We in the Caribbean have a [. . .] kind of plurality: we
have English, which is the imposed language on much of the archipelago. It is an
imperial language, as are French, Dutch and Spanish. We also have what we call
creole English, which is a mixture of English and an adaptation that English took in the
new environment of the Caribbean when it became mixed with the other imported
languages. We have also what is called nation language, which is the kind of
English spoken by the people who were brought to the Caribbean, not the official English
now, but the language of slaves and labourers, the servants who were brought in.
(5-6)
Ashanti, Congo, Yoruba, all that mighty coast of western
Africa was imported into the Caribbean. And we had the arrival in our area of a new
language structure. It consisted of many languages but basically they had a common
semantic and stylistic form. What these languages had to do, however, was to
submerge themselves, because officially the conquering peoples -- the Spaniards, the
English, the French, and the Dutch -- insisted that the language of public discourse and
conversation, of obedience, command and conception should be English, French, Spanish, or
Dutch. They did not wish to hear people speaking Ashanti or any of these Congolese
languages. Its status became one of inferiority. Similarly, its speakers were
slaves. They were conceived of as inferiors -- non-human, in fact. But this
very submergence served an interesting interculturative purpose, because although people
continued to speak English as it was spoken in Elizabethan times and on through the
Romantic and Victorian ages, that English was, nonetheless, still being influenced by the
underground language, the submerged language that the slaves had brought. And that
underground language was constantly transforming itself into new forms. It was
moving from a purely African form to a form which was African but which was adapted to the
new environment and adapted to the cultural imperative of the European languages.
And it was influencing the way in which the English, French, Dutch, and Spaniards spoke
their own languages. So there was a very complex process taking place, which is now
beginning to surface in our literature. (7-8)
