thepancollective: sa ka fet?

I lived in St. Lucia for just under three years and one of my biggest regrets is not learning creole. St. Lucia, like Dominica, Haiti and islands in the French West Indies, still has a vibrant creole or patois language. It is largely based on French, but also includes words from African languages as well as Dutch.

In Grenada we still have vestiges of creole. Expressions like bun jay! (Bon dieu! = Good God!), and tout bagay (every single thing), and the way we attach oui (Oui = yes) to the end of our sentences as in "It's hot today, oui". We tell ghost stories about the La Jablesse (La Diablesse = female devil) and sing our babies to sleep with Doh doh piti po po. I have memories of hearing adults in my gandmother's generation speak to each other in patois, they did that so that the children couldn't understand the subject of conversation, which sadly is the main reason it died out.

So I was pleasantly surprised upon arriving in St. Lucia to see that creole was alive and well. I vaguely remember hearing Dominicans and St. Lucians using it when I was at the St. Augustine Campus of UWI (University of the West Indies), but that was really in the abstract and didn't register. But when you live in St. Lucia or Dominica you quickly realise that it's not at all abstract, it's a part of the daily life there. In fact, in some of the more remote areas some residents speak only creole and no English. Contrarily in Castries, the capital, at the time I was there, there was an association whose aim was to promote and revive the use of creole in the urban areas, because it was already starting to die out.

The thing I found most remarkable was that even though differences exist in the versions of creole of these islands, the residents can easily communicate with each other. This is a definite advantage. Martinique is so close to St. Lucia, that on a clear day you can see the coast from Castries, and there is a regular ferry between the two islands. Guadelopue and Dominica are just a hop away. But even residents from Haiti, much further north, can communicate with St. Lucians, as I discovered while in the company of a colleague at the local market. He was walking around with a look of wonder on his face telling me "But I understand what they are saying." All the better since I didn't!

sa ka fet = what's happening?

Comments

Mwe La (I'm ok)! I lived in St. Lucia as a kid, but never learned much Kweyol either unfortunately. It was, and still is, the way my mother, grandmother, and other members of my family say things they don't want us "kids" to hear.

Posted by: Dee | April 21, 2006 at 07:55 PM

Tres bien! I spent a few months in St. Lucia freelancing at a local ad agency and it really was a pleasant surprise to see that so many people were bilingual re: the Creole and English. I tried to pick up as much as I could, but only walked away with the functional, basic phrases!

Posted by: Kari | April 25, 2006 at 10:00 PM

Although English is the official language of St Lucia, Patois is widespread throughout the island.

Patois is a great language and is really not that difficult to learn. Increasingly more and more books are being written in patois (something which didn't happen much a few years ago. And today you can even get a patois dictionary. On my website you can hear how patois is spoken. visit www.stlucia1979.com

Posted by: stlucia1979 | May 01, 2006 at 01:36 PM