REZEDENTS RIGHTS & RISPANSABILITIES: THE REST OF THE STORY
(3) Professor Salikoko Mufwene, chairman of the linguistics department at the University of Chicago and an expert in English-based creoles, says the brochure phonetically reproduces the sound of Caribbean English and bears some resemblance to Jamaican patois. Jamaicans write notes and such in patois, but it’s considered slang, and no one in Jamaica would write a formal government document that way. The HUD brochure reflects “a demeaning attitude, a condescending attitude,” says Mufwene, a Congo native who studied patois in Jamaica. “It’s like saying, ‘If we wrote this in regular English you wouldn’t be able to understand it.’” Jamaicans are taught standard English in school; any Jamaican who can read reads standard English.
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(8) A proof of the translation arrived at the GPO and was sent to HUD for approval. The proof was returned with “OK to print–no corrections or changes” checked off, accompanied by the note, “To the best of my knowledge, OK to print. This is a Haiti type of Creole. [Signed] Sylvia A. Miller.” Miller is a manager in HUD’s multifamily housing office. The GPO gave the go-ahead to print. Unexplained discrepancy: the GPO says it contracted for 5,719 copies, but HUD says it got only 2,000.
