RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

If left unchecked, the pan­dem­ic could pos­si­bly harm the sur­vival of some of T&T's unique lan­guage ex­pres­sions as many chil­dren un­der the age of five are no longer speak­ing the Tri­ni Eng­lish cre­ole di­alect.

So said Dr Visham Bhimul, the di­rec­tor of Caribbean Hin­dus­tani, who has been at­tempt­ing to pre­serve dy­ing lan­guages of the Caribbean in­clud­ing Trinidad Bho­jpuri, a lan­guage brought by in­den­tured im­mi­grants.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Dr Bhimul dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, so­cial in­ter­ac­tion was re­strict­ed so many chil­dren de­pend­ed on main­stream me­dia which has strong Amer­i­can and Eu­ro­pean in­flu­ences. This, he said, has cre­at­ed changes to lan­guage among the youngest gen­er­a­tion.

"Many chil­dren es­pe­cial­ly those un­der the age of five are now speak­ing ei­ther British Eng­lish from mim­ic­k­ing car­toons like Pep­pa Pig, or Amer­i­can Eng­lish from ex­po­sure to Youtube videos," he point­ed out.

He al­so said the T&T ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem need­ed to be re­vamped to bring about an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for T&T's Eng­lish Cre­ole di­alect and cul­ture.

"As­pects of life in our com­mu­ni­ties that rep­re­sent who we are should be part of our schools' syl­labus. We should be proud of who we are," Dr Bhimul said.

He added: "We are still with­in a colo­nial sys­tem of ed­u­ca­tion where our own lan­guages and cul­tures are made to seem in­fe­ri­or to oth­er Eu­ro­pean cul­tures. We need to teach these as­pects of our lo­cal cul­ture to our chil­dren and in our school sys­tem.

For ex­am­ple, Dr Bhimul said Caribbean Bho­jpuri, a lan­guage brought by in­den­tured im­mi­grants, was al­ways re­gard­ed as in­fe­ri­or.

"Peo­ple re­gard­ed it as a bro­ken form of Hin­di when in fact it was not. It is a sep­a­rate lan­guage."

He added, "In the same way, the va­lid­i­ty of all our di­alect ex­pres­sions, should be giv­en a space in our for­mal ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem so these ex­pres­sions can seem valid and au­then­tic in their own right."

Dr Bhimul said dur­ing In­di­an in­den­ture­ship, In­di­ans were brought main­ly from west­ern Bi­har and east­ern Ut­tar Pradesh, the heart of the Bho­jpuri lan­guage belt and this evolved in­to a spe­cial Trinidad Bho­jpuri lan­guage. How­ev­er much of this lan­guage has been lost.

Dr Bhimull has al­so avid­ly re­searched the im­pact of Dutch and French on Caribbean Hin­dus­tani as well as the In­di­an words and phras­es loaned to the var­i­ous Cre­ole di­alects in each Caribbean na­tion.

He says while our Tri­ni Cre­ole di­alect fea­tures wide­ly in many hu­mourous blogs and videos done by lo­cals, Caribbean Hin­dus­tani has con­tin­ued to work to pre­serve cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions.

"We are per­sis­tent at Caribbean Hin­dus­tani in pre­serv­ing our lo­cal cul­ture and lan­guages. I want to men­tion the Lly­od Best In­sti­tute and Tapia House where I do class­es in Trinidad Bho­jpuri, and they al­so of­fer Trinidad pa­tois and a course which is the Eng­lish cre­ole of Suri­nam and their stan­dard is Dutch," he added.

Dr Bhimul said he planned to lob­by on be­half of the Caribbean Hin­dus­tani In­sti­tu­tion to have con­ver­sa­tions with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Min­istry of Cul­ture to have changes made to the ed­u­ca­tion syl­labus.

He said the me­dia should al­so do its part by go­ing to com­mu­ni­ties to doc­u­ment the cul­ture of com­mu­ni­ty-based groups.

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