For the past several decades, a trend has been emerging across the post-colonial world: the development and institutionalisation of native languages. The Caribbean is no exception. Creole languages, especially those in the Dutch Caribbean, the Guianas, and the Francophone islands, have slowly been gaining recognition both in their educational systems and in some cases, legislation. This trend first emerged in Curaçao following the Trinta di Mei uprising, which resulted in a reworking of the island’s relationship with The Hague. The black majority was allowed into the island’s administration, and an ensuing cultural revival resulted in newspapers, books, and popular media being published in the native creole language, Papiamentu– for hundreds of years prior known only as “broken Spanish”. Eventually, a standard writing system was developed and the language was made official in 2007. Haiti also adopted its creole as an equal official language in 1987.

There is no reason why this cannot happen in Antigua and Barbuda. With the adoption of Spanish as the “second official language” earlier this year, it has been proven that the government is capable of initiating the reforms necessary to transform a marginalised ‘vernacular’ into one that can be used in education, public signage, and communication between this country’s citizens and its government.

While both Antiguan and Barbudan Creole and Spanish are looked down upon by many in this country’s society, the way this discrimination manifests is quite different. The 2008 CPA Report finds that the Spanish-speaking population is among the lowest income in the country, and the 2011 census finds that they are among the most likely to be foreign-born. Much of the opposition to the adoption of Spanish as official is based upon xenophobia and perceived economic issues in contrast to other languages being considered for official status in informal public discourse, namely Mandarin Chinese. Antiguan and Barbudan Creole however is almost exclusively spoken by people of Antiguan and Barbudan descent. As this group is the majority population, a different type of hatred had to develop: one known by many in the region as ‘self-hatred’. A type of self-hatred that causes the language to be viewed as lesser, as a mere dialect of English. Michael Aceto stated in his 2002 study of Barbudan Creole that many even refer to their language as “scrap language”– in contrast to the linguistic consensus that Antiguan and Barbudan Creole is an entirely independent language in its own right, not in any way a corruption of the English language. Antiguan and Barbudan Creole has its own grammatical system, vocabulary, and even provisional writing system based upon the research of various creole-language researchers.

Many claim that adopting this country’s majority native language as official would cause harm: that it would make the country less competitive on the international market and that English fluency would only go down. This could not be further from the truth. While detailed data is not currently available for Antigua and Barbuda itself, data from Jamaica, which has a similarly conservative policy about its creole, shows that in 2005, only 63.5% of Jamaicans could speak Standard English. Even accounting for the socioeconomic differences between the two countries, it is still more than likely that a significant, vulnerable population in Antigua and Barbuda lacks English fluency. Research on other islands suggests that the gap between creole speakers and English speakers is caused by inefficiencies in the education system, particularly at the primary level. While code-switching between Standard English and Creole is briefly covered in modern primary school English textbooks, the language itself is rarely, if ever incorporated as a subject of instruction in its own right. Most students in Antigua and Barbuda arrive at primary school as native speakers of Creole, but many struggle to adapt to Standard English due to the perception that they’re only speaking a different dialect, rather than a different language. A 1979 paper by Dennis Craig recommended that schools in nearby Saint Kitts adopt a bilingual approach– one that encourages Creole rather than dismissing it.

Today, many countries in the Caribbean are exploring the institutionalisation of their respective creole languages. The Jamaican Language Unit at the University of the West Indies is exploring the official adoption of Jamaican Patois to protect the human rights of monolinguals, and Saint Lucia and Dominica already publish government broadcasts in their creole. Antigua and Barbuda following the trend would bring government, education, and culture closer to all Antiguans and Barbudans. It is already part of daily life and there is no good reason to suppress the language’s independent development by depriving it of official status.