In Guyana, several communities coexist and express themselves in their original Creole, thereby impacting Guyanese Creole. If, like any living language, Guyanese Creole evolves, it must nevertheless keep a well-identified lexical base. For effective transmission, Creolists recommend learning it.
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“We would like people to learn Creole, to really study it and for that you have to go to school.”
Robert Loe Mie always spoke Creole from a very young age in the family home. He wanted to perfect his knowledge of the language and began to study it at university. He thus obtained the university diploma in regional language and culture, Creole option (DULCR). Keeping Guyanese Creole alive requires, according to this Creolist, its teaching for its academic learning:
“Speaking a language and studying it are not the same thing. The majority of people who speak Creole have not learned it. Here the Creoles rub shoulders and, inevitably, there is an interaction. People from parents of different communities (Guyanese, Haitian or West Indian) necessarily mix things up when expressing themselves because they have not learned Guyanese Creole. The most common mistake being the formation of the plural of words, there are also mixtures of French on Creole and Creole on French. »
Elderly people in communities are often considered references in the use of Creole, underlines Robert Loe Mie, for the simple reason that they had very little contact with other Creoles and languages. : “There was no radio, television, they lived almost in linguistic self-sufficiency. Now people have contact with other Creoles and other references are being created. »
For example in Saint-Laurent where the majority of Creoles at the beginning and middle of the 20th century, apart from those who worked in the penal colony, were Creoles who came to work gold on Haut-Maroni, then settled down in Saint-Laurent. These were often people from Saint Lucia. The Creole spoken in Saint-Laurent was that of Saint Lucia or the West Indies, many soldiers from Martinique or Guadeloupe having left.
“There are no pure languages except dead languages. From the moment languages rub shoulders, there is necessarily an interconnection, exchanges. Thus, we say in Guyana, take sleep instead of falling asleep and the expression I am not mixed is a creolism. We can talk about Frenchization and Antillanization and all this thanks to the music, the family mixtures. We can even speak for young people of Jamaicanization “mo ka watch to” as many contributions which dilute the original Creole. »
In the territory, there are 10 schools distributed in Cayenne (2), Matoury (3), Macouria (2), Kourou (3) which accommodate, in total, 45 classes, which represents around 1100 students. These children receive their teaching equally in both languages either by a teacher authorized for both languages or by two teachers.
All disciplines are studied in French as well as in Creole. This is only valid in primary school. At the end of the cycle which began in kindergarten and ends in CM2, the child must be able to speak Creole, read it and write it.
In secondary education, students can choose to study Creole as a second language in the same way as any other language.
Numerous events are organized throughout the year to spread the language, such as the famous Creole dictation or the brand new Creole eloquence competition for students from kindergarten to CM2.
A second edition is planned for 2024, it will be aimed at all those who speak Creole from kindergarten to high school.