Materials Honduran Black English Speakers Isleños I Linguistics ethnographies bilingual ed

Materials Related to the Black English Speakers and Isleños of  Honduras

Part I—A. Linguistic Studies, B. Ethnographic Studies, C. Bay Islander Bilingual Education Related Texts D. Science Textbooks books related to the Special Environment of the Bay Islands

By Wendy Griffin January 2015

A. Linguistic Studies

The principal person who has done linguistic studies of Bay Islands English of Honduras is Dr. Ross Graham.  He did his doctoral thesis on Bay Islands English while a Ph.D. student in linguistics at the University of Florida. This thesis is available from PROQUEST.com Dr. Ross Graham is currently Linguistics Professor at the University of Coventry in England.

He has done two other articles related to his study of Bay Islands English. His first article was mostly history of three different phases in Bay Islands English speaker history and did not contain much linquistic analysis. Ross Graham’s most recent article is in the book World Englishes, which he said also contains another article on Bay Islands English. This recent article includes both a history of the English speakers of the Bay Islands and a summary of the results of his linguistic study of Bay Islands English. English speakers in Honduras are also included in a book by John Holmes on Central American English.

Graham, Ross 'Partial creolization, restructuring and convergence in Bay Islands Englishes.' English WorldWide vol 26, 1: 43-76.

Graham, Ross’s article appeared as ‘Honduras/Bay Islands English’ appeared in ‘The Lesser Known Varieties of English  (2010) ed by Daniel Schreier, Edgar Schneider, Peter Trudgill and Jeffrey Williams. Cambridge University Press.

Graham, Ross (2012) "Bay Islands English" (Inglés de Islas de la Bahía) en Hopkins, Tometro, John McKenny and Kendall Decker (eds.) World Englishes: Vol. 3 Central America. London: Continuum.

 

Laura Herlihy is a Latin American anthropologist who was paid to collect samples of authentic Bay Islands English to analyze how different Bay Islands English was from Standard English for PRONEEAH (Programa Nacional de Educación para las Etnias Autoctonas y AfroAntillanas de Honduras), the national bilingual intercultural education program in Honduras. She chose to do this in the form of a cookbook of traditional Bay Islands food. As a write for hire contract, PRONEEAH, now DGEIM, holds the Intellectual Property Rights for this book, and they neither publish it, nor give her permission to publish it.

 

Laura Hobson Herlihy,(1996) Hawks, Chip, Grate, and Squeeze:  Recipes from the Bay Islands (Recetas de las Islas de la Bahía). (Wendy Griffin has a digital copy).

Candice Bergan "Wee Speak"  She was a Honduras This Week writer living in the Bay Islands and wrote a small book about Bay Islands English, especially special vocabulary in Bay Islands English. No US university seems to have a copy of this material.

 

Wendy Griffin did a study of Bay Islands English to see how different it was from standard English which was funded by the Extension Dept. of the  UNAH in Honduras, but after finding that the differences were not significant enough to cause problems in understanding written Standard English texts, she did not keep a copy of the study.  Although the differences are not enough to cause problems in understanding Standard English, which the children hear on the radio and TV from the time they are small, most North Coast English speakers and Bay Islanders even those who are teachers have problems producing, especially in written form, Standard English.  

 

Bilingual school teachers on the North Coast of Honduras like in Tela and La Ceiba say it is easier to teach Standard English to Spanish speakers than it is to those who speak North Coast English at home. North Coast and Bay Islands Native English speakers who try to take the sufficiency exam so that they do not have study English I at the university level usually fail it, because the precise things that are in English I like the s on the third person singular, the use of do and does in questions, the past tense, the plural, the verb to be are all unmarked in Bay Islands English.   Bay Islands English speakers also tend to accentuate words on different syllables than North American English speakers, and principally for this reason North American tourists have a hard time understanding them. Bay Islands hotels often prefer to hire bilingual Spanish speakers from the mainland or foreigners working illegally whose English is more easily understood by tourists than the English of the Native Bay Islanders. Many of the tourists who come to the Bay Islands are Salvadorans and Hondurans, and until very recently many Bay Islanders were also challenged to obtain this type of tourism employment by not having good Spanish language skills, which also affected their ability to finish high school or study at the university.

 

On the UNESCO Endangered Languages map on the Internet for Bay Islands English there is principally the comment, they are embarrassed to speak it. This map is not particularly accurate for Honduras. This issue of embarrassment is what I think is behind the comment of Bay Islands parents that they move to La Ceiba so that their children can go to an English speaking high school, but at the end of high school, they speak fluent Spanish and refuse to speak English. I think they become embarrassed that their English is different from what is taught in school which their Spanish speaking classmates have learned since kindergarten.

 

 Bay Islanders, especially adults, will code switch between the most Standard form of English they can produce with non-Bay Islanders to Bay Islands English between themselves, which is sometimes so different from Standard English that it is so unintelligible to me that I can not distinguish if they are speaking Garifuna or Bay Islands English.

 

B. Ethnographic Studies

 

Griffin,Wendy (2004) The History and Culture of the Bay Islanders and North Coast English speakers

.s114101627.onlinehome.us/files/Isleno.pdf

Includes foods, oral tradition, history. Most of these stories and information were originally published by Wendy Griffin  in Honduras This Week the English language newspaper, which is no longer online. I did a series of 3 articles called On the Road to Flowers Bay about the ghosts and dances that were associated with the road between Flowers Bay and Coxen Hole.

Griffin, Wendy (2004)  Los Isleños y Los Ingleses de Honduras:  Su Historia y Su Cultura, manuscrito inedito.  This is the Spanish versión of the book above which is in some libraries. (Digital versions of both English and Spanish versions are available.)

 

Griffin, Wendy (2012) Buscando Panes: Los Orígenes Africanos de las Comidas Afro-Hondureñas. Unpublished manuscript. Many of the Bay Islanders and Miskito foods are the same as Garifuna foods, but I have better descriptions of how they are made in my Garifuna book,  Griffin, Wendy and CEGAH (2005) Los Garifunas de Honduras. San Pedro Sula: Central Impresora. (Digital copy of Buscando Panes is available.)

 I did many articles on Honduras This Week about foods, including Bay Islander foods like Griffin, Wendy (1998) "Coconuts play Central Role in North Coast Cultures" (Cocos juegan un papel  central en las culturas de la Costa Norte)  and "Coconuts can be good medecine"   (Los Cocos Pueden Ser Buena Medecina), en Honduras This Week Online (Honduras Esta Semana En Linea), Mon. Feb. 2, 1998 at http://www.marrder.com/htw/feb.98/cultural/htm. I also did articles about coconuts dying due to Lethal Yellowing in the Bay Islands, and how Christmas was celebrated with special foods and celebrations among different ethnic groups in Honduras and in 1999 on the effects of Hurricane Mitch on the different Bay Islands.

Hay muchos artículos mios sobre la comida típica, la medecina casera, las danzas folklóricas, celebraciones navideñas, las ceremonias, las leyendas, de los afro-hondureños, indígenas y Ladinos, organizaciones isleñas como NABIPLA, APRODIB; BICA,  problemas ambientalistas en Islas de la Bahía en este periódico en inglés que estaba en el Internet, pero ya no está en el Internet.

 

Griffin, Wendy (2014) Entrevistas sobre Juegos Tradicionales Garifunas Tiempo del Truxillo Railroad, Honduras, 23 December 2014 www.crisisderechoshumanoshonduras2015.

blogspot.com  These interviews include some interethnic playing of games like “ringplays” the Garifunas and Black English speakers played together, and “Negros e Indios”, the Honduran variation on Cowboys and Indians. Also tops, hopscotch, marbles, Maypole, Barbarian Indian, and Black rag dolls used by both Garifunas and the Black English speakers in Puerto Castilla.

 

Brooks, Artlie (2012) Black Chest, Tegucigalpa: Editorial Guardabarranco. Historia de los Isleños y los negros de habla inglesa de la Costa Norte escrito por un Isleño miembro fundador de NABIPLA. La publicación fue financiada por la Secretaria de Desarrollo de los Indígenas y Afro-Hondureños. The first book published by a Black Bay Islander on the history of the Bay Islanders and includes anti-black riots that occured in the North Coast banana towns. Includes a medicinal plant section.

 

Susan Stonich’s book (?2003) “The Other Side of Paradise” is about the effects of tourism on the loss of land and culture by Honduran English speaking Blacks in the Bay Islands. Available on Amazon.com. Susan Stonich is an anthropologist at UC-Santa Barbara and formed part of a group of anthropologists studying traditional peoples living in Coastal Areas.

Flores, David (2003) La Evolución Histórica de la Danza Folklórica Hondureña.  Tegucigalpa: IHER.  (There is a chapter by Wendy Griffin on Bay Islander and North Coast English speakers traditional dances, costumes and clothes, and musical instruments) 23 universities in the US have this book.

 Flores, David Cesar Indiano, y Wendy Griffin (2012)  Hecho a mano: Una Panorama de la Artesania hondureña Unpublished manuscript. There is a good chapter on Bay Islander crafts. (Digital copy of this document is available.)

Martinez, Adalid (2012) Antropología Alimenticia. San Pedro Sula: Impresora Central. Has Wendy Griffin’s study of Bay Islander, Miskito, and Pech food and Virgilio Lopez’s study of Garifuna food. (Digital copy of this book available.)

3. Bay Islander Bilingual Education Related Texts

Textbooks in English for grades 1-3 Written by Bay Islander Artlie Brooks

Textbooks for Spanish as a Second Language Written by PRONEEAH staff under the direction of Dr. Ruth Moya. Wendy Griffin has done an evaluation of these, which will be put up on the blog www.crisisderechoshumanoshonduras2015.blogspot.com  and was part of the paper given at the Congress of the Association of Central American Linguists  (ACALING) conference in Tegucigalpa in 2013

Griffin, Wendy (2013) “Aspectos Políticos del Desarrollo de los Abecedarios Garífunas y Pesh y otros elementos De los materiales didácticos  para los Proyectos de Educación Bilingüe Intercultural de los Garífunas y los Pech y la Relación de estos Aspectos Políticos con la Pregunta-- ¿ Porque los maestros Pech y Garifunas Hondureños no utilizan las cartillas en sus idiomas y unos otros materiales didácticos preparados para ellos por PRONEEAAH (Programa Nacional de Educación para las Etnias Autóctonas y Afro-Antillanas de Honduras)? Paper based on the Presentation at the ACALING Conference in Tegucigalpa,August 2013.

 “Pasos Como Lograron Educación Bilingüe intercultural en Islas de la Bahía y Problemas Actuales en 2014”. 10 Diciembre 2014 On Wendy Griffin’s Spanish language blog www.crisisderechoshumanoshonduras2015.blogspot.com

“Proyecto de Educación Bilingüe Intercultural de los Isleños”. 9 Diciembre 2014. On Wendy Griffin’s Spanish language blog www.crisisderechoshumanoshonduras2015.blogspot.com

“Pautas para Organizar un Currículo de Enseñar una Segunda Lengua” 23 Diciembre 2014. On Wendy Griffin’s Spanish language blog www.crisisderechoshumanoshonduras2015.blogspot.com

Griffin, Wendy (1995) “Educación Bilingüe Intercultural entre los Miskitos, los Tawahkas, y los Isleños de Honduras”. Unpublished article in the possession of the author. (Scanned copy available.)

Griffin, Wendy (2013) Bilingual Education Stories  Anecdotes related to education before bilingual intercultural education and fighting for bilingual intercultural education mostly for Afro-Honduran groups. Unpublished. (Digital copy available.)

 

Herranz, Atanasio (2008) Estado, Sociedad y lenguaje: La Politica lingüística en Honduras. Tegucigalpa:  Editorial Guaymuras.  Includes a lot of information on political policies of the state towards Afro-Hondurans who spoke other langauges such as the Miskitos and The Garifunas. Does not include specifically the English speaking Blacks in his analysis of state policies.  The Honduran government felt a strong need to españolizar and Honduranize its Afro-Honduran populations on the Coast and in the Bay Islands, with “españolización” continuing as official Educational policy into the 1980’s.

Euraque, Dario A. y Yesenia Martinez (2013) La diáspora africana en los programas educativos de Centroamerica. Tegucigalpa: Editorial Guaymuras. Includes a selective bibliography of books on Central American Blacks.  There is very little overlap between the sources he cites and the books listed in my materials about Afro-Honduran resource materials. He shows that the experiences of Afro-Hondurans including slavery and their contributions are generally not covered in the curriculum of any Central American country for grades 1-9.

Griffin, Wendy (2014) Existen Días Especiales Dedicados a Celebrar las Contribuciones de las Etnias Afro-Hondureñas on her blog www.crisisderechoshumanoshonduras2015.blogspot.com  This corrects some errors in Dario Euraque’s book especially by not including about Mes de la herencia Africana (African heritage month—April in Honduras) and Garifuna Day in Honduras.

Griffin, Wendy (2013) “Central American Blacks Generally Absent From Central American School Curriculums”   HondurasWeekly.com in Culture. This is my book review in English about Dario Euraque’s Diaspora Africana book.

Griffin, Wendy (2013) Historic Roles of Afro-Latin Americans Left Out of Research Agendas, Public Schools and Libraries  Published by HondurasWeekly.com

D. Science Textbooks books related to the Special Environment of the Bay Islands

BICA (The Bay Islands Conservation Association) together with a Peace Corps volunteer did a book El Arricifre Coralino (The Coral Reef) which could used in Bay Islander schools.  I most remember looking at the book with the Bay islanders of NABIPLA and saying Oh look there is a blue wrasse, an aquarium fish in the US that is expensive. The Bay Islanders looked and said, “Yeah that is a good bait fish.”  Different ethnic groups value things in their environment differently.