If Language Is The Map That Charts Our Course

What is commonly referred to as 'broken English' or 'Creole' is, in fact, a non-standard, non-traditional form of English. I learned this in a class focused on the African American legacy, led by Ms. Fields, a white woman and head of the African American Studies department. During a class discussion on language, oral tradition, and continuity, she spoke to me about AAVE (African American Vernacular English) and Ebonics. As she spoke, I couldn't help but think about how our people were forced to assimilate, swallowing a continent that refused to blend with the enslaved syllables and silent letters that exist as scars across white textbooks. Those same textbooks claim that Creole is a borrowed language, as if this mixed and matched speech was only ever theirs to reclaim. As my professor informed us that speaking a language is a story of survival, I wanted to ask her...

"What's the value of broken English when trying to reconstruct your identity? Why cling to a mother tongue when it's a colonized language, a constant reminder of bastardization? I yearn to reclaim my speech, just as my father's tribe repatriated our people, Creole slaves who bravely crossed the Atlantic in search of themselves. I wonder if they ever found who they were looking for. Are the branches of the cotton tree what guided them, or did they ever need to ask for directions? When did they realize they were home?

They say home is where the heart is, but we're still Sierra Leoneans, bleeding from the mouth, haunted by the legacy of blood diamonds. Our existence is marked by nothing more than a muddied skull on the world map. So, my Creole has become a crutch, or rather, an amputee struggling to survive on phantom limbs. The broken jaw, severed tongue, and checkered smile still manage to call the kids home, a tug of war between what once was and what will be.

"Let my dialect be the voice of the resilient culture that still thrives, despite being bandaged and butchered. My accent is the reason why 'home' is spelled with the letter 'h'. I once thought my mouth held a dead language, trying to speak Creole felt like writing an epitaph, speaking my bloodline backwards, speaking us into existence. But if language is a survival god, then isn't this more like resurrection?

Doesn't this taste of the Frabei, the Mende, the Timne, prove our resilience? If the tongue is the strongest muscle, how dare you call our speech broken? It's as if you asked us to cast a spell, but instead, you gave us a caste system. You think yourself a soothsayer, and us a fractured bone or an open wound. But medical experts say the best way to stop bleeding is to apply pressure. And isn't that what diamonds are made of? Isn't that what this blood-soaked soil, spilled from our mother's mouth, gave birth to?

That's what I've been given, and doesn't that mean resilience comes with the territory? In my language, we don't just speak, we resurrect. We don't just communicate, we survive. And that's the power of our dialect, our culture, our resilience."

"We've learned to greet each other with a warm 'howdy buddy' instead of asking 'how are you?' Because time has taught us that every wound can be healed with the balm of music and life. We've discovered that even in the darkest moments, a song can revive and restore us. So, we say 'howdy buddy' as a reminder that every hurt can be harmonized into wholeness. Thank you for being a part of this melody we call life."