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Thomas Decker and the death of Boss Coker
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2011
Extract
Thomas Alexander Leighton Decker, o.b.e., teacher, journalist, broadcaster, poet, dramatist, linguist and senior civil servant—to name only some of the major occupations or preoccupations of his busy life—was the man who, more than any other, crusaded for the acceptance of Krio as a language in its own right. At a time when others dismissed Sierra Leone's main lingua franca as a debased or corrupt form of English and failed to recognise its distinct identity and full potential, Thomas Decker never once faltered in his conviction that it was as good a language as any other. He spent much of his life trying to convince others of the truth of this, and the fact that Krio has at last begun to gain the acceptance he sought for it is in no small measure due to him and his efforts on its behalf.
Résumé
Thomas Decker et la mort de Boss Coker
Cet article examine le rôle joué par Thomas Decker pour faire accepter et promouvoir la langue créole basée sur l'anglais, connue sous le nom de krio au Sierra Leone. Cet article suit les écrits de Decker dans le Daily Guardian du Sierra Leone au cours des cinq derniers mois de 1939, aboutissant et faisant suite à la publications de son sketch satirique, Boss Coker befo St Peter. Il étudie le développement de la pensée de Decker sur le krio et ses tentatives de trouver un système d'orthographe approprié à la langue. Ses travaux au cours de cette période sont liés à ses pièces principales ultérieures écrites en krio et à la polémique générale suscitée par le krio, qui allait continuer pendant les quatre décennies suivantes.
- Type
- Culture and language
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © International African Institute 1987
References
NOTES
1 For the most comprehensive account of the history of the Sierra Leone Krios and for references to Thomas Decker's role in promoting the acceptance of Krio see Spitzer, Leo, The Creoles of Sierra Leone (University of Ife Press, Ile-Ife, 1975).Google Scholar
2 Articles, stories and poems in Krio have started to appear in Kamojade (1986– ), a publication produced by the Sierra Leone Association of Writers and Illustrators. The People's Educational Association of Sierra Leone (PEA) has printed texts in Krio and other indigenous languages since 1985, and the Krio Publications Series (1982– ), edited by the present writer and Njie Sulayman, has published three plays in Krio to date. The longest text available at present is the recent Lutheran translation of the New Testament, Gud Yus Fo Olman, published in 1985.
3 The official recommendations can be found in ‘A Krio Orthography Workshop’, a mimeographed report on a language workshop held in Freetown on 24 and 25 November 1981 and sponsored by the Sierra Leone Ministry of Education and the German Adult Education Association (Ministry of Education, Freetown, no date). See also the ‘Report on the Writers' Workshop of the Indigenous Languages Education Project’ (Ministry of Education, Freetown, 1983).Google Scholar
4 Quoted by ‘a correspondent’ in West Africa, 14 August 1965, p. 903.Google Scholar
5 Thomas Decker, Julius Caesar, privately mimeographed edition (Freetown, no date). To be reprinted in the Krio Publications series (volume 4), ed. Neville, Shrimpton and Njie, Sulayman, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden, in October 1987.Google Scholar
6 Entitled Udat di Kiap Fit (‘Whom the cap fits’), privately mimeographed edition (Freetown, no date). Also forthcoming in the Krio Publications series during 1988.
7 Decker, Thomas, Tales of the Forest (Bros, Evans, London, 1968).Google Scholar
8 I am indebted to Thomas Decker's widow, Mrs Yomi Decker, for biographical and other material. Mrs Decker also gave permission for the inclusion in this article of ‘Are Day Go Up’ and the extract from Julius Caesar, both of which are covered by copyright. Further biographical information about Decker, Thomas can be found in West Africa, 14 August 1965 (see note 4 above) and 18 September 1978, p. 1828.Google Scholar
9 His battle for the avoidance of letters which are not to be found in the English alphabet was perhaps the only one he really lost. The new official orthography contains ε, o and η for Decker's e, oh and ng. Fyle and Jones had recommended ε and o, and the 1981 Workshop group added η. See note 11.
10 For a full discussion of this question see Sutcliffe, David, British Black English (Blackwell, Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar and Edwards, V. K., The West Indian Language Issue in British Schools (Routledge, London, 1979).Google Scholar
11 Fyle, Clifford N. and Jones, Eldred D., A Krio–English Dictionary (Oxford University Press, London and Sierra Leone University Press, Freetown, 1980).Google Scholar
12 Daily Guardian, 1 August 1939.Google Scholar
13 For example, the Rev. Johnson, James had, in a letter to the Sierra Leone Weekly News on 22 February 1908Google Scholar suggested that the use of Krio (‘Sierra Leone English’, as he called it) in schools would help the children to learn English better, and he went on to say, ‘Unfortunately, this language has not been considered elegant enough for either the schoolroom or the pulpit, though it is like every other language in the world, an outcome of the people's own situation; though it is the language that they readily understand and enjoy, and that which touches their hearts and influences them in a way that no other language has done or can do; …’
14 The pidgin version appeared in the Daily Guardian on 24 August 1939. It had originally been published in the Gold Coast Journal and was reprinted in the October number (1938) of Overseas Education.
15 Daily Guardian, 28 August 1939.
16 Misprinted as Nor.
17 Misprinted as (flag).
18 Misprinted as uy.
19 The following is my own attempt at a somewhat free verse translation:
The sun was just about to die;
The moon was nowhere in the sky.
When up along Aburi high
Came a little boy whose pace was quick.
He held a flag which was on a stick.
‘I am going up.’
A woman who liked him very much
Said, ‘Friend, it is growing late for such.
The larder's full. Just come inside.
There's good food here.’ But he replied,
‘I'm going up.’
He did not smile but his eyes did swell,
Just as if he was not feeling very well.
And all the time a song he sang
As he beat his drum with a mighty bang,
‘I'm going up.’
‘Don't go! Don't go!’ an old man said.
‘The rain must come. There's a storm ahead.
The water will wash you well up there.'
Few words expressed the child's care;
‘I'm going up.’
The morrow came. A dog went up the hill
And chased some animal to kill.
It spied the lad upon the ground
And saw these words on the flag it found:
‘I'm going up.’
It knew the child had upped and died,
Which made it start to howl. It cried
And all the people round about
Thought the child was calling out.
‘I'm going up.’
20 Such spelling systems are variously described as ‘phonetic’, ‘phonemic’ or ‘semi-phonemic’ in what sometimes appears to be a rather haphazard way. ‘Phonetic’ is a misleading term because it implies a process of close transcription (using a phonetic alphabet) rather than a spelling system. Semi-phonemic is used by Fyle and Jones in their Krio–English Dictionary and this is perhaps preferable, since the term ‘phonemic’ can then be reserved for orthographies which keep to a strict one-sound–one-sign system and which avoid the use of digraphs such as sh, ch and th.
21 Todd, Loreto, Pidgins and Creoles (Routledge, London, 1974), pp. 1 and 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22 At least, this is the view of Bailey, Charles-James N. and Maroldt, K., ‘The French lineage of English’, in Meisel, (ed.), Pidgins—Creoles—Languages in Contact (Narr, Tübingen, 1977), pp. 21–53.Google Scholar
23 See Feist, Sigmund, ‘The origin of the Germanic languages and the Indo-Europeanising of north Europe’, Language, 8, 245–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 Opinions are divided about the origins of Krio. Eldred Jones favours the theory that Krio was brought from the West Indies by the settlers when the colony was established 200 years ago. See, for example, his article ‘Krio: an English-based language of Sierra Leone’ in John, Spencer (ed.), The English Language in West Africa (Longman, London, 1971), pp. 66–94.Google Scholar Ian Hancock has expounded the theory that Krio, or its ancestor, was firmly established on the coast of West Africa well before their arrival. See ‘A provisional comparison of the English-based Atlantic Creoles’, African Languages Review, 8 (1969), 7–72.Google Scholar
25 The question of adequacy has dogged discussions about more languages than one would think. Many Englishmen continued to regard Latin and French as ‘better’ languages than English until fairly recent times, and, although most linguistic textbooks contain remarks about the general equality of all language systems, it is surprising to find that this assumption may be modified when it comes to the consideration of Creole languages. See, for example, the remarks of Whinnom, Keith in ‘Linguistic hybridization and the “special case” of Pidgins and Creoles’, especially pp. 109–110, in Pidgimzation and Creolization of Languages, ed. Dell, Hymes (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971).Google Scholar
26 The words used by ‘Observer’ when introducing the pidgin parody in the Daily Guardian on 24 August 1939.
27 In his doctoral thesis, ‘Marginal Languages’, unpublished, Yale University, 1937.
28 Pidgin and Creole Languages (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1966).Google Scholar
29 Daily Guardian, 18 September 1939, p. 4.Google Scholar
30 ‘Urban negro speech:. sociolinguistic factors affecting English teaching’, in R., Shuy (ed.), Social Dialects and Language Learning (National Council of Teachers of English, Champaign, Ill., 1965), pp. 10–18.Google Scholar
31 ‘On the nature of a Creole continuum’, Language, 49, pp. 640–69.Google Scholar
32 The rural areas are noted for the fact that they retain older features and ‘deeper’ forms of Krio.
33 Daily Guardian, 18 September 1939, p. 4.Google Scholar
34 ‘When the time comes for the sun to rise up and when the time comes for it to go down, it never says anything. When the time comes for the trees to change their leaves, they change them and they never say anything, but when the time comes for people to change one sort of habit that they have for a better habit—come and hear them shout and curse.’
35 ‘It seems as if that thing which they call Fate [itself] does not want to let women come up in the world. … Because, just as I was about to tell you how we do not treat you properly … ’
36 Daily Guardian, 21 September and 13 October 1939.
37 Daily Guardian, 12 October 1939, p. 5.Google Scholar
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 See, for example, Michael Kelly's article, ‘Finding the right spelling for Krio’, West Africa, 9 November 1981, 2655–9, and my arguments against his suggestions in ‘Au (Aw) fo (foh?) rayt (rait? write) Krio?’ in the same journal on 1 March 1982, 561–3.Google Scholar
42 Daily Guardian, 24 October 1939.
43 Was the choice of the name Johnson due to the fact that the Rev. James Johnson (see note 13) had made out a case for promoting the Krio language at the beginning of the century?
44 Professor Eldred Jones (personal communication).
45 The Creoles of Sierra Leone, p. 140.
46 Ibid.
47 Daily Guardian, 1 December 1939.
48 The Creoles of Sierra Leone, p. 147.
49 ‘Dora’ had, in fact, as Decker acknowledges, used this spelling first in his or her article in the same newspaper on 13 October 1939, p. 4.
59 Julius Caesar, p. 41.
51 From the author's own typewritten manuscript (p. 1) of an introductory note to two scenes from his play Udat di kiap Fit. Probably written in 1977.
52 Daily Guardian, 4 December 1939.