Hindi and innocent Creole culture

New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 2008

Examines the contemporary lexical component of the English/Creole of Trinidad (TEC) that is derived from languages of India. Author focuses on the TEC as spoken among Indo-Trinidadians, but also pays attention to Indic words used in the TEC of Afro-Trinidadians and other groups. Author sketches the history of Indian immigration into Trinidad, explaining how most came from the Bihar province in northern India and spoke Bhojpuri, rather than (closely related) Hindi, and how in the 20th c. Indian languages were replaced by English with education. She further focuses on retained Indic words incorporated in current-day TEC, and found 1844 of such words in usage. She discusses words misassigned locally as Indian-derived, but actually from other (European or African) languages. Then, she describes most of the Indo-TEC lexicon, categorizing items by their semantic-cultural domain, with major domains for Indian-derived words: religious practice, music, dance and stickfighting, food preparati...

Foundation Readings on the History of Trinidad and Tobago, 2017

In the Caribbean region today (the Caribbean islands and in continental CARICOM and French Guiana), some 75 languages have survived, contrary to the general view that there are only four to six languages in the region. Those four to six are the official languages of countries of the region, namely, Dutch, English, French, Haitian, Papiamento/u and Spanish, but there are many more languages that are spoken or signed in the Caribbean and that are in daily use. The focus in this chapter is on the language history of Trinidad and Tobago.

La Caraïbe, chaudron des Amériques, 2017

Any assessment of the language vitality of Trinidadian French Creole (Patois), a variety of Lesser Antillean French Creole, shows that the variety may be classified as moribund, or near death, and very likely to become extinct without intervention, a status applied to languages no longer being learned as a mother tongue by children. Yet, in spite of its highly endangered status, elements of the language live on both in specific sociolinguistic domains and the language itself survives in relatively remote-access geographical locations. This paper seeks to examine these last spheres where Patois still exerts considerable influence, such as nature (flora and fauna) and culture (traditional Carnival, folklore and songs), to briefly consider other areas of language structure (calques and more), to determine some of the sociocultural factors responsible for this language persistence, and to chart possible ways forward for this national heritage language of Trinidad and Tobago. Research Interests: Trinidadian French Creole

A range of contemporary critical theories suggest that it is from those who have suffered the sentence of historysubjugation, domination, diaspora, displacementthat we learn our most enduring lessons for living and thinking….It forces us to confront the concept of culture outside objets d'art or beyond the canonization of the 'idea' of aesthetics, to engage with culture as an uneven, incomplete production of meaning and value, often composed of incommensurable demand and practices, produced in the act of social survival. 1

Trinidad and Tobago Review, 1999

It was my and my mother’s first ever trip to India. To my surprise, after our visit my feelings toward India were very different from what I thought they would be. I did not go to India to fortify some emotional bond with my “Motherland”. In fact, I expected this trip to finalise the sense of distance I felt from contemporary India – a sense developed from my experience with Indians in Toronto (where I grew up), in the United Kingdom, and the Indian nationals resident in Jamaica and Trinidad. In these places, I had met what we in Trinidad would simply call “Indians”, but are more properly referred to as South Asians, not only from the many linguistic, religious and regional groups of India itself, like the Punjabis, the Sindhis, Goans, Tamils, Malayalees, and Kannada speakers, but also from Fiji, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Mauritius, and other places of the Indian Diaspora. To the people whom I met from all these groups, Trinidad Indian culture was alien and unfamiliar. Our food – dhalpourie, saheena, kuchela, pholourie, kurma -- many of our names (like “Meighoo”), and other things that Trinidadians think “Indian” might as well have been Venezuelan as far as these others were concerned. Similarly, to me, their food, customs, languages, etc. were alien and unfamiliar. I had to learn about India and things Indian, and I eventually did.

This newspaper column from 2003 examines how Indians in Trinidad and Tobago are misled, guided by so many fears, the encouragement of feelings of victimhood, and smallness of vision. There is an important contribution for Indians to make to the building of this New World civilisation, which is still in its infancy and only half-made. What is needed is a vision, mission and leadership not griping about “discrimination”, but looking fearlessly to the future.

Göttingen Series in Social and Cultural Anthropology, 2018

Caribbean Dynamics: Reconfiguring Caribbean Culture, 2015

This article discusses language documentation for Trinidadian French Creole (Patois), an endangered heritage language, especially through textual support, from c.1805 to texts gathered during the present day. From the Introduction (xvi to xvii): Jo-Anne Ferreira discusses the cultural heritage and revitalization issues of Trinidadian French Creole (TFC) or Patois. She examines and establishes a very useful update of a minority and marginalized, even endangered language in the Caribbean that, while thriving elsewhere, is very limited today in Trinidad. The chapter raises pertinent questions about language planning, the effects and benefits of internet technology on language development and maintenance, as well as the sociocultural importance of TFC. The author’s purpose is twofold: to make TFC literary culture available to a series of wider audiences and to formally support informal language preservation efforts currently under way. pp. 111-125