For years the Kriol Council has been fighting tooth and nail to have Kriol as a language and over the years they have made tremendous strides. But tonight they make the one that is expected to be the definitive pace forward at telling Belizeans and the world that Kriol is not a mere dialect, a derivative of English, in fact it is a language on to itself. After working for years with linguistics expert Ken Decker, the Kriol Council has come up with the Kriol Grammar Book. Decker explained how this will now revolutionize how our children learn in schools.
Ken Decker, Linguistics Expert
"The real need for it is for people to understand the difference between standard English and Kriol, the way it is spoken, and it will hopefully help children to understand the difference between the two languages, to help the transaction to English. Its more for teachers to use and hopefully they'll get instructions on how to use the book and it will be a resource for them in teaching the children."
Alfonso Noble,
How far along does this go to standardize Kriol?
Ken Decker,
"Well the fact that it makes, it shows that there is a complete grammar to the language. When we first came here years ago, people said you can talk Kriol anyway you want but here I show the rules and as people will see, this is the way its spoken and people do actually follow real rules when they speak the language. So all of the rules go for what I recorded people saying. So its not any rules I made up, all I've done is identify the way people are talking. When I first came and started hearing the language, I started identifying patterns right away and recognized them as different from English. Hopefully teachers will be able to use this and it will improve their education practices and along with other things at the National Kriol Council, is doing and we at the Belize Kriol Project, helping to develop the language. We hope that it will preserve the language and that when people want to speak Kriol they really speak Kriol and not something that is mixed up with English and when they speak English, they speak real English and not something mixed up with Kriol. Its to preserve both languages and give people ability in both languages. Historically Kriol came out of English. There's a lot of words that are still used here in Belize that aren't used anymore, that have been preserved in Kriol and I think its only going to help children, particularly if we talk about it as a different language because as long as they think that Kriol is bad English and all they have to do is cleanup up their Kriol to get English, they're going to have problems getting into English."
