Adjusting

British Hondurans spoke Creole, a sing-song dialect similar to the speech in the British West Indies. In the schoolroom, private or public, pupils were taught (forced) to speak English. Still, they emerged with strong Creole accents and reverted to pure Creole among themselves.

Creole is a colorful language, based on English, but with altered grammar and pronunciation and an abbreviated vocabulary. Perhaps because of the latter, phrasing can be quaintly colorful. Although the gracious old British Colonial ways of speech are disappearing, not long ago [mid 1990’s], a neatly dressed young boy approached me begging, “Please for half a dollar that I might catch a bus.”

Our Children

A major problem for Bucher and me as our two impressionable children settled into life in Belize was language. Bucher had a soft Georgia accent and I was easily recognized as having been brought up in the Midwest. We both were educated and made sure that Alex developed a sense of proper grammar as he acquired a vocabulary somewhat faster and more extensive than we expected.

By the time we moved into the Eyre Street house, Bucher and I were becoming alarmed at the change in Alex’s speech from American to Creole. He did what any child would do, adopted the speech patterns of his school friends and most of the people around him. After worried consultation behind closed bedroom doors, Bucher and I devised an answer.

“Alex,” I announced one day, “English is your first language. When you are in the living room with us, we expect you to speak it. When you walk through the door into the kitchen, or when you are with friends, you may speak Creole, if you like.” To our delighted amazement, it worked. Alex was perfectly happy with the new rules and we had our little Southerner back.

As for Carli, she decided it was time to start talking and did so, in long, incomprehensible, Creole paragraphs. Alex had to interpret for her for about six months. By that time Carli, too, had learned the bilingual house rules and out-performed us all by developing a beautiful, soft voice with an accent in English tinged with both British and the Georgia-Southern acquired on her regular visits to Bucher’s Atlanta family.

 

Carli is just as lively as ever…and growing so fast! Just wait till you hear her talk! She still was talking relatively little when we came down, so she is learning the local Creole from Sonia and her little playmates. It is hysterical to hear her. Her a’s are broad ah’s (Dahddy, mahn); she swings the end of each sentence up in the air in the sing-song Belize way, ending on a high, almost singing note. And she uses all sorts of quaint local expressions, just as Alex does, of course:

What you want I must do now?

I’m going to give Peggy a hail.

I don’t like that a-tahll (at all), a-tahll, a-tahll!

Adult Americans

Language could be more perplexing for the adults. British Hondurans were not as familiar with American accents as they were with British. I was completely adrift with Creole. Even when shop clerks, bank tellers, and post office employees spoke to me in English, we found ourselves stumbling through endless misunderstandings.

One day when Mama (Bucher’s mother) was visiting, she left me in the grocery store and bravely crossed the street to Brodie’s, one of Belize’s largest stores, to buy some emery boards.

In Brodies, Mama found the right counter and made her request of the pretty clerk:

“Do you have emery boards?”

“Yes,” was the polite reply.

“May I please have a package?”

“They’re finished, Mum.”

Mama began again: “Do you have emery boards?”

“Yes, Mum.”

“May I please have a package?”

“No, Mum,” the clerk replied patiently, “They’re finished.”

Mama became a little heated. In her best dowager manner she asked very slowly, very distinctly, and somewhat loudly, “Will you be kind enough to give me a package of emery boards.”

Fortunately, I arrived as the clerk was replying, “They’re finished,” and just before my beloved mother-in-law erupted like an overdue volcano.

“Mama,” I explained soothingly as I led her away from the counter to the clerk’s great relief, “She is telling you that, yes, they normally carry emery boards, but, no, they do not have any in stock right now. They are finished.”

 

A more complicated conversation took place in October of 1969 when I telephoned the General Post Office (GPO) to find out the new schedule of mailing times for foreign airmail.

Usually the GPO printed the schedule so that people would know what time mail was collected for the few weekly flights. Two airlines, Transportes Aéreos Nacionales (TAN) of Honduras and Transportes Aéreos Centroamericanos (TACA) of Salvador, each had two or three flights a week between Belize and the United States. However, their schedules had changed, the GPO had not issued a new mail-closing list, so I decided to get the information for myself.

This proved a major mistake. I felt that I was in a time warp as I tried to make sense of the surrealistic replies to my questions. By the time I hung up in bafflement, I was so amused that I went directly to my typewriter and reconstructed the conversation as nearly verbatim as I could. The brown-edged and tattered report is in front of me as I copy it here. Except for indications of who is speaking and how, the following is exactly as I wrote it, without editing.

Kate dials 2330: Post Office, The General Office, Paslow Building.

Clerk (liltingly): Post Office General Office.

Kate: Will you please give me the new schedule of airmail dispatches?

Clerk: ???????????????

Kate: The new schedule of mail closings—the times mail must be deposited at the Post Office to go out by air to other countries. The changed schedules since the airlines have put in new flight schedules.

Clerk: Oh, you will have to call the Post Office for that.

Kate: I’m sorry. I thought this was the Post Office.

Clerk: ????????? I’ll call him.

Him: Post Office. May I help you?

Kate (now we’re getting somewhere): Will you please give me the new schedule of airmail dispatches?

Him: You drop it in the slot.

Kate (attacking from a new direction): The Post Office publishes a list telling what time a letter must be mailed to catch the plane to go to other countries. Do you have one of those lists? Or can you just tell me over the telephone what times the mails close for transmission to the United States, or Canada, or England, or Mexico?

Him (happily): You can get a schedule from TAN.

Kate: Is TAN the only airline that takes airmail out of Belize or does TACA carry mail, too?

Him: You can get a schedule from TAN and another one from TACA.

Kate: Fine. Now can you please tell me how far ahead of flight time the letter must be mailed?

Him: Twenty minutes.

Kate (astounded at newly unearthed Belizean efficiency): Do you mean that twenty minutes after I mail a letter through the slot at the General Post Office it has gotten itself up the airport road, onto the plane, and into the air?

Him: Yes. The plane lands and twenty minutes later it takes off.

Kate: All right. Let’s go back to the Post Office. Do you have the new list…

Him: Yes, at the Post Office, you drop the letter in the slot and it goes into a mailbag when it is time…

Kate (breaking in frantically): …and about the right time…

Him: …we take the mailbag out and dump the letters on a table and we look at the addresses and they go through a sorting machine and we put them back in mailbags and the mailbags go to the airport and are put on the plane.

Kate: I seeeeee! Well then, how far ahead of time do you want me to mail my letter so that it will be sure to get on that plane?

Him: You ought to bring it in right now.