Friday, October 24th, 2008
What's the third language?
Friday, October 24th, 2008 10:54 amThe guy working at the desk behind mine is an American, and asked us if we wanted to see what a USAn postal vote (or as he called it, absentee vote) looks like. The ballot itself and the instructions came marked in three languages. One was English, one Spanish; the third was not immediately obvious:
Enstriksyon Pou Votè Peyi Etranje Yo(Instructions for Overseas Voters.) It looked like it might be Romance from that, but there wasn't enough there for me to be sure these weren't all words borrowed from another language, so I read on:
Li enstriksyon sa yo ak anpil atansyon anvan nou make bilten vòt lan.(Read these instructions carefully before marking ballot.) The guys sitting around me thought it might be Portuguese, but it didn't look Portuguese, and I had a sneaky suspicion that it might be... But wait, first you have one more try:
Trè enpòtan. Pou asire w ke yo konte bilten vòt pou moun ki pap la w an, se pou w gen tan ranpli li epi voye li tounen bay Sipèvizè Eleksyon Miami-Dade lan le pli vit ke posib pa pi ta ke 7:00 p.m. (diswa) menm jou eleksyon an.Have you got it yet? My suspicions were confirmed when I found the page entitled "Enstrikson—Kreyòl". It's Creole. Read it aloud and you'll see it's like phonetically spelled slangily pronounced French (with a lot of loanwords). I found it fascinating: I've never actually come across Creole beforehand.