The case of ‘Creole’ versus ‘Kreol’ |31 March 2016

It was certainly most pertinent on your part to publish in today’s issue of NATION the letter of ‘En Seselwa ki kontan son pei’, criticising my recent Opinion Page concerning the Creole language.

Briefly, in that Page, I had made the point that whilst we make maximum use of the Creole language, it is not in the interest of the young generation to be compelled to learn a grammar which had been arbitrarily created and which is restrictive in its application within the Creole world.

I also made the point that if the Seychellois people has a maternal language, it is the Creole which their forefathers and mothers had spoken and not the ‘Kreol’ which was introduced and grammartised arbitrarily in the 1980s after the coup.

I consider myself, relatively speaking, to be academically qualified in the Seychelles context to have made the points I did in the Opinion Page concerning the subject matter. After all, I did my primary and secondary schooling in Seychelles, study law in London, practiced as a lawyer in Seychelles before becoming the first Chief Minister, the first Prime Minister and the first President of the Republic.

Despite such a background, I had great difficulties to read the letter you published in ‘Kreol’ from sois-disant ‘En Seselwa ki kontan son pei’. This fact confirmed to me once again that this ‘Kreol’ is certainly not the maternal Creole spoken and written by our parents and forebears and which we inherited at the time of our birth.

I do not understand what point the writer is making when he quotes – “When a people no longer dares to defend its language, it is ripe for slavery…’’ - and then takes the trouble of quoting this statement in French, Basque, Brazilian, Breton, Catalan, Danish and Dutch. I think, in our circumstances, it would be more suitable and intelligent to say that when the Seychellois people allowed their Creole language to be mutilated and turned into ‘Kreol’, they sadly demonstrated that they were ripe for a new form of slavery.

It is sad and unfortunate that the person who wrote the letter did not have the bravado to identify himself or herself and preferred to hide behind an abstract ‘nom de plume’. So far as we know, this person could very well be among those who congratulated me for my Opinion Page but has now decided, behind the façade of anonymity, to play the role of a ‘kameleon’.

 James R. Mancham