Joe Parkin Daniels writes for the Guardian about an intriguing new movie:
Bad Lucky Goat is the first film ever written and produced in San Andres-Providencia creole, the distinct variant of Caribbean English spoken on Providence and its larger sister island, San Andres.
The movie – which tells the story of a brother and sister who accidentally kill a goat with their parents’ car on the eve of tourist season – is the first feature project by the Colombian director Samir Oliveros, who hopes the film can serve as a testament to the island’s language and culture.
“We knew from the beginning it was going to be 100% in creole, and in [mainland] Colombia, people don’t even know that they speak creole in Old Providence,” said Oliveros. “We wanted to showcase the island as it is – that’s never been done before.”
The creole spoken in Old Providence shares most of its vocabulary with English, and sounds close to typical Caribbean English, though it borrows certain phrases and grammatical tics from Spanish and a host of African languages.
The trailer looks good, the music is delightful, and of course it’s fun to hear the dialect, but I’d almost be willing to post about it just for the title Bad Lucky Goat. Although the actual title seems to be Day of the Goat — it’s a bit confusing. Anyway, thanks, Bathrobe and Yoram!
In my (limited) experience the second description (“sounds close to typical Caribbean English”) is more accurate than the first (“the distinct variant of Caribbean English”). I’m sure that someone with a thorough knowledge of, say, Jamaican English would notice that the English of Providence and St Andrews (as my informant called them) was different, but a casual listener wouldn’t notice.
My late father-in-law was professor of chemistry at the Universidad del Magdalena (Santa Marta), and once when we visited his department he said beforehand that the head of the department was an Argentinian woman. When I met her I was surprised by several things: although more or less white she looked more Caribbean than Argentinian; her English was completely fluent and understandable (better than pretty much any other Argentinian that I have known); she sounded to my ears like a Jamaican. In particular, why would an Argentinian speak English with a Jamaican accent? Over lunch most became clear. Her husband was from Providencia, and she had lived there and spoke English every day. I’ve forgotten how she came to have Argentinian nationality.