By Adriano Cabral , FORCV.com Editor & Columnist

There are misconceptions and controversies about whether Cabo Verde should adopt Creole as an official language. The anxiety about the prospect of globalization, its pros and cons along with the idea of which role Cabo Verde should play in the process of development, seem to be part of the main reason. It is naïve to think that Cabo Verde should maintain Portuguese as its only official language, despite the fact that its primary language is Creole. Adopting Cabo-verdian language as an official language is an additional step towards an independent Cabo Verde. The political Independence took place in 1975 as a result of Amilcar Cabral and some other good citizens of Guinea and Cabo Verde in the battlefield, but all the rest of national independencies, such as economic, cultural, and social are in the hands of its sons and daughters.

The anxiety of many countries about isolation from the rest of the world is part of the reason why few Cabo-verdians fear the idea of Creole as an official language. Globalization is both, good and bad. Because globalization is dictated by multinationals in industrialized countries and designed to serve primarily their own interests, a smart thing to do among the less developed countries is to preserve together with globalization, their local and national tradition, customs, languages, and economy in order to preserve their distinguished national pride, specificity, cultural identity, independency, and a needed diversity throughout the world. At first, globalization may seem inoffensive, offering great many alternatives to less developed country's socioeconomic development, but the other side of it, is an invasion of national identity and political dependency of these countries. It is up to the individual countries to preserve what are important to them.

In fact, the global dominance of a lingua franca such as English, less widely used language may face extinction. English has become the most important language for international communication in popular arts, in science, business, and Internet. Among European Union countries, 80% of high school students study English, including more than 90% in Denmark , Germany , Netherlands and Spain 70%. Six years of English is typical in Japanese schools. A number of African and Asian countries that became Independent in the 20th century adopted English as one of the official languages for government business.

In some countries, the preservation of national pride and unification has gone as far as reviving languages that had been extinct almost centuries ago. Cornish Language, a branch of European language became extinct in 1777. Historians are trying to preserve the language as much as possible and as a result of this commitment, about two hundred people have become fluent in the formerly extinct Cornish language.

Most countries with cultural consciousness and with awareness of the threat that globalization of economy bring, have begun to put in place policies to protect their local diversity. European Union has established the European Bureau of Lesser used Languages that aims the preservation of about two dozen languages that face extinction. Gothic is another branch of Romance languages that died because the descendants of the Goths were converted to other languages through the process of integration such as political dominance and cultural preference. Recent efforts have prevented the disappearances of the Celtic Languages. Britain 's 1988 Education Act made Welsh language training a compulsory subject in all schools in Wales , and Welsh history and music have been added to the curriculum. Companies and Broadcasting agencies are obliged to provide services in Welsh. The revival has been led by young Irish living in other countries who wish to distinguish themselves from the English.

When Israel was established in 1945, Hebrew became one of the new countries' two official languages along with Arabic. Hebrew was chosen because the Jews population consisted of refugees and migrants that lived in many countries who spoke many different languages. No other language was seen as more important to reunify the nation as the one in which the Bible's Old Testament and the Jews prayers were written. They had to create words and adapt the language to the modern way of speaking. As alternatives, many countries have tried to adopt two or more official languages in order to maintain diversity. In fact, multilingual States are not necessarily a bad thing, especially for the ex-colonies. Belgium maintains both French and Flemish as the two official languages and even road signs are posted in both languages. In Switzerland , exists multiple languages. The main language in Australia and New Zealand is English, but New Zealand has adopted policies to preserve the indigenous language, the Maori, and it became one of the new official languages, along with English in 1987.

Cabo Verde is not an exception from this rule. We are miles ahead from the debate about whether Cabo-verdian language is separated from Portuguese language and of course, the name ?Portuguese Creole? used by many other nationals only adds to the misleading factors. Cabo Verde should display its ambition to preserve its local richness as an asset that doesn't belong to just resident Cabo-verdians. It is an element of culture that belongs to all Cabo-verdians wherever they are. It is their right to something that unifies them tightly together. There are Cabo-verdians in all corners of the world who are struggling to preserve Creole, stay connected with their relatives and friends in the old country, support their families and the government, but don't necessarily speak, write, or read Portuguese. An example of a ridiculous situation that happens in the USA , among Cabo-verdians that often need interpreters, or to identify themselves as an ethnic group in different setting like hospitals, courtrooms etc, is that some identify themselves as Portuguese, but when asked: Can you speak or read Portuguese? The answer is NO.

The Portuguese interpreter is provided but the two do not understand each other. Whoever asks the question remains perplexed? The fact is that colonization heritage and confusion still remain in the minds of many of us ?being identified with the colonizer makes us look better than with the colonized ones.? That is the confusion that needs to be uprooted in order for us to be who we are.

Preserving languages require skilled teachers and willingness to endure inconvenience compared to using the world's most known languages. Individual Cabo-verdians, together with the Government have made great effort to preserve the language, to name a few, Tome Varela who have spoken in the Parliament, expressing in his own language through the Cabo-verdian media for the Cabo-verdian people while most the other officials expressing in Portuguese. He wrote several books in Creole.

Manuel Veiga, ( photo ) the present Minister of Culture is another who wrote books, dictionary, grammar, and to whom we leave the responsibility to give Cabo-verdian language the respect that it deserves. Daniel Spinola and many more have tried to preserve the language, bringing terms almost extinct to life, making it beautiful, needed, liked and used in the everyday conversation; Artists like Domingos Luisa and others who tries to portray Cabo Verde's culture in canvass and stones; musicians and an endless list of people who express their culture in so many ways. But that is not to say we don't need to reinvent the wheels when comparing to bilingual program model in the USA . This is inventing the wheels because the situation of bilingual program in the United States and the process of adding an official language to another already in place are totally apart, and requires more than wishing on the part of the pursuant of implementation of Cabo-verdian Language as an official language - preserving a language, a culture, a history, and the pride of who we are: Cabo-verdians with Cabo-verdian Language .

If the fact that Cabo-verdian language and Portuguese language have some origin, are close in lexical terms, and that the Portuguese language may be a means to facilitate Cabo-verdians' desire of globalization, are good reasons for Cabo-verdians to consider keeping Portuguese as a second official language, fine! Still, we are Cabo-verdians! We're not Portuguese .


By Adriano Cabral , FORCV.com Editor & Columnist

Link:http://bpe.org/btr/index.html

I believe that the first thing to do regarding the adoption of Kriolo as the official language in CV is to tackle the difficult question of the different "kriolus". There is a raging battle as to which "kriolo" should be The One. It is urgent to have such a debate, in order to clarify the situation.

The choice of a regional dialect over another one will always instill fear in the hearts and minds of most people. Thus, it is up to the academicians to explain to the people what is at stake. We are a very young Nation, and we're learning from our mistakes as every other country before us did.

However, it would be beneficial to all of us if there was a consultation rather than an imposition on this subject.

Adriano, as usual, ta da ki papia.

Lu

What is a Caboverdiano?

What dialect of creolu will we speak.

Fogo,Brava,Praia or St Vincent, St Niclauo that is Balaventu or
Sortaventu or how about the way they speak creolu in Guinea Bissau the
way my grandfather spoke it?

If we make Kreolu the official language how many countries will you be able to speak that mother tongue.

I think we should always keep our mother tongue active and never loose it.

Remember the so-called Jews did not speak Hebrew they spoke yiddish.

Hebrerw,Aramaic and Arabic was the language of the man we call Jesus.

Help me to understand this question from your point of view my Brothers.

Like it or not Portuguese can be spokeN in many African countries and Asia and Canada,USA,Soputh America ( Brasil) East Timor and some otheR countries. Tell me what will serve us Better?

What will break thru tribalism?

[quote="Manu Salah"]What is a Caboverdiano?

What dialect of creolu will we speak.

Fogo,Brava,Praia or St Vincent, St Niclauo that is Balaventu or
Sortaventu or how about the way they speak creolu in Guinea Bissau the
way my grandfather spoke it?

If we make Kreolu the official language how many countries will you be able to speak that mother tongue.

I think we should always keep our mother tongue active and never loose it.

Remember the so-called Jews did not speak Hebrew they spoke yiddish.

Hebrerw,Aramaic and Arabic was the language of the man we call Jesus.

Help me to understand this question from your point of view my Brothers.

Like it or not Portuguese can be spokeN in many African countries and Asia and Canada,USA,Soputh America ( Brasil) East Timor and some otheR countries. Tell me what will serve us Better?

What will break thru tribalism?

For example in the African countries that speak Portuguese as an offical language helps to break thru the many tribal languages that they have in those countries, and help to unite them in one language.

It would seem to me that Caboverdianos will have to learn to speak the language of the country they migrate too. You come to the USA you must speak English,you go to france you must learn French and so on.

I think that it is good that CV's speak at least 3 languages if not more.
But we should never loose our mother tongue.
My next question is what languages make up the creolu tongue?

Please help us to understand this better,those of us born in the USA and who will live here until we expire are asking those of you who say you know more about our roots(raiz) They say ask question and you just might learn something. So please explain.
Thank you.

brr

Dear Manu Salah,

Capeverdean Languge as all other languages is vehicule of communication among its people(s) as you point out well, but it is as well the cultural identity of the people. The Language is the the identity of one people because the way you speak, the words you use to say whatever you say, the meanings you attribute to the words, in many cases are unique because only the people who develop the word prescribed the meaning for a particular word( the others learn them translate them with more or less accuracy).

This is why grammar, for example, comes after the language exists. Language correctness is just an attempt to uniformize a way to speak a language and an attempt to adjust the language to a certain time as well as updating the language with new words, new influences, and new meanings.

As far as capeverdean language, just like any "creole language", it grow out of the encounter between the colonized people and colones when that takes place in a relatively neutral environment. Per say, creloe is among the newest languages on earth because it only began to apper less than 500 years.

Creole came about because the kids that is raised in the context of two different languages, encounter a new way to express themselves in a completely new language. It was first expressed in the form of Pidjin or lingua Franca ( by the different people that inhabited the region) but the kids raised on that environment tended to have their own structure borrowing words from the languages involved.

In the case of Cape Verde, most of the words come from the metropole (Portuguese) probably because of the isolation from the continent of Africa and influence of Portugal in the Islands.


As far as the variance of creole to be used as the official one, is the subject of studies and Political decision of the people of the Islands considering all the pros and cons and what the purposes.

As far as I am concerned, we have to choose from which Island(s) we pick because you can't use all of them, and normally the tendency is to pick the ones the most people speak or the ones with most influence in the region. It seems that the language variances of Santiago and S. Vicente are the ones to be picked upon, but yet, it is a political decision.

The same thing happened everywhere anyway! The English that we speak today was not originally the English spoken in the region of Great Britain, but London imposed its version and today everybody is happy that you have the same language internationalized.

The main thing to think of is that officializing creole does not impede the use or learning of other languages but adds to it and it is an essential part of our Independence.

Just like you learn Portuguese, you learn creole in school, understanding its expression uniformizing it in the everyday analysis develop it and be proud of it.

Cabrala

Yes, Kriolu should be added as the official language of Cape Verde. English should also be taught in the schools. Of course Portuguese remains for obvious reasons. (to be continued)
Vasco