Coming to terms with our Mauritian self: Three proposals concerning the status, form and use of Morisyen

What follows is a slightly modified version of an article which appeared in the 40 Independence Anniversary celebrations issue of the Mauritius Times. The issues raised being still very much there, I thought that a timely reprint might provoke a thought or two. The following three features relating to the status, form and use of our national language cannot fail to baffle any mindful observer and indeed instill despair in any one committed to the enhancement of the Mauritian personality on the one hand and the long-term survival of the Mauritian society on the other: 1) All Mauritians readily subscribe to the view that we are in the same boat and will survive only collectively in the face of the mighty challenges facing us but no one seems to consider that Morisyen, our language, is a vital asset to be deployed in this connection. Its role as a fundamental factor that can give substance to the Mauritian personality and its importance as a springboard to the command of the other languages present in the local context are ignored if not purely and simply negated. Yet, this is what lies at the root of our lack of psychological assurance in language handling and our clumsiness in formal communication. Only the pedagogical value of our language is being highlighted by some and that too in a topsy-turvy fashion. 2) The amount of energy devoted to defending Morisyen only equals that spent in its constant mutilation in all spheres of public, formal communication! Every time the socalled defenders of Morisyen open their mouth in public, the gymnastics they resort to in getting their views across reflects not only a deep-seated self-depreciation but also a debilitating inferiority complex vis--vis French, which has become The reference in the local language setting. When challenged as to the damages they constantly inflict to Morisyen, their answer is that language is alive and constantly changing! That we must not be purists and that calling for a standard form of the spoken language (which they readily switch to in informal contexts!) is a lost battle, etc. 3) A powerful thrust to make Morisyen the medium of instruction, at least at the primary level, has built up over the years but no parallel claim (except only recently) that it be taught as a subject in primary schools has emerged. As if English, French, Chinese etc. children were taught via their mother tongue without first being made to learn this mother tongue formally. As if teachers having never learnt the language formally themselves could teach in that language without the required training and the associated tools and text-books that have yet to be designed in this respect. On top of that, although no opportunity has been provided to the language to develop into a formal knowledge and know-how transmission tool, it is claimed that only when we get down to using it fully and exclusively as a medium of instruction can we expect to curtail the CPE failure rate, especially for children coming from the poorer sections of the population! However grotesque all this may seem, it has not prevented those spearheading such a cause from hammering their claim and resorting to foreign experts to vindicate their cause. Putting the cart before the horse seems to have developed into a Mauritian speciality! This brief outline indicates the inter-related issues we have to tackle in dealing with our Mauritian self. In developing the proposals mentioned in the title above, I will therefore attempt to examine these issues and make some suggestions as to how we can come to terms with our Mauritian self.
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Chafeekh Jeeroburkhan

10 March 2009

Coming to terms with our Mauritian self: Three proposals concerning the status, form and use of Morisyen
Proposal 1: Grant Morisyen Official language status alongside English and French This proposal focuses on the political dimension of the language issue. We all know that, 1 however earnestly we may cherish and cling to our ancestral language (Mauritians of African descent too have ancestral languages, but nobody has really cared to find out which ones), the only common denominator for all Mauritians is our universally spoken and occasionally written Morisyen: Incidentally, the Morisyen designation is being used throughout this article to highlight this characteristic and give Mauritians the chance to define themselves directly in terms of their national language, born in this land, out of their own interaction, whatever the ancestralcultural sensitivities they may nurture. The intent is neither to challenge Mauritians to forego their ethnic and cultural heritage nor to get them clothed in the self-sufficient cloak of Mauritianhood and spur them on to nationalistic confrontation with prospective rivals or enemies. It is simply to indicate the extent to which our national language provides the missing link which alone can make belonging to the Mauritian nation meaningful and purposeful. We have no external enemies to fight. Ignoring, overlooking or worse, underrating the language dimension of the Mauritian personality deprives us of the cohesion we need to stand as members of the same nation and of the assurance we need to address the world at large. Indeed, the surest way to maintain our personality deficit and undermine 2 our capacity to preserve our unity as a nation is to downplay or simply dismiss the Morisyen issue altogether. Of course, in spite of the wording of Proposal 1, the question may arise as to what will become of the existing official languages. Paradoxical as it may sound, in putting up a case for Morisyen, I am also advancing that if it is implemented judiciously along with proposals 2 and 3, greater and more adequate command of both the academic and/or cultural languages can be achieved. Which means that those who value English and French (or any of the other languages present or yet to come in the local context for that matter) have nothing to fear. This can only enhance the plurality and flexibility of Mauritian society thereby ensuring its long-term survival. What the authorities (and those who still argue that Morisyen is not a language!) may fear instead is that Morisyen will not live up to the standards of an Official language. This belief is itself grounded in the ignorance of the fact that languages are constantly deployed at different levels: For example, the French that is used in the academic or literary contexts can in no way be equated with the one used in the market place or in local slang. The same holds good for Morisyen. Of course, we cannot expect Morisyen to develop and those using it to be in a position to overcome their inferiority complex if we restrict its use to the less noble contexts and encourage switching to more respectable languages (or worse, clothe Morisyen with borrowed French respectability) in the more noble contexts! On the other hand, the political and psychological incidence of such a measure (granting official status to Morisyen) cannot be exaggerated: it will put those capable of expressing themselves fluently only in Morisyen on the same footing as those who understand Morisyen perfectly but prefer to express themselves in English or French. It will also give those resorting to Morisyen as the official language the incentive to enhance their language, making it worthy of its status. The risk of the language level declining is mere speculation. The probability of the opposite occurring is much higher, disciplined thinking and measured argumentation being the hallmarks of formal, official communication. Of course, all this will not occur overnight. But it will never occur at all if the decision-makers fail to grasp the importance of the above proposal or shrink from giving it substance even if they are convinced that this is the way forward.

Chafeekh Jeeroburkhan

10 March 2009

Coming to terms with our Mauritian self: Three proposals concerning the status, form and use of Morisyen
Proposal 2: Work towards a standard form of Morisyen to avoid the gymnastics referred to in the introduction above. As mentioned above, the approximate, spontaneous knowledge Mauritians have of their own language (they have the excuse of never having had the opportunity of studying it formally), coupled with the dominant position French has acquired in the local context, will have it that as soon as somebody has to express himself formally, he will subject his language to various distortions! He will attempt to enhance his Morisyen by 1) clothing it in French phonetics (use of sounds like ch in chateau, j in jardin, u in sucre, etc. 2) introducing structures and expressions which are patent translations of French, revealing that the person is thinking in French and not in Morisyen in the first place. Even Dev Virahsawmy talks of condision dan lekel ! and these days, the use of the French prepositions and de in expressions such as enn stasyon lapolis a Blue-Bay instead of enn stasyon lapolis Blue-Bay and minis de lazistis instead of minis lazistis respectively, is rapidly gaining ground. Of course, this is the way things are when verbal interaction begins. But where sustained elaboration and argumentation are required, it is the opposite situation that we witness. Translation switches from Morisyen to French! Typical Morisyen expressions which do not have their French counterparts are translated more or less literally into French, making a joke of both Morisyen and French. Some might try to get away with it, arguing that they are resorting to the widespread practice of code-switching, characteristic of multilingual situations. But obviously, code-switching has nothing to do with literal translation or phonetic or structural metamorphosis. Preserving both Morisyen and French therefore calls for a sharp distinction to be made between the two and for each language to be used in its own right. The obstacle to a move in this direction is twofold: First, as Morisyen is not studied formally, one is more likely to encounter the standard form in the family context (with the exception of cases as stigmatised in some Komiko sketches for example!) and with those who already practice what I am preaching! (Cassiya sega and ABAIM song scripts or the dialogue in H. Anendens film La Cathdrale, for instance, bear witness, if need be, as to how the resources of Morisyen can be deployed in their own right). Second, given the combined absence of formal study of Morisyen and the growing pressure to make it more respectable, the Morisyen/French divide is being irretrievably blurred, people being brought more and more mistakenly to think that Morisyen and French are much the same, thereby overlooking the price they pay in straying from one language into the other. Until universal, formal Morisyen teaching/learning takes place (that is, until the conditions for us all to become fully Morisyen literate are met!), the following can be suggested as a next best solution: Where formal communication is bound to occur (reception desk dealings in the office, and in particular with radio or TV debates, public speeches, etc.), a language protocol must be proposed by the moderator and agreed upon by the participants before any communication starts so that the everyone knows which language(s) will be used during the encounter. They may then choose the one in which they want to express themselves and stick to the standard form of the language chosen so that even where code-switching takes place, it can be identified and accepted as such. Otherwise, we will constantly be witnessing the torture some people undergo when brought to express themselves in what they consider to be the appropriate language (French most of the time) in Radio Plus distance interviews for example. In this connection, it may be fitting for a body like the MIE to 1) issue guidelines for one and all regarding the basic phonetics and structure of Morisyen where confusion with French is the more likely to occur, 2) conduct formal language courses for those having to handle radio and TV programmes in Morisyen, 3) grant Morisyen language specialist status to those having to counter-check texts to be made public. This is not a call for language policing but simply a suggestion as to how the general public may be brought to distinguish between standard and distorted Morisyen until formal Morisyen learning is available to one and all.

Chafeekh Jeeroburkhan

10 March 2009

Coming to terms with our Mauritian self: Three proposals concerning the status, form and use of Morisyen
One might have expected the Mauritian Cultural Centre to be the body entrusted with the 3 tasks listed above but nowhere in the act creating the Centre did the previous Government consider it necessary to include the promotion and enhancement of Morisyen as one of its main objectives. As a result, the following questions arise: Are the advisers to the present Minister of Culture aware of the matter and if so have they informed the Minister about it? Once this is brought to the knowledge of the decision-makers, will they take the necessary steps to set things right? Proposal 3: Introduce Morisyen as a subject to be studied at the primary school level, not as THE medium of instruction I have mentioned the growing pressure that is being exerted to make Morisyen the medium of instruction and recently, apparently the Ministry of Education has agreed to examine the BECs proposal in the matter. My own stance here (which I have summarily exposed in previous interviews in the Mauritius Times) is as follows: 1) Considering the limited scope of Morisyen (no outreach beyond our own territorial and linguistic borders, interaction only at the internal level in the social, economic and political areas, limited formal knowledge and know-how transfer capability Morisyen is neither an academic nor an industrial and/or business language and thus falls far short of what we need for our material survival in a particularly technically sophisticated and economically hostile environment), making Morisyen the medium of instruction is to seal our doom. English must be maintained as the medium of instruction at least for the foreseeable future (until and if ever we have to switch massively to Chinese to survive in a Chinese dominated environment, for example). The main problem with English at present is that exposure to oral English having been reduced to next to nothing (for example, English-based films and TV serials are dubbed or subtitled in French), Mauritian children cannot benefit from any spontaneous acquisition of the language. They access the language formally and not in the natural way. The second problem is that Mauritian children who do acquire spontaneous knowledge of Morisyen are denied formal knowledge of same as no formal teaching of Morisyen has ever been devised in this respect. The result is that they apply the rules of their language unconsciously and are unaware of the mechanisms underlying Morisyen. Had they been given the opportunity to study Morisyen formally as a subject, it would have been easier for them to identify similar mechanisms (with the required adjustments of course) in other languages such as English, French, Hindi, Tamil, etc. The result is that the absence of formal teaching of Morisyen makes formal acquisition of English, French, etc. unduly harder. The formal teaching of Morisyen is thus a must on two counts: to provide the foundations for proposals 1 and 2 above and as a springboard for easier access to and enhanced command of other knowledge and know-how carrier languages. Of course, creating the conditions for this transition can be very costly and cannot take place overnight. But if the diagnosis is correct, the way ahead is clear whatever the costs. Given the workload of Mauritian children, Morisyen must be taught all through primary school but not as a qualifying subject (although evaluation will be necessary to gauge language progress all through the primary cycle) as the pupils will have to give it up at latest upon leaving primary school. For those who may be channelled towards prevocational schools, it may be given a qualifying subject status if it is used as a medium of instruction in lieu of English.

Chafeekh Jeeroburkhan

10 March 2009

Coming to terms with our Mauritian self: Three proposals concerning the status, form and use of Morisyen
2) The case for Morisyen as the medium of instruction is based on the claim that as it is the mother tongue of most if not all Mauritian children, if used in this capacity, it will reduce if not altogether eliminate failure at the primary level and in particular it will enable children of the poorer sections of the population to do away with the curse of academic failure. Of course, any means that can pull our poor children out of the academic pitfall is welcome. What proponents of this argument overlook or ignore is that academic failure is no stranger to the English and French contexts, for example, where children are not only taught in their mother tongue but also study their mother tongue formally at all levels at school! What is also ignored is the fact that the difference between mother tongue and second language does not lie in an intrinsic quality of the former but on how early and to what degree a child is exposed to the language concerned. Children have difficulty with English not because of difficulties intrinsic to the language or on account of any innate cognitive shortcoming of their own but because parents, teachers, and decision-makers have done nothing to introduce oral English early enough in the family and kindergarten environments. All language specialists agree at least on one point regarding language acquisition: children are naturally multilingual. They specialise according to the linguistic background in which they grow up and because their brain is structured very early with respect to language, the sooner they are exposed to a language the better. Natural language learning takes place spontaneously at that stage. Formal teaching can then take that knowledge further. Given the way things have evolved in Mauritius during the past 15/20 years, the main handicap children have to face in learning English is the quasi absence of oral exposure to the language at a very early age. Children from poorer families are not less endowed than their richer counterparts as far as language learning is concerned. What they are denied is timely and sufficient exposure which only adults and the context can provide. It is indeed a shame that while everybody is deploring our declining command of English, the Ministry of Education does not consider it a priority to make even a well-known educational/cultural channel like BBC Prime available to one and all via the MCA and/or the MBC. Although not all of our children will need to be language champions, an enlightened language policy, catering for proper and more efficient language acquisition, should make more articulate human beings of them and prepare them to survive in a cosmopolitan environment, whether they stay in Mauritius or choose or are brought to emigrate to ensure their livelihood. 3) The multilingual context in Mauritius which largely accounts for the cosmopolitan character of our island and the openness of its people is a priceless asset to be preserved at all costs. But these days, even the bilingual (let alone the multilingual) faculties of most of our fellow countrymen seem to be declining rapidly. Countering such a decline can only be contemplated if we start by identifying the aggravating factors in the first place. I have already described the shortcomings inherent in the trends regarding language acquisition, use and dissemination at the root of our language skill and personality deficiencies. Among these I mentioned the dubbing and subtitling in French of English-based films and TV serials earlier. Unfortunately, these days, ancestral4 language based films and TV serials too are suffering the same fate! The increase in the number of Mauritians claiming to be Bhojpuri, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Telegu, Marathi, Gujerati, Chinese, etc. speaking is only matched by the increasing numbers of those who cannot utter, let alone write, a word in the corresponding language! How awkward we are in English and in our ancestral languages can readily be gauged by comparison with the language faculties of Indian children and/or adults in Door Darshan programmes, for example. Complex-free attitudes, methodical thinking and articulate expression in any of the languages present in the local context are far from being the order of the day. Worse, our capacity to enjoy or produce literature in these languages is shrinking rapidly in a business driven environment.

Chafeekh Jeeroburkhan

10 March 2009

Coming to terms with our Mauritian self: Three proposals concerning the status, form and use of Morisyen
Incidentally, only those working in the tourist industry (and to some extent in the callcentres and BPO concerns) seem to be drawing any benefit from professional use of the languages they have to handle. Institutions and opportunities for the academic and cultural practice of some ancestral languages do exist but remain confined to a narrow audience given the utilitarian approach to the language of specific language groups and/or the ethnically determined access to such languages. Of course, for the day to day user, multilingualism is more a matter of differentiated sensitivity, attitude, behaviour and frame of mind than of academics and linguistics. How far he can survive in and take advantage of a multilingual context depends on how much of a language chameleon he is and to what extent the context in which he grows up provides him with the opportunities for same. This is where le bt blesse. Apart from the shortcomings already highlighted above, we can but deplore that while Mauritius is being branded as a Cyber-island and at a time when a TV set is available in most households, worldwide channels such as Al-Jazeera and Channel News Asia (which are powerful counterparts of CNN and the BBC, capable of bringing an alternative insight into world affairs, helping us shape our vision of present-day reality and work out more adequate attitudes and responses to presentday challenges) are not only not available but purely and simply unknown to most TV viewers! TV can be a powerful tool to overcome the type of limitations mentioned at the end of the previous paragraph. How far our decision-makers (public and private) are prepared to go in making good use of this tool and therefore in building and maintaining a more dynamic and efficient multilingual setting remains to be seen.

Conclusion As mentioned above, initially, this article was written in connection with the 40 Independence anniversary celebrations and as such, I was not expecting it to draw much attention or prompt any worthwhile debate. May be it may encounter more favourable circumstances this time!
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Of course all languages are ancestral in the sense that they are handed over from one generation to the next! But in the Mauritian context, which was uninhabited until the arrival and settlement, at different periods in the history of the island, of the various population groups identifiable today, ancestral language refers to the language which accompanied these groups upon their arrival and which have been maintained more or less successfully over time. As opposed to these ancestral languages, Morisyen is the only one that emerged out of the interaction of the first permanent settlers and that has developed into a full-fledged language with the growing complexity of Mauritian society over almost three centuries.
2

It may be useful to underline that unity does not automatically mean or entail unanimity. Civilised debate is the lifeblood of all dynamic, open societies and of majority rule in a democratic context. Unanimity is more akin to the rule of the graveyard! As mentioned, it is national unity we are talking about, not social, ethnic or cultural homogeneousness which exists nowhere in the real world and which is not desirable as such either.
3

See The Mauritius Cultural Centre Trust Act 2001 - Act No. 6 of 2001. This had even escaped the attention of our former President of the Republic, Cassam Uteem, who signed the Act! As for Vinesh Hookoomsingh, who gave me a copy of the act, it was up to the Nelson Mandela Cultural Centre and not the Mauritian Cultural Centre to take care of Morisyen!
4

People do not seem to realise that French too is an ancestral language in the Mauritian context! It is spared such a characterisation essentially because of its academic and social status. Incidentally, only English can avoid being branded ancestral as no English settlement followed in the wake of the British takeover of the island at the beginning of the 19 th century.

Chafeekh Jeeroburkhan

10 March 2009