Propose & Present

Wednesday was the big day for proposing and presenting to the class, and it was recorded by the lecturer. We were a bit nervous, but we were glad that we were 2nd to present. The rules were that we had a maximum of seven minutes to present and after which, our classmates were allowed to ask us a maximum of two questions.

Although we forgot to mention a couple of items, we think that we covered all aspects of the criteria. The two questions directed to us came from Renata: Explain the differences in the spelling of Patois/Patwa; and Kyron: How do we intend to reach our secondary target audience? (Not quoted).

We called a couple of our classmates to find out what they thought about the idea and the presentation, generally everyone said that they liked both the idea and the presentation, in addition to that they also thought that: we would have to do a lot of research; one classmate offered to assist with some footage (it turned out to be unsuccessful) but we really appreciated the gesture; another said that she loved our outfits and didn't realize that lagniappe was Patwa, she explained that before the presentation she was not interested, but now she wants to learn more about it; another said that she didn't think much about it before, but after the presentation she's looking forward to seeing the documentary.

We are pleased about these comments and we look forward to producing an enlightening documentary.

The Dry Comedian

At the very beginning of this project the lecturer used very dry comedy which was quite amusing to her, but scary for me (though it may not be her intention). Today a bitter joke popped out of an email to the class. I am now nervous to infinity.

So back to the project. While we made another baby step toward acquiring archival footage, a plan B, C and D came into being, so we are hoping for the best. We also made a mutual decision not to contact any other authorities on the subject as we feel that we have all that we need for interviews, if we have any mishaps then we can pull from the other names that we have.

We're off to our meeting tomorrow.

Saturday @ SBCS

Karlene and I spent many hours at SBCS on Saturday. We:

• shared our ideas and did the bulk of our proposal and budget;
• got another step closer to getting old footage of patois (fingers and toes crossed);
• discussed our presentation (we have a few questions about that though).

So we're on the same page and moving forward. We will meet again on Tuesday to finalize everything, but in the meantime we are in contact via email and mobile phones.

Welcome Matthew

Matthew is the fourth member of our team, he's in the same class as Randy. We're grateful that they were both just as eager to devote some of their time and energy to this project. Everyone was sent a crew contact list tonight, a calender of events will follow after Karlene and I meet on Saturday.

Welcome Randy

Our team now has one additional person - Randy - a Year 2 Media and Communications student at SBCS. We look forward to working with him.

We also managed to book an interview with Mr Holly Betaudier.

We're also in the process of gathering footage of persons who presently speak or sing in patois.

Lessons Learnt

I finally have the opportunity to read the information that Karlene forwarded to me. I cannot say that I am not enjoying the richness of this history lesson. It brought me to the realization of how uninformed I am of Trinidad. I feel however that the power is in the hands of those of us who decided to pursue this course to document Trinidad's dying culture and icons as much as possible so that the generations after can have an identity.

Now on to the lesson:

HISTORY OF PATOIS:
According to Gertrud Aub-Buscher in an article he wrote on www.une.edu.au/langnet/definitions/trinidad.html

• "... by the latter half of the 18th century, the (Trinidad) population, composed of Spaniards, the few Amerinidians who had survived, and some slaves imported from Africa, was decimated by disease to the point where the economy was stagnating for lack of manpower. To remedy this, in 1783 the King of Spain published a cédula de población, inviting any catholic subject of a monarch friendly to the Spanish crown to come and settle in Trinidad. The very favourable conditions set out (grants of land, exemption from taxes for 10 years etc.) attracted a large number of French colonists, who were ready to leave the French islands of the Caribbean following natural disasters and to escape from the unrest which was beginning to make itself felt. They came with their families and slaves, and the latter brought with them the language which had developed in the French posessions. Trinidad French Creole is therefore very similar to that of the French islands, especially Martinique, though it also developed its own traits, notably in its vocabulary.
• During the 19th century, Trinidad French Creole was in effect the lingua franca of the working population of this British colony, spoken not only by the slaves who had brought it, but also learned and used by the indentured labourers imported from Asia after the abolition of slavery in 1838, and picked up from their nannies by the children of the French planters. It maintained its position into the beginning of the 20th century, but then was superseded by Trinidad English Creole, becoming only a very minor mosaic of Trinidad linguistic usage...
• In the early part of the 20th century, there were still monolingual speakers of patois, especially in the villages of the Northern Range. However, it was stigmatized as 'broken French', even by its native speakers, and under increasing pressure from Trinidad English Creole. At the beginning of the 21st century there remain very few Trinidadians for whom Trinidad Fench Creole is the natural or main means of communication, and it is to be feared that, despite the efforts fo those trying to revive it as an important part of their heritage, Trinidad French Creole may before long join the long list of languages becoming extinct...
• There is no standard orthography for Trindad French Creole, as it is essentially an oral language...."

HOW TO SAVE AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE
On October 1st, 2006 there was an article printed in the Sunday Express entitled: Pou lanmou Patois - For the love of Patois, by Julien Neaves in an interview with Dr Jo-Anne S. Ferreira. According to the article, Dr Ferreira is a Lecturer in Linguistics at UWI and coordinator of the French Lexicon Creaole course at UWI. In her interview she outline six main support factors based on David Crystal's book "Language Death" (Cambridge University Press, 2000)

1. "The first step for an endangered language to progress is for its speakers to raise their visibility or social profile in the wider community, for example beginning with the media such as regular column in the daily newspaper, an occasional programme exposing the language on radio or television, a cultural celebration or a religious festival, and other areas eventually....
2. The second step is if the language's speakers have a strengthened and stable economic base such as language and culture tourism. Ferreira noted that in Venezuela they are planning to get government funding to assist in various ways....
3. The third step is if its speakers have legal suport of their linguistic rights through legislation protecting their language such as The Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights.....
4. The foruth step is if speakers have a strong presence in the educaitonal system such as bilingual and other educational programmes, and native speakers should be trained as teachers....
5. The fifth step is if speakers can write their language down (literacy). Ferreira noted that there is already the standardized writing system accepted throughout the Caribbean and elsewhere with minor modifications per territory.... She added that we already have J.J. Thomas ' The theory and Practice of Creole Grammar, one of the first ever patois grammars fo any French Creole anywhere, produced by a Trinidadian in Trinidad back in 1869.
6. The final step according to Crystal is that if speakers make use of electronic technology such as websites with audio recordings of songs and storeis, history, news, recipes. Ferreira noted that there are over 500 languages with an internet presence now."
   

Hopefully a little goes a long way; tonight I synchronized my hard copy diary with my yahoo calender, read a bit of the links that Karlene forwarded to me today, searched for different Adobe tutorials, tried categorizing the budget, started setting a few deadlines for our project. I have to retire to bed now, the next two days at work will be never ending.

THE INITIATION

After much contemplation, on the project and on one of the topics and we decided to work as a team (deciding to working as a team was easy, deciding on a project... DIF-FI-CULT!). The good think is that we've worked together on projects in the past (over the past 3 years of this course), so we understand each others strengths and weaknesses and we always seem to be able to pull the other out of the slumps that we fall into individually at times.

We're both extremely excited and full of energy rearing to go. We've just started researching, budgeting, and coming up with a look for the name of the show.

Unfortunately we won't be able to meet this weekend because I have a full weekend of work, so I'll do the best I can and we'll meet early next week for another pre-production meeting.