Sa ki sla-ou, sé sla-ou.

Today, there are fewer and fewer people in Trinidad and Tobago who recognise that the previous sentence is the Patois origin of the popular saying “What is yours is yours”. A documentation project at The University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine, is seeking to increase those numbers and to document and preserve the dying languages of Trinidad and Tobago.

Most people simply categorise Trinidad and Tobago as English-speaking. However, it is estimated that there are between 1,000 to 2,000 Patois (French Creole) speakers in Trinidad and Tobago.  While English, Trinidadian English Creole and Tobagonian English Creole (both known as Dialect) are an integral part of our cultural and linguistic landscape, what most do not realise is that this country is also home to at least nine other heritage languages. In fact, in the 19th century, over 30 different languages were spoken in Trinidad and Tobago, and before that, at least 11 known Amerindian languages.

Three of these heritage languages have been selected for an interdisciplinary digital documentation project funded by The UWI Research and Development Impact Fund (RDI Fund) and led by Dr Ben Braithwaite and Dr Jo-Anne Ferreira of the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics of The UWI, St Augustine Campus. These languages are: Trinidadian Patois (Lesser Antillean French Creole or Kwéyòl), Trinidadian Hindustani (Caribbean Bhojpuri), and Trinidad and Tobago Sign Language (TTSL). All have counterparts across the region—Patois (French Creole) in 11 countries, Hindustani (Bhojpuri) in three, and related sign languages in many. More.

See: Trinidad Express

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