv­ers the mes­sage that a grin is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a sign of friend­ship. It doesn’t mean to be­come para­noid, but you don’t have to be­lieve every smile ei­ther.

Then you get “two man-rat cyah live in de same hole.” Two peo­ple com­pet­ing, clash­ing or re­fus­ing to give way in the same space? Trou­ble is bound to fol­low. There sim­ply isn’t room for two egos try­ing to run the show.

When pa­tience is wear­ing thin, a re­minder that “time longer than twine” set­tles it. What­ev­er feels ur­gent or im­pos­si­ble to­day usu­al­ly works it­self out. En­durance al­ways out­lasts pres­sure. That is the plea­sure of these id­ioms. They take every­day things—an­i­mals, twine, a smile - and turn them in­to lo­cal truths.

Words that car­ry weight

Younger gen­er­a­tions will al­ways find fresh ways to speak, bor­row slang from oth­er cul­tures, and put a new stamp on com­mu­ni­ca­tion. How­ev­er, Forde be­lieves old Trin­ba­go say­ings still be­long in the mix. She names two spe­cif­ic lo­cal proverbs she keeps close as she has watched peo­ple rush in­to bad choic­es: “My favourites are ‘Nev­er use the light of night to see what is vis­i­ble in the light of day’ and ‘See me and come live with me are two dif­fer­ent things.’ These have stayed with me be­cause dur­ing my life­time I have seen so many peo­ple go down the path of mak­ing de­ci­sions on a whim with­out see­ing what is hap­pen­ing. They just go with their feel­ings and not their in­tu­ition. But your in­tu­ition al­ways wins out if you take your time.”

They may not be used as fre­quent­ly to­day, but the lessons passed down on our street cor­ners are built to last. A coun­try’s lan­guage car­ries the wit of past gen­er­a­tions, cap­tur­ing how peo­ple re­lat­ed to each oth­er, sur­vived hard times, and fig­ured out the world around them. In T&T, we don’t just talk. We talk we talk.