Eating or taking

Every culture, or sub-culture for that matter, has their own language. Sometimes the language is made up of a mixture of different languages such as Patois (a French/English mash-up spoken in Trinidad) or, more commonly, a mixture of re-defined English words and truncated grammar.

Living in the Caribbean, with its many small micro-cultures, all co-existing in close proximity, creates not only a tolerance for but also an appreciation and understanding of the variances in dialect.

A Trinidadian friend of mine, living in Canada for quite a number of years, visited Barbados on business recently and though well versed in the various Trinidad dialects, was out of practice with dealing with different nuances, after all he had been exposed to the language of Canadian English as his only verbal communication for so long that his intuitive grasp of local dialect was rusty.

At the cashier of the local fast food outlet, after placing his order, he was asked, “Eating or taking?” To which he replied, falling back on the old Trinidad statement that conveyed the message that I did not understand you question, “Eh!”

“Eating or taking?” the cashier repeated, this time with a slight tone in her voice that said, you dumb or what! answer quickly nuh! De line getting’  longer.

My friend, recognizing the tone, began to think quickly, what is she’s asking? Eating or taking? Surely she can’t be asking if I intend to eat the food I just ordered, since this is a restaurant and they serve food, they must expect me to eat it. And taking, the food will be handed to me over a counter, like every other fast food restaurant, so I must also take it.

Looking at the cashier’s face for clues my friend was greeted with the bored, lights-on-but-nobody’s-home refection of a woman who has spent too many hours at the same job asking the same questions and who’s only ambition is to finish her shift without encountering too many stupid customers.

With the realization that an answer was expected to allow the completion of my friend’s transaction, he reverted to the tried and true Trinidad response to get the question repeated, “Eh!”

“Eating or taking?” the cashier  repeated exasperatedly. To which my friend replied, with a smile as though only now understanding, though all he did was take a stab in the dark, after all it couldn’t be eating, that was too obvious, so it must be…”Taking.”

The cashier smiled in return and handed him his change and directed him to the other end of the counter to collect his food.

When he returned to my car and explained what had happened, I laughed and explained to him the Bajan’s propensity to chop words in their dialect. What the woman was asking him was if he was planning to eat in or take out the food he had just ordered, but after so many times of saying the same thing over and over in got shortened to, eating or taking.