I mentioned once before, after living away from Trinidad and Tobago for 6 years, how the Trinbago accent and manner of speech grates upon my ear, like long fingernails screeching down a chalkboard. Of course, the radio and television reporters worsen the situation with their forced ('force-ripe' as we say) pseudo-American accents. Gone are the days of Jones P Madiera, Dale Kolasingh, Brenda De Silva. Instead we are stuck with the likes of Astil Renn, Kristy Ramnarine and Shelly Dass.
Quite possibly, the only places that speak worse than us might be deep south of the USA, and the Jamaicans.
But it isn't only our speech that shames us internationally. It is also our attitude; I've mentioned this even more often.
Recently, a Trinidadian I know in Birmingham mentioned a television programme shown here in the UK, called 'CARIBBEAN COPS'. The show follows police officers (dunceys in TnT) around the Caribbean as they go about their crime fighting duties.
In one episode (and this is shown publicly here and is a matter on record), the camera crew followed two dunceys as they went around checking out females arses. No lie!
They went into graphic details as to the types they liked, how they specifically wanted the roundness and/or highness of said body part... totally crude and imbecilic.
As I heard this, my mind froze, then went into a kind of crazy overdrive, with questions popping into my brain so fast I got dizzy.
First of all, I know for a camera crew to follow police around, permission would have to be sought and given from the Ministry of National Security and the police brASS.
The question that then occurred was: Did they see the tapes before the crew left the island and if not, why not? If they did, did they agree that the comments were okay?
Then I thought, did these two morons have no brought-upsy, no manners, no respect? Of course not; that's why they joined the police - nowhere else would they be accepted to fill a position (even though I must mention here, my lawn needs cutting!).
So here we have two dunceys with the combined brain power of an ant representing us to the world - well, at least Europe. Oddly enough, it's where the majority of our tourists come from, won't you know.
Once again, the world laughs at us, because we have ably demonstrated we are not ready for the world stage, or 2020. No surprise there.
