General Notices

The Departments of Modern Languages and Linguistics (DMLL), and Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA) co-host International Creole Day (Jounen Kwéyòl Entennasyonal) activities under the theme, Moving Forward Together (Annou Alé Ansanm (AAA)).

The day includes guest lectures by Prof. Raphaël Confiant, Université des Antilles, Schoelcher, Martinique and Wendy Dyemma, Director, Alliance Française, Port-of-Spain. You can also look forward to poetry and theatre performances by Louis McWilliams, Director of DCFA and Dr. Travis Weekes, and Theatre students of DCFA and Linguistics and French students of DMLL.  

Join the commemoration on October 25 from 1.30 to 4pm at the Centre for Language Learning.

For additional queries, please call 662-2002, 82036, 83280, 82623 or email Jo-Anne.Ferreira@sta.uwi.edu.

About International Creole Day

International Creole Day is celebrated annually on 28 October, having started in St Lucia as Jounen Kwéyòl in 1983. The month of October itself was later designated as Creole Month (coinciding now with Calypso History Month. In the Caribbean, French Creole/Kwéyòl/Patois in the Caribbean is the second most spoken language after Spanish, with over 13 million speakers in 10 countries in the region and throughout the diaspora. (English and English Creole follow in third place.) In France, French Creole is the most widely spoken of the 10+ regional languages of France, with almost 3 million speakers. In honour of International Creole Month (Mwa Kwéyòl Toupatou Asou Latè-a), the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (DMLL - Linguistics and French) and the Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA - Theatre) will co-host the UWI Creole/Kwéyòl/Patois Day ( Annou Alé Ansam (AAA) : Moving Forward Together ), focusing on Caribbean French Creole (Dominican, Guadeloupean, Guyanais, Haitian, Martinique, St Lucian, Trinidadian, Venezuelan), a heritage language and culture of Trinidad since 1783.

Some famous Caribbean French Creole speakers include Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Sylvester Devenish, Léon de Gannes, three Caribbean Nobel Prize winners (Sir Arthur Lewis, Saint-John Perse and Derek Walcott), Aimé Césaire, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Jean Rhys, the Mighty Sparrow, Holly Betaudier, Dame Pearlette Louisy, Baroness Scotland, Thierry Henry, Marie-José Pérec, Wyclef Jean, and many more, in all walks of life, across the Caribbean Sea. Trinidad and Tobago is the home of the first grammar of any French Creole anywhere in the world was produced by Trinidadian John Jacob Thomas in 1869, almost 150 years ago.

This event foreshadows the 150^th anniversary of that milestone in 2019, and Patois will be included in the lineup of languages in the 20th anniversary celebration of the UWI Inter-Campus Theatre Festival in 2019.

The commemoration features guest lecturers from Martinique and Guadeloupe, renditions of Sparrow’s Patois calypsos and more, Derek Walcott’s poetry and theatre performances by Louis McWilliams and Dr Travis Weekes, and Theatre students of DCFA and Linguistics and French students of DMLL.