| Think that
people don’t read kweyol?
Well, think again, dear anglo-philiac. The first edition of the
Ministry of Education’s Kweyol Dictionary is
selling 10 times faster than a mid-week paper with half-naked girls
on its derriere.
During Kweyol Heritage
Month, St. Lucians ate it up like it was bwigo going out of season.
It is a phenomenal success by any local standard, but by kweyol
standards, it is almost revolutionary.
Bookshops in the north and south of the island are
calling up the Folk Research Centre for more and more copies so that
they can keep up with the demand. There are reports of dozens of
people waiting for a Castries bookshop to open so that they can get
a copy.
Skeptics would have thought that the Kweyol Dictionary might
have suffered the same fate as other major kweyol
publications like Testeman Nef-la, the kweyol Bible and
Jones E. Mondesir’s monumental $400 dictionary, with
its unique, creative othorgraphy. Even the easy-to-read Michael
Walker publications of folk fairy tales didn’t catch fire like this
latest addition to the literary heritage of what some consider an
illiterate culture.
The newest kweyol dictionary has
several advantages on the kweyol books
that went before it, however.
Mondesir’s dictionary might
have been popular, but the exorbitant price was disturbing even for
the writer, much less for the local public. One day, it might be
hailed as a landmark publication in the culture, but until then,
most people will never shell out the $400 they need to buy one.
The Kweyol
Bible, which was released a couple of years ago, provided some hope
that kweyol
people would soon start reading and writing in their native
language. But although Testeman Nef-la has been used widely in
churches, it is still not in wide use, even by kweyol readers.
And this is not because most kweyol speakers
can’t read, but because very few people are au courant with the
spellings of kweyol words.
The new dictionary might
be just the bridge that is needed to make readers of kweyol speakers
and to make kweyol speakers
of readers. It has everything going for it. At $10 it is one of the
cheapest books you will find on the market. Cheaper than even most
English dictionaries.
Not only that, but it was launched on the verge of Jounen Kweyol, meaning
that everyone was in the mood for a kweyol dictionary.
Any word on whether there is going to be a second printing?
You can count on it. According to John Robert Lee, one of the
Christian activists who are still looking for ways to boost kweyol
literature, "this popular new dictionary is an
important part in the evolution of St. Lucia and the kweyol
Caribbean".
"If you look at the development of culture and literature, even
in Germany, in England, etc., you will see that the first things
they publish are a Bible, some folk or fairy tales and a dictionary," he
explained. "Now that we have this dictionary added
to the body of kweyol
literature that already exists, we have the foundation that a
national literature can be built on."
This new success might give patois-phobiacs something new to rant
about. Already, the new dictionary is
becoming the target of talk show hosts who have nothing but contempt
for kweyol.
But as with all things that are super-successful, the more they talk
about it, the more successful it gets.
So there it is, your Christmas gift package for your reading
friends. A dictionary and a
bible, and maybe one of those traditional music CDs that the Folk
Research Centre has on sale. What more do you want? A kweyol
newspaper? | 
