Media Monitor: French tongues, Spanish villages and stress for radio and TV presenters

Watson Duke, would-be prime minister of Tobago, held a news conference recently. Not for the first time with this high-profile personality from the sister isle, things did not exactly go swimmingly.

I say ‘sister isle’ but for how much longer, I wonder. Trinidad and Tobago remains one country but that’s just for now. That could change at the drop of a hat or, if Duke has his way, at the toss of a coin.

Anyway, the PDP political leader boasted that he is ‘good with words’. A sentence or two later, he was talking about his people not being prepared to surrender to Trinidadian ‘auto-CRA-cy’.

And yes, he did put the stress on the second-last syllable. 

January 6 made clear that democracy has been under stress in the US. It is, however, debatable whether the stress on au-TOC-racy has moved as a result. 

Maybe it’s just a Tobago thing. 

I haven’t read Dr Winford James’ The languages of Tobago. I just heard the late Winston ‘Shadow’ Bailey’s ‘I funny wuss’ line and first noted that the speech habits of the denizens of Crusoe’s Isle differed somewhat from those of us who live in the big-sister—twin-island republic my foot!—isle. 

No Trinidadian, I think, says ‘I funny wuss’ unless (s)he’s quoting Shadow. And we call ourselves Tri-ni-DAD-ians and call people from Tobago To-ba-GO-nians. But in common with PNM Tobago Political Leader Tracy Davidson-Celestine, Duke calls people from his country, oops, his island To-BA-gonians. 

Political leadership, I suppose, is a very stressful thing. 

Back to Shadow. In Pay de devil, he pronounces Les Coteaux LEK-KEY-TOE, unintentionally reminding us that Napoléon Bonaparte’s compatriots have not left too much of a mark on the landscape in Crusoe’s Isle. Only Lambeau, L’Anse Fourmi and Parlatuvier besides come readily to my mind. 

Not so in Trinidad. French is everywhere. In fact, they have had so much influence on the way Trinis speak (‘It making hot, oui!’), that, like them, we often don’t put our tongues between our teeth to pronounce ‘th’. 

Our brothers and sisters raised in the little-sister isle seem to always do.

Compare Duke’s ringing ‘tlee’ with Daren Ganga, say, calling the cricket score at 333 for 3. Or to take a recent example from this week’s Super50 Cup semi-final between Red Force and Jamaica Scorpions, describing Lendl Simmons’ huge six that landed beyond the Coolidge swimming pool as a ‘rootless strike’. 

Check Trinidad: Basseterre, Biche, Blanchisseuse, Bourg Mulatresse, Carenage, the Croisée, the jokey Embacadere—the French word actually has an R before the C—Grande Rivière, La Lune, Laventille, Lopinot, Matelot, Morvant, Petit Valley, Petit Bourg, Pointe-à-Pierre, Usine St Madeleine.

And La Romain or, to go with the updated version, La Romaine. Once you start conceding that fidelity to the original language takes primacy over age-old local practice, you clearly have no argument against converting Sangre Chiquito into Sangre Chiquita. 

And where will it end? The French vallée being feminine jardin masculine, will Petit Valley have to become Petite Valley and Tobago’s Belle Garden Beau Garden?

What about the hybrid San Francique? Do we make that San Francisco or Saint(e) Francique?

If I raise it here, it is to deal obliquely with a Facebook response to my last Media Monitor column. A professional journalist claimed it’s okay to pronounce the Crédit in Crédit Suisse à l’anglaise. And she wanted to know if on air she should say La-van-TILL or La-van-TEA, Sip-PA-ria or Sip-a-REE-a.

To those two, I add Aranjuez or Aranguez, El So-cor-ro or El See-cor-ro? 

To the first part, my response is in the interrogative: really? On what grounds? Because it happens to look like an English word? 

So is it okay for i95.5fm’s Don Lee to pronounce Real Madrid à l’anglaise, as is his wont, that is REEL MADRID? 

Is it okay for people to pronounce Francesca Hawkins’ Italian first name ‘FRANCE-SESCA’ because there is no written H? Or is it okay to call the German car a Vokes-WAGON and the French cars PEE-JHU and REE-NALT?

To the second query, I respond with a story. Before joining the staff, one of my non-Trinidadian former colleagues had lived for almost three years near UWI in Tunapuna. One day she told us precisely where. In Pasea. But she pronounced it à l’espagnole: PA-SAY-A. 

We laughed. But, if you know Spanish, it’s a perfectly understandable mistake. Nobody had ever told her that area was called PA-JHAY so she went with what she saw. 

That’s why my advice to the journalist is to choose one and stick with it. But it cannot be on an individual basis.

Basic training for ALL voice and vision personnel who might one day hit the airways should include the pronunciation of Debe, La Brea, Manzanilla, Marabella, Maracas, Matura, Maturita, Palo Seco, Rancho Quemado, Rio Claro, San Fernando, San Juan, Santa Cruz, Santa Flora, Santa Margarita, Santa Rosa, Toco, Valencia. Et al.

And, of course, all the French and Spanish and other names already mentioned. As a basic minimum. There would have to be a Frequently Found Foreign Names list as well.

We all know what would happen if one of these days i95.5fm’s Don Lee were handed the following text:

Today, the last day of the January transfer window, is Marnus Labuschagne’s birthday.

The big football news is that Manchester City midfielder Ilkay Gundogan and Manchester United goalkeeper David De Gea are both set to leave their Mancunian clubs. 

Despite the rumours swirling around recently, neither is going to the rival Liverpudlian club. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer confirmed that De Gea is going to Barca while Pep Guardiola revealed that, at the request of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Gundogan is bound for Real Madrid.

Lee would make a mess! Only 84 words but on a really good day, he might make only six mistakes; on a normal day, twice that. 

Without training and standardisation, would he really be to blame?

Worse, what might happen on the weekend? Though sport is not his forte, Dominic Kalipersad, a real pro, might cope. 

But what of the ladies who sometimes find themselves required to read the weekend sports news? 

I shudder to think.

More from Wired868

Remembering Teacher Percy and our journey into education

Bring back the old-time days… Do you remember the primary school days when we sat in the dusty school yard Read more

Kitchener and Sparrow not good enough for top ten? Ah wanna fall!

Is greatness, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder? The question is broached in a not-very-good Calypso History Month Read more

Dear Editor: Newspaper editors needed… and start at the Trinidad Express!

Trinidad Express Newspapers are in the market for an assistant night editor. Through you, I wish to make an application Read more

Media Monitor: Making amends for mystery of not calling SC’s name

As a part-time monitor of the media and a full-time anglophile, I sometimes come across stuff in the newspaper that Read more

Early Bird: When CNC3 “rolled” over the late Professor Gordon Rohlehr

Apoplectic, my fo’daymorning walk pardnah Bobby would later describe my state. In hindsight, I had to agree. Unapologetically apoplectic. Don’t Read more

Noble: Considering the PDP’s collapse, the PNM Convention’s shuffle, and Volney’s passing

What a week! The events that tumbled over each other added to the exhaustion and frustration of the long road Read more