Quote:Never came across this Trini 'slanguage' before ..... Tenks !!!
oh god! it have so much I only now begin. and I doh know all...not at ta'll.
look here Trinidad was Spang/french from the start.. very small pop up until the 18-teenth C, when the French revo gave a spurt to the pop.
but look what that spurt was...FRENCH MULATTO. then 8 years later the arrival of Ralph Abercromby brought an english/slave imprint on the Spang/French. and less we forget there was the original Amerindian that mus' account for something..some level of input however small.
so although by the 19-fifties african was the dominant cultural strain Titty never quite seemed fully african.
the French mulatto imprint on Titty is a very powerful one dating all the way back to the French beginnings under the spanish that grew from the 1789 'invasion' ....
brown skin people were and are very powerful element in the Trinidad reality.
I used to wonder about that..the strength of mulattos in Titty. they weren't afraid of anything and moved with a social confidence that did not belie their numbers. of course they had money... their chief financial power base the CLICO.
a name like Duprey has always meant power in Titty. and there has been much French Creole diffusion back into the black population. one can locate some of that blood in the names of black people..especially when their skin tones shade to the brown.
then from Abercromby and the slaves from 1797.....43 years later we have 'Indian Arrival' and Titty off to the races.
then there were/are 'Pottogee' who also made strong input. also Syrian Maronite Christians and Indian Muslims
and of course the French Creoles commanded jobs first in the economy. it used to sooprise me all the time to go to businesses like Lever Bros in Trinidad...in Champs Fleurs in particula...walk into the offices and be faced by only brown skin people..mostly lots of absolutely beautiful women you never really saw on the streets. and of course Champs Fleurs was an original mulatto centre in Trinidad.
but those Frenchies had a defining influence on Titty culture giving Carnival especially.
CANBOULAY IS THE BURNING CANE THE SLAVES AND THEIR DERIVATIVES USE TO LIGHT THE WAY ON CARNIVAL NIGHTS AND DARK HOURS MONDAY MORNING...CANE FLAMBEAU.
The english governor ban them but by that time Canboulay came to signify african carnival which was a thing segregated from the uppity carnival of the French creoles