UG seeks to create writing system applicable to all Creole languages

Dear Editor, Thank you again – this time for the briefest possible space in which to point out the depths of your inveterate letter writer Ryhaan Shah’s ignorance regarding the subject she discussed in her recent piece captioned: ‘Creativity counts for more in good writing than any concern for the study of linguistics’ (SN June 21).

In her latest assault on the University of Guyana’s Department of Language and Cultural Studies Vacation School (Aliidee Skuul), though Charlene Wilkinson took care to point out in her letter (SN June 20) that ‘Standardisation is not one of the aims of the UG Creole course’ (a response to Shah’s ‘Teaching Creolese at UG sounds like a pagaly idea’ SN, June 17), still Ms Shah, with unerring persistence could posit afresh that “‘Allidee Skuul’...imparts an obvious African bias and privilege to African Guyanese Creolese above all others...begs the question whether the university intends to convey racial insensitivity or exclusiveness.”

By this consistency Ms Shah is proving – more than anyone could have believed – that her mind is mired by wallowing in that familiar hollow of race. Maybe this confinement within a restricted intellectual space explains the letter writer’s inability to conceive the fundamental idea informing a university course that seeks to create a writing system to enable Creolese speakers universally (here in Guyana and anywhere on the globe) to read texts in every variation of Creole languages.

Ms Shah, who obviously just does not get the idea, further theorizes in her letter that writers should take a “common-sense approach” to writing in Creolese lest they end up “straying so far from the known English”, thus emphasizing how far lost from the point she is herself. The letter writer also lauds V S Naipaul and Salman Rushdie, both of whom were not ‘colonised’ by the English language but used “the master’s language [my emphasis] with superb skill and articulation”.

Speaking not only for myself but (from all indications) my fellow participants also, we’re inspired by the opportunity to be involved in this groundbreaking exercise and basking in the pleasure. Yours faithfully, Joan Cambridge