Pidgin, Patois, and Prestige

In a previous article, I talked about why Americans have different accents, and how it can affect your life. Essentially, there are innate biases some regions of America have against other regions that, despite accomplishments and other indicators of ability or intelligence, tend to give a poor impression of that person. This bias is why broadcast journalists will work to neutralize their accent before trying to work outside regional stations. If you pronounce "pin" and "pen" the same way, or otherwise have a heavy drawl, that may be fine if you're working in Tulsa, but if you want to make it to Chicago, Los Angeles, or New York, your accent has to change. This is depicted well in the film "Sweet Home Alabama," in which a young woman from rural Alabama finds success as a fashion designer in New York, but only after abandoning her roots and her accent.

This isn't just true in America. In England, a Cockney accent has been portrayed as uneducated and low-class for generations if not centuries. Correcting that accent is in fact, the basis of the George Bernard Shaw play, "Pygmalion" and the subsequent film, "My Fair Lady."

Grammar counts

However, there are more factors at stake than pronunciation. What you say is as important than how you say it, most likely more so.

There are bits in grammar that few if any are going to hold against you. Working in media my entire life, I recall a day early in my career when I was editing a piece written by a colleague, and I was pretty sure he should have been using "whom" in a sentence, rather than "who." I asked another editor, who had no idea. I asked our managing editor, who also had no idea. I finally looked it up and the sentence was in fact wrong, but overall it was a minor error. Who/whom, laid/lain, lie/lay, these are the types of errors people make all the time, even professionals, and they're really unlikely to affect your life most of the time. What may run you into trouble is your dialect, as evidenced by two examples I recently encountered.

I currently live in the South, where it's interesting to note that even among other Southerners who may have an accent, if you want to do an impression of someone who's unintelligent, you broaden your accent and use bad grammar, doubling or tripling negatives in a sentence, "don't pay no nevermind," or making up versions of words that make sense, but are grammatically incorrect, such as I heard one news commentator do, "I voted today and I made sure I was the lastest one, yes sir!"

That last point is important, because it shows that in listening to the person, you understood what they were saying, so they were communicating effectively, but they were not following the predominant rules of grammar, so the effect is, the person sounded stupid. The preferred accent and dialect are what is referred to as the prestige dialect. Essentially, the rules of grammar used by those who are more successful.

Patois, pidgin, and creole

The other example of the effects of dialect I saw was in an episode of "90 Day Fiance': Happily Ever After?". I'm not a big fan of reality shows, as they tend to have little reality involved, and they offer little positive reflection on people and society, but this series has been intriguing because it shows a lot about cultural differences between Americans and people from other countries such as Brazil, Venezuela, and Nigeria. In this case, an American businessman from Kansas City, Bilal, has recently married Shaeeda, a woman from Trinidad, and she expressed frustration when he corrected her grammar.

"I asked him if he wanted me to hot up his food. He said, 'What?' and I said, 'Do you want me to hot up your food?' He became upset and said, 'Repeat after me - the word is heat. Do you want me to heat up your food?' He corrects me all the time. I can't help it. I am from Trinidad. That's the way we talk."

The issue is that Trinidad, like other areas around the world, has a different way of speaking. In linguistic terms what they have can be called a creole, pidgin, a patois, or a dialect and the shades between them are essentially irrelevant. They start when two cultures meet and need to communicate but don't share a common language. In this case, areas like Trinidad, Tobago, Jamaica, even Hawaii had their own language until other cultures such as the British, Spanish, and French came and traded with or colonized them. English became the dominant language, but in a simplified form. Thus, "Heat up your food," which is the accepted (elite) grammatical form, became "Hot up your food." For another example, think of the Bob Marley songs, "Lively Up Yourself," or "No Woman, No Cry." The ideas are communicated, but not in a grammatically acceptable way.

Why is this important?

The example of Bilal and his wife is a perfect illustration of the problem. At home in Trinidad, Shaeeda was successful. Everyone talked like her, there was no issue. However, she and Bilal met and fell in love and she moved to the United States, where he has a thriving business. As Shaeeda and members of her family noted, the focus in America is on money, business, and success. The focus in Trinidad is on family, and the measure of success is having a happy family.

Bilal speaks perfect English, and while he makes time for his family, he has a laser focus on his business and what needs to be done to protect it. He loves Shaeeda, who is a beautiful, caring, intelligent woman. But essentially, her dialect could be a liability. If the two of them were to host a party or go to an event, while Shaeeda's accent would not likely be a problem, her dialect and use of grammar, which would be perfectly acceptable in Trinidad, could be seen as a poor reflection of her intelligence, which would also reflect poorly on Bilal and cost him business. It's unpleasant to consider, it's not particularly fair, but it is the reality of the situation.