No hasi ko’i pendeu

Megan Figueroa: Hey, and welcome to The Vocal Fries Podcast. The podcast about linguistic discrimination.

Carrie: I'm Carrie Gillon.

Megan: I'm Megan Figueroa. We have a sexiest accent problem again.

Carrie: That makes it sound like we've talked about before, but I don't think we have [crosstalk] that it comes up [crosstalk] a lot.

Megan: The world has a sexiest accent problem again. Yeah. I feel like it comes up every, I don't know, maybe it's like traveling season or something because It always seems to be like these travel blogs or it seems to be people that are like, here are places to visit and let's, I don't know, sexy accents kind of thing. Because this latest one seems to be like from a travel, so bigseventravel.com has the top 50 sexiest accents in the USA ranked.

Carrie: Yes. The ranking is interesting and it's not exactly what I was expecting because, sorry. 1.5 million people apparently took part in this study, which is not a very well-designed study.

Megan: No.

Carrie: But you know, whatever, the poll is [crosstalk]. So, it's a lot of people involved and it does tell you something about how people think of dialects.

Megan: No, absolutely. [Crosstalk] but the fact that they can keep reusing this idea, like what's the sexiest accent and still get clicks tells you a lot about people and how they think about.

Carrie: We clicked on it.

Megan: I just like to be angry, Carrie.

Carrie: Me too. Well, I did post one of the versions to our Facebook page because it was about how Baltimore was one of the sexiest accents, and then it turned out it was number 18, which I thought was hilarious that they were like crowing about being number 18, but also like what?

Megan: Sure. I think it must be because they never get any love for their accent. It's usually like disparagingly talked about. Right?

Carrie: Is it talked about at all? I don't even have a perception of what Americans think of Baltimore accent.

Megan: Maybe I'm lumping it in with everything else, like New Jersey or New York or something.

Carrie: Yeah, maybe. It's closer to Washington DC, I think. I don't know if it has the same accent as Washington DC. I don't really have any conception of it at all. When I think of Baltimore, I think of the corrupt police system now. 

Megan: Oh, sure. Definitely. Yeah.

Carrie: It is outrageous. 

Megan: Yeah. Even, no, it's fucked.

Carrie: Even within the millions of the United States.

Megan: Right. Yeah. I guess I'm not thinking about the way they talk, just how fucked up they are. Like the police, I mean, yeah.

Carrie: I don't even have any conception of them at all. How would I, let's say I thought this was a good idea to rank accents by sexiness. I wouldn't even know where to put them because I don't know how they talk. 

Megan: Yeah. 

Carrie: Even though I've heard them talk many times, I just don't have like a stereotype of it. 

Megan: Right. I'm thinking of the wire. I'm like, no, that's not helping. Not helping at all.

Carrie: Some of them did definitely have Baltimorean accents. I just [crosstalk]

Megan: Yeah. Nothing sticks out to me. 

Carrie: Right. 

Megan: Also, what is sexy? [Crosstalk] tell me what that is. 

Carrie: Yes. I was going to ask that question and then I was like, oh, there's a can of worms. It's so subjective, obviously. 

Megan: Yeah. 

Carrie: But the fact that there's some agreement means there's some kind of ideology underpinning it.

Megan: Right. General American 32nd. [Crosstalk] I know, right? 

Carrie: That reminds me Texan is number one, which actually surprised me because of the idea, oh, there's an ideology underpinning all of this. I would never have predicted that Texan would be number one. 

Megan: Yeah, no. I don't even know what to say about that. Okay. I just obviously have to say 12th Chicano. What is happening? I'm seeing a lot of racism in other places when we're talking about Chicanos, but all of a sudden 12th and sexiest accents. What?

Carrie: Yeah. I was surprised by that as well. Yeah. 

Megan: Yeah. I'm like, I wasn't surprised to see that California Valley was like in the 40s. Yeah. I'm just like, okay, wait, Texan, Bostonian, and New York are the top three and that's not like at all [crosstalk]

Carrie: What do they share in common? Almost nothing.

Megan: You know what they do share in common, I think? We all have some idea of what they sound like. 

Carrie: Oh, that's true. I do have a much better sense of those three, even though, even within Texas, there's like a bunch and within New York there's a bunch, but still stereotypically, I have accents in my head for all three places. That's true.

Megan: Yep. Yep. That's the only thing that I can think of. It's just like, none of this makes sense. None of it. You ask people that, I don't know, we're going off of media, like 1.5 million people. I bet most of them haven't traveled to all these places. It's going to be like media. 

Carrie: Of course. Yeah. 

Megan: So, I don't know. This is all wrong anyway. We should never do these things. 

Carrie: No. We should never rank accents in any way, shape, or form. Sexiness in particular just makes me laugh because like what?

Megan: Really, it should be like the 50th sexiest accents ranked, and all of them are number one.

Carrie: Interesting. Another interesting thing was that the New Jersey accent was placed pretty low.

Megan: 49th. 

Carrie: 49th, almost dead last, and yet New York accent was much, much, much higher and at least North Jersey and New York share an accent. Yeah. People don't know. That's what it comes down to. People really don't know what accents really are, where the boundaries are.

Megan: Even if you're not being overtly discriminatory, there are discriminatory things that are underlying these instincts to say what is sex and or not. I guess we really just want to get to the point where most people see something like this and they're like, oh, nope. This isn't okay, you know?

Carrie: Yeah.

Megan: I don't know when that's going to happen. Of course, our listeners are already there, but I don't know. 

Carrie: I don't know either. But it does really show that people have a different conception of what it means to be from New York versus what it means to be from New Jersey even though culturally they're very similar. 

Megan: Well, in Long Island. 

Carrie: Then Long Island has [crosstalk] its own.

Megan: Yeah, they've separated it.

Carrie: It's way, way lower than the rest of New York. 

Megan: Yeah. Yeah.

Carrie: The article that Nu Capella[?] sent to us.

Megan: Our Jerseyan. [Crosstalk] Our new Jerseyan.


Carrie: Former guest. That article says something like, all this being said, most people can't hear their own accents. Ah, ding ding, ding, ding, ding, and it turns out we're not very good listening to ourselves, so yeah, that's part of it.

Megan: Yes, yes. Okay. Well, at least, some people are having good conversations around this, so this is just a terrible list anyway, how they've demarcated these things.

Carrie: Yeah. 

Megan: It certainly wasn't a linguist who did it, because a linguist should always say, no, no, I will not help you with that. You shouldn't do it. 

Carrie: The only way you would do this is to try and figure out some ideology.

Megan: Oh yeah. That would be really cool.

Carrie: Because this is telling us some of the underlying ideology. It's just not telling us in a very clear, transparent way, but it's giving us some hints. 

Megan: Yeah. Oh yeah. 

Carrie: That's the only reason why this is interesting. 

Megan: All of a sudden, I love it, I love it. Let's do it, but yeah.

Carrie: I don't want to do that. That's not [crosstalk]

Megan: No, no. This is a huge project.

Carrie: People who have done this kind of thing before have at it.

Megan: Do it. Yeah. Yeah. Look at this list and see how people have separated it. It makes no sense some of them.

Carrie: Totally unrelatedly. Last week Chris and I went to this Patreon meetup. They came to Phoenix because they were also going to Arcosanti, and if any people don't know what Arcosanti is - it's an interesting art space that you can look up. But anyway, so they were coming here for a concert and they decided to host a meetup, so we went and it was really fun. Interesting and yeah, lots of good tips, but [crosstalk] 

Megan: Enlightening. 

Carrie: It was enlightening. Yeah. Just want to remind everybody that we have a Patreon, patreon.com/vocalfriespod.

Megan: Yes. Sorry, I just saw your cat and I was like she looks [crosstalk]

Carrie: She looks [crosstalk] old.

Megan: She looks like a puddle of cat. 

Carrie: She looks like a puddle of cat.

Megan: Anyway, yes. 

Carrie: Anyway.

Megan: Yes. Thank you so much for your support on Patreon. We really appreciate it.

Carrie: Yeah, we do.

Megan: We're fueled by love [crosstalk]

Carrie: Fueled by love. Yes, yes, yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Megan: Yeah. Well, today is the first time we talk about creole languages. 

Carrie: Well, one Creole language.

Megan: Officially. Yes, one Creole language.

Carrie: Yes, yes.

Megan: That's exciting.

Carrie: It's very cool. It's very cool, yeah.

Megan: Yes. We would happily talk about more, just hit us up.

Carrie: Yes. I want to talk about all the Creoles.

Megan: Yeah, let's do it.

Carrie: And all other languages as well.

Megan: Yes. Yes. We are so excited to have Keisha Wiel with us today. She is a PhD student of anthropology at Temple University. Her research interests include Creole languages of the Caribbean and their place in education. She's particularly interested in Papiamentu and the dichotomy between its use in cultural settings and formal educational settings. Thanks for coming on the show and talking to us. 

Carrie: Yeah, thank you.

Keisha Wiel: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. 

Carrie: Of course. 

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: Of course.

Megan: Really excited. We haven't talked to anyone about any Caribbean languages yet, so this is exciting. 

Carrie: No. Or Creole languages. 

Megan: Yeah. Yeah. We've mentioned it on the show but haven't really got into it. Could you just start off by telling us what is a Creole language?

Keisha: Okay, so that's actually a contested term depending on who you speak to, but in its most basic sense, a Creole language is a language that's developed through an advent of something like colonialism. It doesn't necessarily have to be colonialism but that's where most of our Creole language is, where we see that they've come from. Basically, it's when all these one or more groups get together and they need a way to communicate. There's been this debate for the longest about whether Creoles evolved from pigeons or whether they're separate from pigeons, where you've heard this old school saying of like, well, Creoles develop from pigeons. Because pigeons were these languages that were created or for everybody to communicate together and then Creoles were what was born from that. As soon as the first speaker of that pigeon came to be, this is what Creoles are. Now we're starting to see that that might not necessarily be the case. You have people who are saying that pigeons are something completely different than Creole languages. I'm a linguistic anthropologist, so a linguist would have a far better explanation than I would exactly about the intricacies between pigeons and Creoles. But at its most basic sense, Creoles are just these languages that were created because of some type of language contact.

Carrie: Where did your interest in Creole languages and I'm going to pronounce this word differently than Megan. Does Caribbean come from?

Keisha: It's actually pretty interesting. My mom is from Aruba and my father is from Curacao. I remember as a kid I grew up speaking Papiamentu, but I was always told that it wasn't a real language. Which is the case with most especially first-generation students from the Caribbean who live in the United States. We're always told that whatever our parents speak is not a real language. It's some sort of bad French or English or Spanish or whatever. The difference with Papiamentu on the other hand is that Papiamentu has such a mixture within its languages. It's never considered a bad form of Spanish or a bad form of Portuguese. The way it was told to me, it was just this language that people speak it, but it's not a real language like English or Dutch or Spanish.

I remember asking my aunt one day to ask her how to write something in Papiamentu, and she was just like, oh, you just write it however you feel because it's not a real language. It kind of stuck with me because I was like, well, if it's not a real language and if I speak it, everybody understands what I'm saying so I don't understand why it's not a real language. I was a teenager at the time, so I put it out of my mind. It wasn't until I actually got to my freshman year of undergrad at the University of North Florida, and Dr. Ronald Kephart, I don't know if you guys know him or not, I was speaking to him and he does work on Creole languages, and he was just like, "Wait a minute, so you speak Papiamentu?" I was like, "Yeah I speak that language, whatever, it's not a real thing." He's just like, "Wow, I can't believe you speak this language." He was really just pushing this like, wow you speak this Creole language and it's so interesting. I was just taken aback that this was the first time ever that I heard about this and not from someone from my island, but a white man from the US is telling me this. He's from I think Virginia or Maryland, I don't remember specifically what state. Here's this guy telling me how great my language is compared to my own family and my own people around me who've never told me about that. Through him, I really started looking into what Creole languages were, and I took a lot of classes with him, and that's how I got interested in it.

Carrie: When you go back, do you say, listen, this is what happened when I went to university. We should respect our language. Do you do that now and do you tell everyone, we have this really special thing?

Keisha: It depends on who I speak to. Thankfully right now, you do have some scholars on the island who've been advocating for it for decades. I just recently met them within the past 10, 15 years. But the shift on how people are viewing their language is changing now than it was, let's say even 15, 20 years ago. I have to give a lot of credit to those on the island who've been doing the work for decades. They've really been pushing even against political dissent, even against personal, they've been the ones who have pushing. Not to say that it's completely like, oh, everybody's like, yes, Papiamentu is our language, but I give credit to them mostly.

I do as well, like if I do tend to talk to people from time to time now, especially when I'm doing my preliminary research and I'm talking to them about language and education you do have a lot of people like, oh, well, and I guess we'll talk about this a little bit more later. They'll say, oh, well yeah Papiamentu is great as our language and it's our cultural identity, but you're never going to get anywhere with that because it's not a full-fledged language compared to Dutch and English. Now it's shifted from it being not a language at all to not a full-fledged language in a way that you can go somewhere with it. They're valorizing it was like, oh, this is a great cultural part of our identity, but then at the same time, it's like, okay, but it's not a full language like these other European languages that we can actually progress in.

Megan: Right. Baby steps, I guess.

Keisha: Right. Baby steps, very baby steps. Like I said, the work is being done, the work is being done and I am glad that it is shifting. Let's put it like that. I really am glad that the tone and ideas about language on both islands are shifting.

Megan: Yeah, that's great.

Carrie: Can you tell us something about Papiamento? I know only a very little amount and I imagine that some of our listeners know nothing. What makes it unique or what properties does it have that are interesting?

Keisha: Okay. What to say about Papiamentu? I would say compared to other Creole languages in the Caribbean, Papiamentu, the only Creole language in the Caribbean that doesn't have a direct lexical link to the colonizer that is on these islands. In Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, they were colonized. Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire are the only three islands in the whole world that that's where they speak Papiamento. They were colonized by the Dutch, like the last colonizer because with the Caribbean, everybody was colonized by all these different countries and finally the Dutch were the last ones to colonize us.

What was interesting about the Dutch was that the Dutch weren't really interested in promoting their language like the French were or promoting anything about them, their religion, their language or anything, their culture. They were just like, listen, we're here to traffic in the slave trade. We're here to do merchant stuff. We're not here to put our culture to these other people and so because of that Papiamento which there are a lot of different theories like Genesis theories on how it's created, but the most, I guess, prevalent one is the Afro Portuguese Creole Genesis theory that there was this Afro Portuguese Creole that came from West Africa and came to the different Caribbean islands. But because we were never exified, I guess you can say by the Dutch, that language stayed. It's not to say that there aren't any other Dutch Creoles in the Caribbean. There were a couple, but they all died out. But in terms of Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, we never shifted into a Dutch Creole. It just stayed as this Afro Portuguese Creole with Spanish influences. There's a little bit of Dutch influences, obviously, as well as French, very little French and English.

One of the interesting things as well is that there's a bottom up approach. Compared to other Caribbean Creole languages our Creole is one of, or maybe the only Caribbean Creole language that's actually spoken at all levels of societies. In terms of class, there's no class restriction or no race restriction. We wouldn't say like Dutch white descendants or descendants of Jews, they don't speak Papiamento, no, because that's considered the language of the slaves. They also speak that as well. In terms of class as well, there is no class distinction with the exception of like, you might have a Papiamento that, like, they would say it's [foreign words] which means it's nicer, the nicer Papiamento versus the [foreign words] which is the rougher Papiamento but it's still the fact that that Creole language is at all levels of society.

We are one of only two Caribbean Creoles that actually has an official status. Haitian Creole is the other one and then in Aruba and Curacao Papiamento has an official status alongside Dutch on the islands. Bonaire used to have it too, but politically, because Bonaire became an overseas territory of the Netherlands after the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles, it went back to just being a recognized language. There's a lot of historical stuff to it, and I'm trying to condense it into two minute sound bites, but it's this long very interesting history because as terms of Creole languages go, we have this dichotomy of being valorized as having all of these attributes, like having official status compared to like Jamaican Patois that doesn't, but at the same time, we still have the negative ideas about what we can do with the language or where we can go with the language.

Megan: Growing up, what are the languages that someone on Aruba is going to learn?

Keisha: Okay. People in Aruba and Curacao on average speak about four languages and to varying degrees of fluency. Those four main ones are Papiamento, Dutch, English, and Spanish. Papiamento, most people on the island, they grew up hearing it. That's just something that's in their home. Dutch, they get introduced to at school because that is the language of education still for the most part. Spanish, I remember when I was asking some college students, well, how did you learn Spanish? Most of them were like, oh, well, my grandmother, the lady who cleans our house, she watches novellas a lot from Venevisión or Univision so I just learned Spanish from that. We have a very close proximity to Venezuela and Colombia as well, so it's sort of like that cultural influence has seeped and that's where a lot of people learn Spanish from as well as [foreign words] and all of that.

English, a lot of it is from television as well. I know when speaking to a lot of the kids now, especially because I would say the youth today compared to previous generations, their English is on a level that I've never seen. A lot of them just attribute it to, or at least the ones that I spoke to, they're just like, yeah, I just watched a lot of Discovery kids in Disney Channel when I was a kid. Their English has developed to a point that when they speak English they don't speak it with an accent. It's more of an Americanized accent, which is very interesting. They learn just a lot of nuances of American English that let's say, like their parents wouldn't necessarily know or be hip to. That's not including other people or people on the islands who have like let's say first generation or second or even third generation Portuguese immigrants or Haitian immigrants or let's say Chinese immigrants, immigrants from India, they also bring all their languages as well. Like I said, the four main ones is what most people can speak and then you have also others as well, where based on their background that they might speak those languages too.

Carrie: Did you go through the educational system on the islands?

Keisha: No. I grew up in New York City and I didn't go to school for one month in Curacao, because New York City, we started school in September and in Curacao they start in August and I would always happen to be in Curacao during the month of August. My sister and I we really wanted to enjoy our summers and my aunt was just like, that's not happening. You guys are going to school because my other aunt was a teacher there, and the principal was the best friend of my dad. They were just like, we're going to put you in school there. For about a month up until 6th grade or so, we would get education within the system which was completely in Dutch, which is a very interesting thing for us because my sister and I, we didn't grow up speaking Dutch. We grew up speaking Papiamento and English, so to get this education in Dutch was just like our minds being blown in that essence because after that month ended, we would just go back to the American system anyway. 

Carrie: Right.

Keisha: I have to say though, if I can, if I have time, the one thing that I found really interested in, and that really sparked initially my interest in language and education was, I remember clearly in 2nd grade is when we first started going to school. We had a teacher who did not speak Papiamento at all, which was the case back then, was that you would have a lot of teachers who didn't speak Papiamento at all, all they spoke was Dutch and the kids there, they would have to force to learn Dutch and if not, then oh, well.

I remember this teacher, very nice teacher, but also very strict. She would speak Dutch only, and I remember the kids in our class, mind you, this is 2nd grade, so how old are we? Seven or eight? A lot of the students at that time didn't speak Dutch because their introduction to Dutch is they're 1st 2nd grade. If they had problems understanding, she would just be like, no, you're supposed to know, and she's telling them in Dutch, they're supposed to know this already. This is not her problem. But then with my sister and I, because we were I guess, American for this, she would switch to English. She would help us a lot and be like, okay, yeah, this word is in English, but this is what it is in Dutch and blah, blah, blah. Then if a friend of ours or whoever had an issue because they spoke Papiamento, then it was just like, no, like, you're supposed to know this by now.

Carrie: Wow. You're already getting that messaging. There's a hierarchy of languages. 

Megan: Yeah. 

Keisha: Right.

Megan: Yeah.

Keisha: Right. Very early on. I don't know if that necessarily happens now because I haven't been inside of a classroom obviously in decades, but that was something that I constantly remembered clearly that that was just really distinct. Even back then when I didn't have the know-how, or the knowledge to articulate my feelings about it, it always felt wrong in a way. Like, yeah, you're helping us because we speak English and we're American for these purposes, but the kids who you're going to teach for the whole entire year they're not understanding and it's up to them to understand as opposed to you the teacher, to help them understand.

Megan: Have you looked into stats in the educational system on the islands? I just wonder do the teachers tend to be also speakers of four languages, or are they mostly just like touching English or?

Keisha: Yeah, a lot of the teachers now are from the islands themselves. They went to Europe or the US to study and then come back and they would go to the teacher's college here, so most of them do speak the four languages. As opposed to back in the day, like my parents' generation, the majority of teachers were actually nuns and brothers from the Netherlands or from Suriname. With them, my parents' generation, if they were even caught speaking Papiamento on the playground, they would get severely reprimanded, like beat or be made to write on the board in Dutch, I will not speak that language.

My generation, it was sort of shifting by that point that you started having a lot of teachers from the islands who were coming. Now from what I've been told, you do have a lot of teachers from the island, but even though they do speak Dutch, their Dutch is not at a level that's considered appropriate, let's say. They can speak Dutch with fluency, but from what I've been told, it's not at a level that allows the student to actually learn something in that language. I've spoken to some students who are in college where they were telling me most of us, we're getting taught in Papiamento at the elementary school level, but we have to switch to Dutch once we get to secondary school so they start forcing Dutch onto us in the elementary school as a way to prepare us, but they're not doing it in a way that is conducive to us actually learning the language. So most of them have to do what they call [foreign word] or tutoring. Most kids have to take tutoring in Dutch in order to be prepared for secondary education.

Then they were telling me once they get to tertiary, once they get to university level, either if it's in the Netherlands or if it's on the island itself, most of their studies are in English with some, let's say law, things like that, that remains in Dutch. But if you're doing like marketing or business or anything like that, that tends to be in English. At every stage they're getting a different language. It's interesting now that you do have teachers from the islands who are trying to figure out a way to make this work. I don't place the blame on the teachers at all. I think it's just a system that's weird, but they're trying to figure out a way to teach Dutch in a way that's working for them or working for their students and at the same time not lose Papiamento in a way. I also think some of the materials that they have, I've seen one or two materials that they have for teaching Dutch here. The problem is they teach Dutch as if Dutch is their mother tongue. 

I remember, let's say, I think maybe two years ago, I started taking some Dutch language classes and the teacher was teaching me via English, and she's just like, oh my God, you're so much better than all these kids that I teach here. I was like, oh, why is that? She's just like, I don't know. I'm looking at the booklet that she's giving me, and the booklet is completely in Dutch. There's no translation from Papiamento whatsoever and she is translating from English to Dutch for me. Of course, I'm picking it up and also Dutch and English are a lot more closely connected than Papiamento and Dutches. I'm picking it up with a level of fluency that it's because of my proximity to dramatic languages and all these other things that a lot of these kids don't get, especially at a very young age. That was something that really made me want to see or at least I hope with my dissertation research at the end what can be done to help this out? Not necessarily eradicate Dutch because I don't think anybody wants to eradicate Dutch from the school system, but definitely shifted in a way that allows these kids to learn it in a way that prepares them, as opposed to saying, well, no, this is the language that you have to learn and you're going to learn it as if it's your mother tongue.

Carrie: It reminds me of a conversation we had, which was coming out on Monday, but it'll be awhile about the past for this episode that we had with Nicole Hurtado about Geneva's [indiscernible]. There's one dual language at school, which is not even on the reservation. It's in a neighboring town, Flagstaff. Just like how difficult it is to prepare kids for English, but also still keep Dene alive and keep them speaking that language. 

Megan: Yeah. At this point it's really just the vestige of the past, having Dutch as the official language in the school system, right? 

Keisha: Right.

Megan: In a way would you say that's true or is it Dutch is still used at the courts and all of these things?

Keisha: Yeah, Dutch, to be honest, it's not used that much on the islands at all. At all. Because even at the courts, and let's say in government meetings, they use Papiamento now, which back in the day they used to use Dutch, but they use Papiamento now. In court proceedings they use mostly Papiamento. If there is a judge who is from the Netherlands who speaks Dutch you can request a translator. Aside from that there really, not to say there's no use for Dutch whatsoever, but it's very, very minimal on the island. English on the other hand, because tourism is our main number one, and especially more so with Aruba than Curacao, English has become the language that it's like, okay, well, if you really want to get far on this island, because our main economic source is tourism, English is the way to go, because in Aruba it's mostly American tourists that are coming and in Curacao they're starting to get a lot more American tourists. And even if it's not American tourists, a lot of tourists are just speaking English. I've heard this from a lot of parents too, when I was talking to them in terms of like what languages should be used in education. It was interesting that a lot of parents were like, I wouldn't mind Papiamento being in there, but if we have to choose between Dutch or English, I would say English because English is going to get my kid farther than Dutch at this point.

Megan: Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. 

Keisha: Yeah.

Carrie: Do you think that feeling was already happening when you were doing that month each year in school? Because for that teacher to switch to English, I wonder if English was at the top of the hierarchy already kinda like English Dutch.

Keisha: I wouldn't say that it was English Dutch especially in Curacao at that time. Curacao has a very complex relationship with the Netherlands and it's a lot closer than Aruba is per se. Where I went to school was in Curacao so Dutch was still top hierarchy that Dutch was prestigious, Dutch was going to get you far, and then English. English was just like, okay, yeah, that's going to work in the tourism sector, so you should really know English. But yeah, I think now it's weird because I would put them at the same level when it comes to competing for jobs, but at the same time, I think there's just very different ideas of how people see Dutch and very different ideas of how people see English and even Spanish.

So with Dutch, Dutch is like, it's the colonial language. You'll hear a lot of people basically talk bad about like how Dutch was this and how Dutch was detrimental for them. At the same time it's like, well, we can get so much farther than with Dutch. I remember one linguist on the island, she said, we have a very schizophrenic mindset when it comes to Dutch, so we hate it, but then we love it at the same time. English on the other hand, it was just like, yeah, English is going to get us far because that's the globalizing language. We're going to go everywhere with English, everybody speaks English, and then Spanish, because we're in such close proximity to South America and to also our surrounding areas.

Spanish is a very interesting relationship on these islands because Spanish is mostly the language of like domestic workers here. We had a lot of Spanish immigrants who came here who come to let's say, work as people who clean houses or the hotels or anything like that. But because we still have that relationship with Venezuela and with Colombia and even the Dominican Republic and all these places, it's still venerated as like, oh, that's an extra language that we know and also because our cultures are similar in a sense. I would say it's that same kind of schizophrenic mindset. It's like, yeah, look at how well I can speak Spanish because Spanish is like, we're close to South America and we can converse with people there and do business there. But at the same time, let's say if someone who's [foreign word] here, someone from Venezuela who's taking my order for example, you'll have a lot of people who would just not refuse to speak Spanish and speak Papiamento with them because they're like, you're on our island, you're working here, you should know Papiamento. I don't go to Venezuelan and speak Papiamento, I have to speak Spanish. So it's like, yeah, I know how to speak Spanish, but because you are on my island, you have to know. 

A lot of it I think as well has to do with what's been going on with the Venezuela as well lately, with the political unrest. Starting with Chavez, there's been, if we have seen an influx of a lot of Venezuelan immigrants coming to the islands, and I think unfortunately there has been a rise of like xenophobic ideas of how Venezuelan immigrants and about Spanish speakers where it's just like, if you're a certain type of Spanish speaker, let's say upper class or from a certain Spanish speaking place, you're fine. You'll have people who will speak Spanish to you, especially if it's in a place of business or things like that. But if it's the lady who cleans your room for example, then it's on some other level of like, well, no. I'm not saying this is about everybody.

I think there is a discussion that's happening now on the island, especially because of what's happening in the United States. I think a lot of people are looking at our own islands, like, wait a minute, we're mirroring what's happening with like racist Trump supporters. Maybe we need to take a step back and realize that we're also being xenophobic in these instances as well. I think thankfully there is this discussion that's being had, I think the discussion needs to go further in my personal opinion, but there is this thing of like, okay, we need to figure out what we're doing with this. Because immigrants from Venezuela, especially now, especially what happened with Guaidó coming in, they're not going to stop coming in and we have to deal with it in a way that doesn't seem racist or xenophobic.

Carrie: I kind of want to switch back to Papiamento a little bit. Why is it important to you that it's spoken by people on the islands?

Keisha: It's because I grew up with the language and like other Creole languages, I think it has its place. Also, I think for far too long like other Creole languages, it's been considered a non-language where people on the other hand have been able to do so much through that language. There's poetry, there's things written through the language, and it's the way that people communicate. Just because it's a younger language compared to other European languages doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't deserve its place within the canon of languages. That's why I'm going to go back to what I was saying about the term Creole languages. I remember I took a class with Michelle DeGraff at the Linguistic Summer Institute a couple of years ago, and he, and also Sally [indiscernible], they were talking about this idea of like categorizing Creole languages as Creoles because they're considered their own special language.

Even though that happens, we inadvertently separate them from quote "normal languages" that, oh, it's because they're Creole languages, not just regular languages, but Creole languages. I think in a way people on the islands have internalized that negatively or positively in a way to say that yeah, we're not like English and we're not like Spanish, so we still have a lot of work to do and we still have all these other things. I think the reality is if we want to take Papiamento seriously as well as other Creole languages, but Papiamento in particular seriously, we need to start reflecting on how we view the language first. That includes me. I'm not going to lie, there are moments where I'm just like, Papiamento is so special, it does this, this, this, this, this, you know? I'm not even a full linguist, but I'm just like, yes is great and it's just like, well, yeah, but so does other languages. So, does English, so does French. It's just like saying, well, yeah, it's a normal language like every other language.

It deserves its place because the reality is like I said, when it comes to education kids being taught in their own language really helps them succeed in a way that being taught in a foreign language, and let's be clear here. I'm going to say it on a podcast. Dutch is a foreign language on this island. It's not a first or second language, English and Spanish are. Dutch is a foreign language. Unless your family is from Suriname or from the Netherlands, you hardly hear Dutch outside of school, you hardly do. The problem is that if kids are taught in a foreign language that they don't understand, it doesn't matter how smart there are, there's a whole host of problems that's going to come with that and especially if everything rides on that.

For example, the exams that they have to take to get into secondary school. The way that the education system is set up here, it's not just high school. There's like different levels of high school. You have MAVO in Aruba, you have VSVO in Curacao, and then the two highest are HAVO and VWO. With HAVO and VWO, those are the two that you can go straight to like university level, right? The majority of kids get trapped into the lower levels. So MAVO, VSVO, reason, it's not the only reason, but it's speculated that one of the major reasons is their exams that suggest what level of high school that they should go into is completely in Dutch. So it doesn't matter how smart they are, once they take that exam, if their Dutch is not proficient, they're being trapped. I think the last statistics that I checked is around 60 something percent, 60 60, between 60 and 70 something percent that get trapped into VSVO, that gets trapped into MAVO and Aruba. It's not that it's bad, it's just that it takes them extra to get to that level. If they want to go to research university, they have to go through the lowest level first in order to get to the higher level. Then that's an extra couple of years, and then finally they can go to university.

My niece for example, she's currently in VSVO and two years ago, I think it was two years ago, she was asking me for help with her homework. Mind you, I don't see touch that well, but I was like, sure, I'll try my best. She was like, "Yeah, we have to read this paragraph and make questions based on what we read." Simple. It's very simple. She was, I think at the time like 12, 13, so it's very simple. I said, "Okay, read the paragraph to me. Tell me what you understand about this paragraph." She looks at me like, "I can't do that." I was like, "Okay, well translate this paragraph into Papiamento so that way you can understand." Then she looks at me again and she's like, "Well, I can't do that." I'm like, "What do you mean you can't do that?" I'm like, "You can't translate this simple paragraph from the language that you're being taught to the language that you currently speak?" She was like, "No, I can't."

Then what I had to do was I took out Google Translate, I translated the Dutch paragraph into English, and then from English, I translated it into Papiamento for her. That's when she understood what was in that paragraph, and she was able to make questions in Papiamento that we would then translate into Dutch for her to have. This was just one paragraph, one thing and it took us, I think like two, three hours. Obviously, she didn't even finish her homework for that day while I was there with her, but the fact that that little simple thing that maybe should take like 20 minutes took two, three hours because I sat down and I took the time with her to translate everything, you know? That was something that really stuck out to me because I'm like, she's not a dumb kid. I know she's not dumb. I know she can speak Dutch because I've heard her speak Dutch, but the fact that she couldn't comprehend her own homework says a lot. I asked her like, "Well, do you tell your teacher when you don't understand?" She's like, "Well, I do, but then we don't have time, so we always have to continue and go over." I'm like, "Is everybody else like that in your school?" She's like, "Basically, yeah. If we don't understand, we never have time to actually go over it, so we have to continue on."

Megan: Oh boy. 

Keisha: Yeah. 

Megan: That is not good pedagogy.

Keisha: It's an issue. It really is an issue.

Megan: Absolutely.

Carrie: Yeah, and like you said, that is not a reflection at all of any individual child's intelligence. 

Keisha: No. 

Carrie: That's really frustrating.

Keisha: It doesn't even take advantage of their full linguistic repertoire. 

Carrie: No. Yeah.

Keisha: We had in Aruba, they were doing a pilot study that they called [foreign words]. It was basically some scholars on the islands, linguists as well as educators who were like, listen, all of these kids speak four languages and we're going to try this educational model that incorporates all four languages. So, they followed these kids, they did it, I think two schools where they followed them from grade school to high school, and all of the kids did exponentially better than the students who were in other grade levels. It's the same thing in Curacao, how you have a school that's completely Papiamento, and even though there are some issues in terms of funding and things like that, some of the kids in those schools tend to do better than some of the kids who are considered in a more prestigious Dutch school. That sort of says something about how education is. I am happy to say that there are people who are pushing for these models to be mainstream and to take into account that language is a very important part of how our kids internalize their education.

Carrie: We've said it a couple of times, actually, almost every episode, honestly, on this show, about how important language is in the educational system and ways that maybe some people haven't been thinking about before. 

Keisha: Right. 

Carrie: I figured it would happen, but I am really appreciative that you're bringing these issues up because again, it's just another way that language is so, so important and hopefully another way that people will start thinking about it and how it affects other people, their family themselves.

Keisha: Exactly.

Carrie: I read that you had taught at, was it CUNY? 

Keisha: Yeah.

Carrie: You taught, and you were teaching students from the islands, right?

Keisha: Yeah, so not specifically from Aruba and Curacao, but I did have a couple of students who were from other Caribbean islands, so Jamaica, Haiti, Trinidad. Yeah.

Carrie: Is this in large part where you started to hear many of these stories about the educational systems, at least some stories of the educational systems in the islands?

Keisha: Yeah, I've heard of some beforehand, specifically with Aruba and Curacao, and where I grew up in Queens, there were some kids who came straight from Jamaica and Haiti who would talk about their educational system. I remember when I was teaching, because I taught a course on Caribbean anthropology and that was the first time that I really did hear a lot of older and younger students just talk about their experience with language in education in particular. Because For me, because I'm a linguistic anthropologist, so one of my lessons always fell on Caribbean languages because I was like, you guys are going to learn about this. I would say that that class was always the most resistance that I got, especially at the beginning. By the end of the lesson there were some students that were just like, whoa, you blew my mind and then there were others who were just like, listen, I grew up speaking Jamaican Patois and it's bad English. That's it. You can't change my mind no matter what I say, you know? It has a lot to do with just longstanding ideologies and ideas about what language is and what's been ingrained to them.

We also have to remember that especially a certain generation and before they were taught very much in a colonial system and that's the thing that I think a lot of people tend to forget when it comes about the Caribbean that most Caribbean islands are, so, first of all, under Colonial rule, not just Puerto Rico, and not just Aruba and Curacao but most of the Caribbean islands they're under Dutch French, English, whatever rule. Those educational systems still persist. What a lot of those systems are is that they, and even the ones who are not under a colonial rule like Jamaica or Trinidad, a lot of them still carry over those still European systems. These kids are being taught as if they're growing up in Europe or growing up in the United States, even though that's not their existence at all. It's not just language, but it's the way that they're taught about different things.

My parents for example, they were like, listen, we learned more about snow and the Swiss Alps and all of that than I ever learned about my Caribbean island neighbors. They knew nothing about other Caribbean island nations because they were taught about Europe. I don't even know if that's necessarily the case anymore. I think there is a shift, obviously, thank God, but there's still this very European model and I'm assuming American for places like Puerto Rico and St. Thomas where it's just like how those kids are taught there, is how the kids are going to be taught in the Caribbean and then they get compared to them. I know in Aruba and Curacao for example, there was a huge issue that the kids in Aruba and Curacao were not prepared to go to university in the Netherlands.

The main thing was that they were being compared to Dutch kids in the Netherlands, so they were like, well, look at all these Dutch kids, they're doing so well. I don't understand why these kids on the island are not doing well. It's like, well, yeah, first and foremost, those kids in the Netherlands are being taught in the language that they grew up in. They're being taught in a Dutch educational model. Whereas the kids in Aruba and Curacao don't technically need a Dutch educational model, that doesn't work for them because it's a completely different country in essence. It's something that I think needs to change, and there are people who are pushing and trying to work on a different educational model that centers Caribbean education in particular Aruba and Curacao in education but it's a long fight. I think there's a lot of people who still have what's considered the colonial mentality that whatever the Netherlands is, whatever British is, that's what's golden. That's what's going to get us far and we are nothing compared to that.

Megan: Yeah. The colonization thing, I think it was so strong and so well done.

Keisha: Yeah.

Megan: It's like affected all of us still. No matter how hard we try, it's still there. 

Keisha: Yeah. Yeah. It's very much. I don't know if I should say this, because I get so much pushback from people when I say this, but I'm just like, I like to say that colonization succeeded in their plans in the Caribbean because we are like Europe is the model to progress forward in everything especially in education that it really just doesn't work well on the islands themselves. That's something for me personally that I think needs to change, but it's a very much so very prevalent idea that that is what's going to get them far. It's like, oh, well if we are taught in Dutch, but not only we're taught in Dutch, if we have this Dutch educational model that not even the Dutch uses anymore. Because the type of model that they're using here is actually an older model.

Megan: Of course. [Crosstalk]

Keisha: That not even the Netherlands uses, but still we're just holding on strong to it. So it's a very interesting thing. Yeah, I don't know.

Carrie: Do you have an idea of, I know it's a really big hard question, but do you have any idea of what the education system should look like? Or even just to be the beginning of where to start?

Keisha: I think first and foremost, in terms of the language aspect, I think it should involve most of their linguistic repertoire like they do get Spanish and French. I believe as language classes and English as well, but I'm really partial to the multilingual model and that's just my personal belief or the bilingual model that they're having in Curacao where one school is doing Papiamento and English. But I also think education wise, just centering the Caribbean in their education in terms of the history of the Caribbean specifically what happened on the islands and what happened on the other islands, and how does that work for us in terms of not only just politically, but economically as well. Because a lot of these kids, for the most part on the islands, most kids end up in the tourism sector or end up in like a business sector where they have to do dealings with South America or they have to do dealings even with Europe.

I think in a way, if we center the Caribbean within our education, we can, and this is not just for Aruba and Curacao, I think other Caribbean islands, if we worked together and figured something out I think it would really work in a way that most students would get the best out of their education, but also would prepare them for a life in the Caribbean as opposed to preparing them for a life in the Netherlands. Which there are some students who stay there, but there are increasingly a lot of students who are coming back and they're having a hard time, for example, finding jobs or a hard time reacclimating back to the Caribbean islands, so I think that's one of the things. For me, first and foremost, because I work with language, I really think that doing something in terms of the language, not solely Dutch, but I personally think a multilingual bilingual approach might work best.

Megan: Yeah. You say that, and it seems so simple and obvious to me, but I know it's like politics are going to make everything much more colonized, [crosstalk] much more complicated. Would it be accurate to say that colonization or the colonized mindset is one of the major drivers behind a lot of people feeling and thinking that Creoles are bad? 

Keisha: Yes, but I'll take it a bit further and say that it's not just colonization, it's more than that. Like I said, during colonization on the Dutch Caribbean islands in particular, the Dutch didn't want anything to do with teaching the Dutch language. You actually had the Spanish missionaries who would teach the indigenous people on the islands as well as the enslaved Africans through Papiamento because their ideas at the time of these Catholic missionaries or these Catholic priests were like, well, in order to save the soul of these "heathens", we have to teach them in their own language. So, they were being taught in Papiamento actually before they were being taught in Dutch.

Megan: Interesting. 

Carrie: Yeah.

Keisha: What was interesting is, I think this was like the late 18 hundreds or so, you have this guy from the Netherlands who comes to the colonies in particular to Curacao to assess what life is like on the islands. What he notices is that a lot of the white Dutch descendant children are speaking Papiamento, they're not speaking Dutch, and that their moms are also speaking Papiamento. So basically, the only people who are speaking Dutch are these white men who are talking to each other because of trade and their business. The reason why these children and these mothers are speaking Papiamento is because their yayas, which yayas were the maids, the women who would take care of these kids, they spoke Papiamento with these kids and they're raising these kids basically, and they're speaking Papiamento. 

He goes back to the Netherlands and he has this huge report about how these poor white Dutch children are being bastardized into this language and this culture and how they need to learn their Dutch culture and their Dutch history and their Dutch language. It's something that they unintentionally shifted all of the education into Dutch, so these white Dutch children can learn Dutch. But then it turned into the enslaved Africans and the indigenous people also supposedly learning through Dutch. But the problem is, is that at that time still people weren't really being taught in Dutch. It was still heavily Papiamento, and from what I've read, it wasn't until I think the 1920s, 1930s when the oil refineries come to the island, that you start to really see that shift of like, okay, we need to be teaching in Dutch because we're having all these people who are coming in onto our islands to come work at these refineries. Especially in Curacao where it was a lot of Dutch people coming in and they're like, we have to have one language for them to be taught in. So that's where you start to see that shift of really, really Dutch being in education. It was there before, but being very strict Dutch, I want to say is probably the early 19 hundreds.

From then on until, I don't know, maybe the 1980s, 1990s is when you start to see some people like, okay, we should start thinking about Papiamento. You see it a little bit in the 1960s? Because there's a lot of things happening in the 1960s in terms of like independence in a lot of countries and a shifting into autonomous status in 1954. You have a lot of people who, from the islands, they went to the Netherlands and came back and we're like, well, we are not Dutch. We are this, and like, let's push our Papiamento, let's push our culture. But it's not until let's say the 1980s, 1990s that you really start to see that shift of like, okay, how are we going to put Papiamento in education? What are we going to do to get there? I guess to make a long story short, colonization is a part of it, but it really happens when an economic force that came in became the driving idea of we really need Dutch as the language of education.

Megan: Right. I feel like that's the whole point of colonization is this economic driver, right? So it's not surprising that that's what ultimately tipped it over.

Keisha: Right, right.

Megan: I guess one final question is why do Creole languages matter?

Keisha: Ooh, that's a good question. That's something that I've been trying to justify in all of my grant applications and dissertation proposal. 

Carrie: Yeah.

Keisha: Why care about them? It's funny because my advisor, Paul Garrett, he had a whole article dedicated to why should we care about these languages? I am going to say that because it's a language that people speak. We have less than 300,000 speakers in the whole wide world who speak this language, and it's come so far, why should it have any less value than English or Spanish or French just because it's a newer language and just because it has less than 300,000 speakers? People have gone far with that language whether people on these islands think they have or not, but through their language, they've been able to do so many things. I think that it shouldn't have any less value no matter if you can go far with it or not.

Nobody outside of these islands will speak it, so if I go to New York, I'm not going to be able to speak it with people there, obviously. But at the same time, if I learn to speak other languages through that language if I learned to comprehend things through that language. If I learned to analyze stuff through that language, it would open up a whole world to me. For me, someone who wasn't born on either island, I came here as a kid in the summers, but at the same time, because my mother and my father, they instilled Papiamento and English into me. There were so many things that I could do with Papiamento that I couldn't do with English, or there were so many things that I could comprehend through Papiamento that I couldn't with English and vice versa. So, it's opened up a world to me in ways that I feel monolingual speakers, for example, are speakers of just one European language they don't have. Even with languages in general, like my comprehension of Spanish and even Portuguese is a lot better because of Papiamento. Papiamento has a lot of Spanish and Portuguese in it.

I won't say that I'm fluent in either language, but I still understand so much more in those languages. When I'm, for example, I was in Costa Rica, I was in Colombia last year, I noticed that my Spanish was a lot better because I was in Curacao for the previous couple of months, as opposed to when I come from New York and, well, not New York, because New York has also a lot of Spanish speakers. If I was in an environment that didn't have a lot of Spanish speakers and me going to these countries and trying to speak Spanish, which I know a little bit of Spanish, it was still a lot harder for me to comprehend as opposed to me coming from a place where I'm constantly hearing Papiamento and then I go to these other countries and I'm just like, oh yeah, Spanish is sort of working for me.

There are moments yes, where I'll slip and use a Papiamento word instead of Spanish, but it was still a way for me to comprehend. I think that's what gets lost in this debate about whether Papiamento can take you far or not. Yes, no other place in the world speaks this language, which works out great if we want to talk shit about people. At the same time, just learning things through your own language and being able to comprehend things through your own language and learning other languages through your own language. It just opens up a whole world that you might not otherwise have access to.

Megan: Yeah, that's really cool.

Keisha: Yeah. Thank you.

Carrie: Yeah. Well, thank you.

Megan: Yeah, thank you so much for talking with us today. [Crosstalk]

Keisha: Thank you. I hope I didn't talk too long. I tend to [crosstalk]

Megan: No, no.

Carrie: No, it's perfect. 

Keisha: I tend to get into story mode and I'm like, wait, we have to discuss this.

Megan: No, it's perfect.

Carrie: That's what we want. We want stories.

Megan: Yeah, exactly. We want stories. We don't want it like for me and Carrie just to be like preaching or like lecturing. Stories are perfect. 

Carrie: Yes. 

Megan: Well, thank you so much. We always leave our listeners with our message of don't be an asshole.

Carrie: Don't be an asshole.

Keisha: Yeah. Thank you.

Megan: Can you say that in Papiamento?

Carrie: Oh yeah. How would you say that?

Keisha: Don't be an asshole. Okay, hold on. You'll say something along the lines of like [foreign words] so don't be like a kid asshole or something like that.

Carrie: On it. I'm hearing some Spanish influence in there for sure.

Keisha: Yeah, I'm sorry. No,

Carrie: Yeah.

Keisha: [Foreign words] which means [foreign words] so don't be like a mother's asshole. You know what I mean?

Megan: Yeah.

Keisha: Don't be the child of an asshole or something like that. 

Carrie: I love it.

Keisha: Yeah. Oh my god. Cursing in Papiamento is just so much fun. So much fun.

Megan: Oh yeah. I love it.

Keisha: Honestly, if we had time to get the whole podcast on like cursing in Papiamento, it's great,

Megan: Maybe we should do that in the future.

Carrie: Yes, we'll have you back in like a year.

Megan: All right, well thank you.

Carrie: Thank you.

Keisha: Thank you so much.

Carrie: The Vocal Fries Podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon, theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @vocalfriespod. You can email us at [email protected] and our website is vocalfriespod.com.

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