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God speaks and man writes
Franklin Johnston
Friday, October 16, 2009
Mastery of speech is hard-wired into humans and so infants learn to speak at home. Jamaicans under 45 who cannot speak English are lazy or sick. They were taught in English, by English speakers and even now they can teach themselves, but they don't! They deserve no sympathy.
Franklin Johnston
Hundreds of private schools teach English speech in the UK, China, Africa, India, etc, and people learn by immersion. The teacher and students in the class use English only. Some experts say we must use patois to teach English. But first they must experiment on their own kids and let's see the result.
God speaks! In no age or culture did God write! Men wrote his words centuries after he spoke. Given human error, poor memory, ancient vocabulary, etc, we can't rely on the details, just his core message. God is not illiterate but he is limited by man's ignorance.
There was no alphabet in the Garden of Eden. Man forged them long after. We use one and billions in Asia and Arabia use other alphabets. Many languages exist only as speech and some were lost before sound recording was invented. Some in Brazil are now being recorded using the English alphabet. Others survive in written form but we have no clue as to how they were spoken. Our patois will also die, so let's record it that posterity can know our early culture. For now, let's go deeper into speech.
All life forms communicate (by body language and sensory emanations as scent, colour) but only humans speak. Most tribes did not evolve beyond speaking. Speech is our basic intercourse and foraging, subsistence tribes had no writing. The pre-historic Ziggurat (tower of Babel) noted in Akkadian stelae and later in the Torah is a marker for speech in many languages. Speech is life! It happens in real time - you hear or didn't hear - and speaker and hearer are prone to error. This is made worse as our ability to retain and recall speech degrades with time. All oral history must be taken with a grain of salt.
Accent and technique are important in speaking. China and Middle East states recruit speech teachers with UK and US accents. They have no problem as to who invaded Iraq, is colonial or capitalist. They want results! My friend teaches English in Saudi but does not use his Jamaican accent as they would run him. We diss returning residents with US or UK accents, so many switch back to patois for self-protection and we lose the benefit of their good speech models. Spoken English involves modulation, pause, intonation, pace, nuance, etc, and these convey meaning. We do not say "question sign" for a question, or "pause" for a comma while speaking; we use tone and pace of speech.
Children are born speech-ready; all the software is in place, just "plug and play". If a child does not speak English, blame the parent, not the teacher. Never speak a lot of "baby talk" to your kids. Fathers, put your lips close to the pregnant belly, speak and sing to the child-to-be. Don't tone down your English vocabulary for kids - just explain so they learn.
TOWER OF BABEL... a marker for speech in many languages
Our speech heritage is important. Our usual tonal values are in a range from stentorian to shrill. When in full voice, we sound like a quarrel. These speech registers make us good in debate but poor in seduction. The range for warm, caring, tender, romantic are not in our speech heritage. We are best in loud, aggressive, comedic or abusive mode, not in smouldering, passionate, silent seduction. We show love to our kids using the same tonal values as we threaten or we mourn. We rarely use the soft speech registers!
Patois is no threat to English. As a child we spoke "gypsy" and it didn't harm our English or our patois. In fact, we learned to manipulate speech. Age is no barrier to learning English speech. In India, to qualify for migration or to work in a call centre, people listen to BBC and VOA radio and practise to speak English. Wake up, Jamaica!
Physical fitness is important to speech. A full workout of lips, mouth, tongue, jaws; posture and breathing is the key. Ask Willard White or Jay Z and their speech coaches. They don't just "chuck a Red Bull" and wing it. This helps us ordinary speakers too.
Here are ideas which could spark a quantum leap in English speech skills:
*Ban speaking patois in school hours. Have you ever corrected a pupil for incorrect patois? No! It is not aspirational speech, it's lazy talk! Pupils and staff have 16 hours each day to speak patois outside. English only on school premises, please!
*We need speech heroes. Hotels, high schools and campuses should have a poet or speech artist in residence to create oral works, entertain and be speech models.
*Each English speaker must be a teacher. Let's encourage speaking English in the workplace. The speech apartheid of English in the office and patois in the workshop, farm or warehouse must stop. Poor parents would soon be able to correct their kids' English. Check this upstairs/downstairs chat between a dad, his kids and his maid. Enter the dad: "Gladys, ah deh bout, weh de pickney dem?" and he runs upstairs: "Boys please, I have told you repeatedly, no TV before the homework is done, please switch it off!" He runs downstairs: "Miss G, a weh yu hab yaso, a ungry, ungry soh tel!" End speech apartheid now!
* We need islandwide, knock-out elocution contests by age group, with good prizes.
Rhodes Scholar the late Hector Wynter and yours truly envisioned an institute of English to "finish" students up to executive levels. Along with Bobby Ghisays and Charles Hyatt, we also planned to read "Fakespeare" (Shakespeare with a twist) each week for anyone who wished to bring a cushion and sit on my lawn. Many have never heard Shakespeare declaimed by professionals. You can start a session in your community and begin an epidemic of mastery of spoken English. The state can't do everything! Selah!
Dr Franklin Johnston is an international project manager with Teape-Johnston Consultants, currently on assignment in the UK.
franklinjohnston@hotmail.com
Franklin Johnston
Friday, October 16, 2009
Mastery of speech is hard-wired into humans and so infants learn to speak at home. Jamaicans under 45 who cannot speak English are lazy or sick. They were taught in English, by English speakers and even now they can teach themselves, but they don't! They deserve no sympathy.
Franklin Johnston
Hundreds of private schools teach English speech in the UK, China, Africa, India, etc, and people learn by immersion. The teacher and students in the class use English only. Some experts say we must use patois to teach English. But first they must experiment on their own kids and let's see the result.
God speaks! In no age or culture did God write! Men wrote his words centuries after he spoke. Given human error, poor memory, ancient vocabulary, etc, we can't rely on the details, just his core message. God is not illiterate but he is limited by man's ignorance.
There was no alphabet in the Garden of Eden. Man forged them long after. We use one and billions in Asia and Arabia use other alphabets. Many languages exist only as speech and some were lost before sound recording was invented. Some in Brazil are now being recorded using the English alphabet. Others survive in written form but we have no clue as to how they were spoken. Our patois will also die, so let's record it that posterity can know our early culture. For now, let's go deeper into speech.
All life forms communicate (by body language and sensory emanations as scent, colour) but only humans speak. Most tribes did not evolve beyond speaking. Speech is our basic intercourse and foraging, subsistence tribes had no writing. The pre-historic Ziggurat (tower of Babel) noted in Akkadian stelae and later in the Torah is a marker for speech in many languages. Speech is life! It happens in real time - you hear or didn't hear - and speaker and hearer are prone to error. This is made worse as our ability to retain and recall speech degrades with time. All oral history must be taken with a grain of salt.
Accent and technique are important in speaking. China and Middle East states recruit speech teachers with UK and US accents. They have no problem as to who invaded Iraq, is colonial or capitalist. They want results! My friend teaches English in Saudi but does not use his Jamaican accent as they would run him. We diss returning residents with US or UK accents, so many switch back to patois for self-protection and we lose the benefit of their good speech models. Spoken English involves modulation, pause, intonation, pace, nuance, etc, and these convey meaning. We do not say "question sign" for a question, or "pause" for a comma while speaking; we use tone and pace of speech.
Children are born speech-ready; all the software is in place, just "plug and play". If a child does not speak English, blame the parent, not the teacher. Never speak a lot of "baby talk" to your kids. Fathers, put your lips close to the pregnant belly, speak and sing to the child-to-be. Don't tone down your English vocabulary for kids - just explain so they learn.
TOWER OF BABEL... a marker for speech in many languages
Our speech heritage is important. Our usual tonal values are in a range from stentorian to shrill. When in full voice, we sound like a quarrel. These speech registers make us good in debate but poor in seduction. The range for warm, caring, tender, romantic are not in our speech heritage. We are best in loud, aggressive, comedic or abusive mode, not in smouldering, passionate, silent seduction. We show love to our kids using the same tonal values as we threaten or we mourn. We rarely use the soft speech registers!
Patois is no threat to English. As a child we spoke "gypsy" and it didn't harm our English or our patois. In fact, we learned to manipulate speech. Age is no barrier to learning English speech. In India, to qualify for migration or to work in a call centre, people listen to BBC and VOA radio and practise to speak English. Wake up, Jamaica!
Physical fitness is important to speech. A full workout of lips, mouth, tongue, jaws; posture and breathing is the key. Ask Willard White or Jay Z and their speech coaches. They don't just "chuck a Red Bull" and wing it. This helps us ordinary speakers too.
Here are ideas which could spark a quantum leap in English speech skills:
*Ban speaking patois in school hours. Have you ever corrected a pupil for incorrect patois? No! It is not aspirational speech, it's lazy talk! Pupils and staff have 16 hours each day to speak patois outside. English only on school premises, please!
*We need speech heroes. Hotels, high schools and campuses should have a poet or speech artist in residence to create oral works, entertain and be speech models.
*Each English speaker must be a teacher. Let's encourage speaking English in the workplace. The speech apartheid of English in the office and patois in the workshop, farm or warehouse must stop. Poor parents would soon be able to correct their kids' English. Check this upstairs/downstairs chat between a dad, his kids and his maid. Enter the dad: "Gladys, ah deh bout, weh de pickney dem?" and he runs upstairs: "Boys please, I have told you repeatedly, no TV before the homework is done, please switch it off!" He runs downstairs: "Miss G, a weh yu hab yaso, a ungry, ungry soh tel!" End speech apartheid now!
* We need islandwide, knock-out elocution contests by age group, with good prizes.
Rhodes Scholar the late Hector Wynter and yours truly envisioned an institute of English to "finish" students up to executive levels. Along with Bobby Ghisays and Charles Hyatt, we also planned to read "Fakespeare" (Shakespeare with a twist) each week for anyone who wished to bring a cushion and sit on my lawn. Many have never heard Shakespeare declaimed by professionals. You can start a session in your community and begin an epidemic of mastery of spoken English. The state can't do everything! Selah!
Dr Franklin Johnston is an international project manager with Teape-Johnston Consultants, currently on assignment in the UK.
franklinjohnston@hotmail.com
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