Among the many things I discovered after migrating to Toronto in the late 1950s was the value of the Guyanese dialect I had grown up with; something in fact that I had been made to feel ashamed of in my homeland, a condition not unique to me. In Canada, in passing conversation with Canadians, and particularly in later years at a university journalism course, I had learned, in linguistic studies, that our dialect chat was a vibrant, reasoned means of communication, and indeed, in many social encounters, it was often the best way for Guyanese to communicate. The value of the dialect, in other words, had come clear in my mind and consequently this new awareness was operating in the music I started writing for Tradewinds – I drew on it continuously in the songs and in the introduction to songs like “Copycats” and “Boyhood Days,” explaining our terms to the Canadians in our audiences. It is something, in fact, that has expanded over the years so that I do a lot of it now, wherever I perform, as I have to come to see that audiences enjoy it.
This past week, I noticed an item on Facebook where a similar train of thought in one of the posts was discussing various Guyanese words and sayings, often treating them humourously, leading to other readers contributing items to the gaff. I even mentioned one myself. This is all to make the point today – I have made it before in various situations – regarding the very powerful tool we have in our Caribbean dialects – the situation I described above in Guyana has also produced trenchant communication tools across the region, terms we Guyanese have to learn when we go there. I learned, for example, when I moved to Cayman in the 1980s that the colloquial word “battie” that Guyanese use to refer to the buttocks is unknown there; they have their own word, “bonkay,” to refer to that part of the anatomy, and in fact, probably stemming from the sexual connotation, it is not considered a polite word there, just as the Guyanese version is in Guyana. To digress for a minute, when I started writing an annual Cayman comedy show in the mid-1980s, I used the word “bonkay” in a script and two of the Caymanian actors in the show were offended. “I not going on stage and say that,” one of the actresses told me, and while she later relented, it shows how powerfully these words of our own making can affect us.
Fundamentally, here today, I am preaching, as I’ve done before, for the appreciation of this strong, precise, colourful communication tool we have and I am pleased that the University of Guyana is now offering course on it. I remain particularly fond of the words and phrases that are unique to us, and in fact often require explanation to someone who is not Guyanese. I recall, for instance, returning to Guyana with my first wife, Dorothy, a Canadian, in the 1970s, and on a visit to my aunts’ house at Hague, where I was born, I turned to see her, mouth agape, at the Indian lady living next door to my aunts, who had come to see me and was jabbering away in Guyanese dialect. I had had the same experience with Canadians in Toronto over certain words I would use that I would have to explain. “Scraven” was one I recall, producing the “whaddya mean?” enquiry. And my use of the word “wutless” got the same reaction. (Indeed, as I type this, the spell check just changed the word, making it read “witless”; I had to reject the correction.”) I recall a guy at Hague speaking about a friend of his who had gone to Parika in the morning and by afternoon had not returned. He said, “Wherever he is, he must be fasten.” Think about it – what an imaginative expression.
