Feelgood Trini talk

MARSHELLE HASELEY

The tone of the Trinidadian accent has always sounded to me on the jolly, feelgood side. It has a tone that makes you somehow prepare to hear something crazy that just happened, or as Trinis would say, some bacchanal, especially when it begins with, “Let me tell yuh, nah…”

In comparison and retrospect, the Jamaican accent has a different rhythm, but has the same effect: pointing to some community drama, or just an invitation to gather around a campfire, or on Grandma’s verandah for story time.

I recall the first time a Trinidadian told me, “Just now,” while walking away after I asked a question.

I was a little lost, because in my experience, someone would say “just now” after making a statement about something that happened just now. It had to be explained to me that “just now” means “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

That was the beginning of chapter two of an interesting journey: exploring and becoming acquainted with the nuances of TT’s language.

I always knew that instead of saying, “She drove her car to her mother’s house,” a Trinidadian would instead say, “She drove she car to she mother house.”

I must admit the use of “she” and “he” always fascinated me, especially when accompanied by one of my favourite Caribbean sing-song rhythms. It took me back to my childhood, hearing the Trinidadian accent as my mother watched Westwood Park.

Trinidadians’ expressive use of both spoken and body language made me laugh sometimes, while also communicating to me that we are more alike than we are different.

I learned that Trinidad had a version of patois, a French dialect brought over to Trinidad in the late 1700s, when French settlers were invited to set up plantations in Trinidad – bringing with them their culture and their enslaved people of African descent. Trinidad’s patois is heavily French-influenced, unlike Jamaica’s which is a mixture of African languages and English with bits of Spanish, French and German. Dominant reminders of this, which I rarely hear spoken in Trinidad, include words like cannes brulées and names of places like Blanchisseuse.

There is so much to TT language that I did not know until I got here. I did not realise that Tobago had a different accent from Trinidad. I would not have imagined that there was a place in Tobago named Charlotteville, where people speak with an accent that sounds exactly like that of many parts of Jamaica.

Until I moved, I did not notice what would now be an obviously different accent spoken by people from parts of the west, versus those from south, which has a stronger East Indian tone.

I was not able to find much information to support the sonic connection I made, but if Trinidadians still retain French words from the 1700s, why wouldn’t they speak with inflections inherited from the ancestors of those who account for more than half the country’s population?

I explored a research done by the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA) at dialectsarchive.com/Trinidad, which verified the variations I heard from place to place in TT.

Now, though, to my ears what first sounded foreign no longer stands out. I doubt my own accent is changing – but fewer people are asking me where I am from.