“You talk… You speak the good French…”

“All Haitians speak Haitian Creole, but because of Haiti’s legacy as a French colony, French has remained an important marker of educational status among Haitians (Zéphir 2004) […] These Haitians enjoyed the prestige associated with being speakers of French, a language that invokes images of sophistication and refinement, and they relished being nicknamed ‘Frenchies’ (Woldemikael 1989; Zéphir 1995).”

An except from Doucet and Suárez-Orozco’s “Ethnic Identity and Schooling: The experiences of Haitian Immigrant Youth”

As a third generation American who is proud of their French heritage and an avid lover of the French language, this passage grabbed my attention for two reasons.

The first reason has to do with the superiority complex that is often found among the French in regards to the “less-refined” French dialects. As a non-native speaker living in France, I quickly found out that no matter what one’s level of proficiency is, the French can be merciless correctors of mistakes. At times it feels like the way you say something means more to them than what you are trying to say. However, after living in France for two years, I couldn’t help but to take notice of the double standard concerning the expectations of foreign language acquisition. For someone who wants to speak French, the expectation is near perfection, meanwhile French natives tend to be too embarrassed to even try to speak another language (let’s take English as an example) in front of a native (English) speaker.

The second reason this passage stood out to me is because of the parallel I saw between the native Haitian Creole speakers mentioned in the article and my grandmother who grew up in rural Nova Scotia where Acadian French was, and still is, spoken. She immigrated to New Jersey when she was only 16 and eventually learned English by constantly listening to “talk radio”. At the ripe age of 18 she married a dashing French immigrant who spoke “the good French” as she always said. Years later, their first child came home from school angry because his classmates said he “talked funny”. My grandparents immediately stopped speaking to their children in French. Since my grandmother had experienced the shame of “talking funny,” she couldn’t bear letting her children feel the same embarrassment she lived with.

These examples only give more reason for educators to find ways to communicate to their students that the cultural and linguistic backgrounds that they carry with them are valued and important in both the classroom and the real world.