Hi guys.
(sigh)
This is a response to my video "Les consequences du Francais en Haiti"
which I did it in French talking about the consequences of French in Haiti.
I published this in April and I have the link to it up here and down there
in my description box.
I got some really strong reactions to that post and it seems like I really hit a
nerve for some people so I'm dedicating this week's message to response and debunk
the prevalent counter arguments I received
Here are the main points I made in that video:
"French hinders comunication in self-expression among Haitians
It divides the Haitian population and fosters an inferiority complex for the
majority of the population.
Haitions sustitute someone's ability to muster a few words in French for wisdom or
intelligence.Haitions fail to realize that what they are seeing is more important
than the language they used to say in.
And lastly, Haitians by and large cannot speak French.
These are fairly common and well-known issues I presented to support my proposal
of eliminating French as one of the two official languages of Haiti.
But many didn't want to hear it and here are some of the responses that I want to
address.
The first one is that the problem of Haiti is one of education not of language.
Here is my issue with that point.
Everyone knows that the state of education in Haiti is dire, that has always been the
case in Haiti but have you stopped to think that language is the basis of
learning and education, so if you are attempting to teach in a language that is
cumbersome, unnatural and foreign to kids then you keep them at a disadvantage.
The medium that allows you to communicate the knowledge you are attempting to pass
on is extremely relevant.
My experience as a student in Haiti was that many of my teachers were not fluent
in French, far from.
So yes, there is an educational crisis in Haiti and this isn't breaking news to
anyone. But the fact that we are insisting on sticking to French as the academic
language is to our own detriment.
It is pedagogically impractical and frankly at this point pretty irresponsible
The other thing people say that kind of goes along with the lack of education
argument is that well, we shouldn't just limit our kids to Creole we should teach
them French, Spanish, German, Italian, everything.
Ok, well, do I want our kids to learn multiple languages?
Of course.
I would like every little Haitian out there to know as many languages as the
human brain can retain and my argument has never been to eradicate French from
Haitian schools but rather to repeal its status as an official language of the
of Haiti and instead prioritize Creole which is the language that every last
Haitian speaks.
Luxembourg has 3 official languages.
One of them I'm sure most of people have never heard of, it's called Luxembourgish
and it is the language that is indigenous to its people, the language of the heart
for them so to speak.
Even though, not many people outside of Luxembourg use it, that is the language
that kids are taught in the first year of primary school before switching to German
and then French.
And proficiency and all three of their official languages is required for
graduation from secondary school.
Now as you can see they are somehow able to pull off a
trilingual educational system to go along with the fact that they have 3 offical
languages meaning their important legislature, and official national affairs
are recorded and reported steadily in all 3 of these languages,
even the one that we've never heard of.
What's the point of this little sidebar?
Well, it isn't a sidebar at all.
It is to answer to the people who would rather say: let's just teach our Haitian
kids every language on the planet instead of focusing on teaching them in their
primary language, Creole.
A language that is said to be official in our country yet all the important business
political, professional and administrative dealings are not recorded or reported
in Creole.
Over the years, when nationally elected officials address the population,
they deliver speeches in French and all while everyone knows that Creole
is the language.
Creole is constitutionally one of our official language but that's only"a L'oral
like people say, meaning it's only something we say.
Have we even tried to apply it in that capacity?
Have we even tried before we start crying how it is unsustainable as a global means
of communication for our children?
What kills me is that these people objecting so passionately against the
removal of French are the first to boast that we defeated French in 1804
and that's the one thing from which they derive Haitian pride, yet they don't
realize that they are perpetuating oppression,
holding stubbornly onto the language and the ways of the French at the expense of
their own culture.
For those of you telling me that back in the days, you and your friends used to
speak French, that's like me say every Haitian speaks English because my friends
and I speak it.
That doesn't mean anything.
If you look at the data, education has always been a privilege reserved for the
very few in Haiti and only the educated can manage to speak a little French in
Haiti ergo.
Certain people's experiences back in the day when things were a little bit better
for some doesn't demonstrate that at some point French worked in Haiti.
It never did and never will.
Now, the other argument I got quite a bit is that we can't get rid of French
because we need something to keep us connected to the rest of the world and
people were also saying that having a Creole take-over
now would set us back because we would have to start from scratch
since Creole is such an unformulated language.
Ok, first of all, I hate to break it to you but the world has left Haiti behind
a long time ago, and it's not just because our people don't speak French,
it's because we have not invested or educated our people.
Speaking French is not what's going to get connected or keep us connected to the
world because we don't need French to facilitate international exchanges
and to implement French as a language of the Haitian people would require the same
effort as to implement any other language outside of Creole.
With Creole we have an advantage,
that's our mother tongue, we already speak it.
We have to make the distinction:
To teach French is not the same as educating our people.
Here in the USA, everyone speaks the same language, yet you will see that an
uneducated person cannot articulate or express themselves.
The reason why our Creole-speaking masses sound uneducated oftentimes
is because they are uneducated,not because they are speaking Creole.
However, French can make a smart and educated Haitian sound stupid
And a stupid Haitian who can remember their French vocab and grammar rules is
oftentimes reveal and considered smart,no matter how dimwitted they might be.
There is something really wrong with this picture.
I was lucky enough to listen to Maurice Sixto at a young age and discovered how
he was able to claim such profound, culturally relevant,poetic and educational
stories in Creole.
He was well spoken and most importantly Haitians could understand and truly
connect with the deeper meaning of what he was sharing.
Back then, he wielded the Creole language, which some attempt to devoid of all
virtues, brilliantly, because he was educated.
He was able to use his imagination and talent to enrich the language.
Had there been more of an encouragement for self-expression in Creole and Haiti
and respect for the language, no doubt, it would be at a more refined stage today.
That's what happened when something is yours, when you care about something,
you work at it.
That's your responsibility.
You don't just sit and say it will never work because the languages that are so
sophisticated today weren't always that way;
people developed them, people made them great.
They didn't just sit and say let's adopt another language that's already developed
to help us assimilate and sound educated.
That being said, I appreciate that fact that we need to equip our children with
the tools to compete on a global level
and that includes language skills
but that doesn't preclude us from strengthening and valuing our own language
in our own country and taking advantage of it to educate our children.
Keeping that in mind, if I had to choose the second mandatory language for the
education in Haiti, for our kids to know inside and out, it would definitely not
be French because in today's world,
French is struggling to remain revelant.
That has been the trend for some time now, you can check out the links to a few
articles I posted to support that statement in the description box.
Listen my Haitian people, generally speaking, we don't speak French,
me included, and here are the reasons why.
Speaking a language is not about knowing some of the grammar or being able to read
and write or understand it.
It's about living the language, hearing it and feeling it.
I know some kids who were tragically forbidden by their parents in Haiti to
utter of a word of Creole growing up in Haiti,
yet they still didn't speak French what they did was essentially translate Creole
phrases into French like for example
"envoie les yeux pour moi s'il te plait" (true story)
Now, is it grammatically correct, sure, is it French?
I'll leave that up to you to decide.
Of course you can interact very well with a native French speaker but communicating
successfully to another Haitian in French is much harder.
Short of constantly immersing ourselves in French in the French culture through up to
date literature, cinema, or other creative work,
we really cannot keep up with the language
So yeah, we don't speak French and it's ok it's not the end of the world.
What's not ok is people, my people, not
capable of rationally debating a critical issues in our Haitian society.
People who will tell me "well why aren't you speaking Creole?"
meanwhile their kids probably don't speak a lick of Creole let alone the French that
they are so loudly and mindlessly defending,
people who are blinded by their bias.
I said it in my other video and I'll repeat it now.
I love the French language.
My favourite recording artist this season is actually Belgian.
I am so grateful that I was afforded the opportunity to learn French.
Many Haitians don't get that opportunity.
And I will pass on as much appreciation for French to my kids as I can because the
issue is not and has never been the language; the issue is the many Haitian
people who simply refuse to wake up.
Once again, my name is Marli, I am a Haiti hope ambassador and Wake up Haitians,
seriously.