Beginning Crucian with Mami

I originally posted about this on the Facebook page and realized that I had not posted about it on the blog, I sincerly apologize for that.

You might notice a new tab on the blog’s menu “Crucian with Mami” well that’s there because I started a mini-series in an attempt to teach my children Crucian.

On December 19, 2020, I decided I was going to do something about the fact that my son doesn’t speak the local creole from where we were born, this is what I posted on Facebook:

Being an Expat parent is not easy especially when your child speaks only the community language and not your mother tongue so today I’m starting a mini-series: Crucian with MamiIn Crucian (the creole of St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, where I’m from) we call our mother’s Mami. My son stopped calling me Mami when we moved to France in 2015, social pressure, everyone calls their grandmother Mamie and their mother Maman. It’s an indescribable feeling going through a terrible pregnancy, waiting 9+ months for your child to finally call you Mami, and then just like that in the blink of an eye, it’s taken from you. It felt like he forgot me. I understand fitting in when out and about in public but I had hoped that we could still keep a little of our culture at home. As it is now my son doesn’t talk to any of my family, he says he doesn’t understand them because he only speaks French. I don’t want this for my children so from today, we are going to be doing Crucian classes with Mami. My classes will teach the difference between standard English and Crucian, we’ll listen to Crucian music, hopefully, eat Crucian food, and read Crucian literature. As we say in Crucian “Leh we go!” (Let’s go!)

Crucianize

I started going over the language and trying to figure out the most important aspects of it so that I could teach the children. I decided I would start with the word Deh, I recorded a sound clip and soon realized that it would be much better to start with pronouns in Crucian.

For the first lesson, I covered the two forms of I used in Crucian.