Roro

My name is Rozevel Jean-Baptiste. I was born in Jérémie, Haiti, in the year 1957. After completion of my primary education at the Catholic institution Frères Paulin, my parents relocated to Les Cayes. There I attended the Lycee Philippe Guerrier, where I obtained my first baccalaureate in 1977; the following year, I received my second baccalaureate from Lycee Alexandre Petion, in Port-au-Prince.

From Oct. 1982. to June 1985, I was enrolled at the Centre de Linguistique Appliquée (CLA) of the Université d’Etat d’Haïti (UEH). After I completed my undergraduate studies, I boarded a plane to Paris, on October 14, 1985, with a scholarship from the Franco-Haitian cooperation to pursue graduate studies at the Université of Paris V – René Descartes. In June 1986, I obtained a Master’s degree in the Sciences of Language (with a Major in Semantactics, i.e. the combination and interrelation of syntax and semantics, and a Minor in Psycholinguistics). A ‘Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies’ (DEA), or post-graduate diploma, in Linguistics, will follow in June 1987. And, finally, in June 1992, I earned a ‘Doctorat Nouveau Régime’, or a PhD, in Linguistics, with ‘Mention très honorable’, that is With Highest Honors.

Like all students in Linguistics, throughout the course of my academic training, I explored all the avenues of the discipline. But, as it is customary to do, after graduation, I have settled into some sub-fields, most notably Lexicology (the branch of linguistics dealing with the use and meanings of words and the relationships between items of vocabulary) and Lexicography (the writing and editing of dictionaries), which have become my specialties.

As a matter of fact, my work experience has primarily been in Lexicology, Lexicography, Translation, Editing—from contributing as a translator to 3 special issues of the The Unesco Courier in Creoles (June 1987, February 1988, May 1988) to participating as a research associate in all aspects of the compilation of the Learner’s Dictionary of Haitian Creole (Dir: Albert Valdman. Bloomington, IN: Creole Institute, Indiana University. 1996).

Today when people ask me what I do for a living, and I respond that I am a public school teacher, they are usually puzzled, for they do not see why a linguist would be teaching in a public school. I tell them that when I communicate my love of language to my students, I see their eyes sparkle with wonderment. They ask so many questions, because they want to know so much: “How many languages do you speak?” “How is it possible…?” “When did you learn all this?” “I thought Latin was a dead language, what does it have to do with English?”

Being a linguist is not just a profession for me: Language is my passion! It seems that I was born to be language lover. Thinking back to my days as he child, and later as a teenager, it seems that everything in my upbringing predisposed me to becoming a linguist. I was always a language detective

and a lover of words. I can recall how important it was for children in my days to be able to tune to whatever was being said around them without letting the grown-ups know that they were listening to their conversations. Truth be told, the adults knew that we children were listening in, but they wanted us to be smart about it, to show that we could play the game. That was part of our initiation into the adults’ world, which would become our world some day.

When I was asked to become a columnist for the Haitian Times, I didn’t think too long before deciding on the topic that I would write about. It seemed obvious to me that I had to contaminate my readers with my passion for words. The first column of Dèyè Pawòl, Gen Pawòl was published on January 5, 2005. My readers and I still go ‘behind the words’ every week!

Welcome to my world! Welcome home! Welcome to Bagay Lakay! (Lakay-Graphics’ Blog)