I recently began to read Perry Gilmore’s book,
Kisisi (Our Language): The Story of Colin and Sadiki. It is a kind of autoethnography as well as linguistic case study and a memoir. In the prologue she tells the story of his son Colin and his playmate Sadiki, a Samburu boy in Kenya and how their unique and prosperous relationship led them to create their own private language, which was called a Swahili pidgin. She says that her book is an ethnographic exploration of young children’s ability and creativity in creating a language of their own.
In chapter three (I skipped the first two chapters, which I might return later) Gilmore discusses the role of play in her son Colin and Sadiki’s creative ways of communication. On page 37 she claims that the “play served as a space and a resource for the inventive verbal activities that generated their shared language." Gilmore goes into details how Colin and Sadiki created a lexicon for scatological artifacts, which to some degree influenced by sound play and onomatopoeia. She quotes Sutton-Smith who has suggested that play and fantasy are ground of generating new ideas that can even be used for later purposes. In the case of Colin and Sadiki, the entertainment aspect of their lives led them to linguistic invention in which the two could easily communicate.
This is interesting, but I personally didn’t find this English-Swahili-based creole something impressive or unique in a way that the author illustrates. In fact, this kind of creole is pretty common in developing countries, especially in societies with material deprivation. Further, this could happen anywhere in the world where the average household consists of at least five or six people. In such environment, rivalry among siblings are common and this is where children becomes creative. In order to compete with their siblings – even with their parents – over resources and positions, they devise new languages for communication.
I personally remember when I was very young, my brothers and I invented a language that was only apprehensible for us in the household. We were bitten a couple of times by older siblings and even by our parents for not talking the language that was spoken in the house. We were accused of speaking in the language of djinn and told us that the we would bring curse or spell hex on others.
Inventing creole was not unique to us, it was actually pretty common among children in our my village. When we were forced to quit speaking our pidgin language, we came up with a new idea. In our clique we decided to speak our native language
Hazaragi (a subdialect of Farsi) backward. We became so fluent that we did not see the need to switch back to normal, but when necessary.
So, the quesiton is why children of third world countries are able to create languages of their own and children in the modern world, let’s say the Western world, are not able to be that creative?
Well, the answer is very straightforward. As I mentioned earlier, the family size matters. We were eight siblings and had nothing to do at the house except fighting all the time, but never stayed inside. We left the house at the crack of dawn and returned when it was really dark. During the day no one needed us or came after us. We used to spent most of our time playing, climbing on trees, finding foods in the nature, sometimes even stealing fruits from trees of farmers. We were out with other children in the playgrounds, on the farm and in the mountains, we were experiencing our ultimate freedom. There was no adult watching us and telling us what to do and what not to do. We had nothing but to come up with something new and language was one of them. In order to be unique and keep our schemes secret, we invented language. No one was interested in our speech and when we grew up, we gave up once and for all. It is I personally still can speak my native language backward. I tried with my sister, she was surprised.
Anyway, Gilmore’s book is interesting, especially for people who may think Colin and Sadiki’s case were unique. In fact, in the Western context, it is unique, particularly where children spent most of their time either with their parents or technological tools, and they are given very little time to spend with their peers.
I might come back to this book later.
