Mauritian Creole has taken another step in the right direction. Not only has Grafilarmoni, a report on harmonising its spelling, been published but it has also been welcomed by all parties. The government will study the proposals in the report but it has already made it clear that it should be used to give every child the chance to succeed in school.

Vinesh Hookoomsingh, the chairman of the committee which worked on Grafilarmoni, has much experience in the field; he produced a dictionary with Philip Baker 17 years ago. His aim was to sum up all the different possible spellings and put them together to obtain a spelling accessible to all. This was the government’s wish when it ordered the report. “The most important thing is that, for the first time, the State has decided to officially recognise a standard spelling (…). For a language to be officially recognised, the adoption of a spelling is something historical,” Vinesh Hookoomsingh explains.

Dev Virahsawmy, who has always fought for the recognition of Creole at all levels, believes the report has come at the right time, when the country looks ready to accept it.

The government shows a real will to recognise the Mauritian mother tongue as a structured language. The minister of Education, Steven Obeegadoo, pointed out “the main reason for school failure is that we’ve ignored the pupils’ mother tongue when teaching them how to read, write and count so far.” He has appealed to every stakeholder to behave in a responsible way so as to allow Creole to be implemented at school.

Likewise, the Catholic Church, which had taken part in a first step towards standardisation with Dev Virahsawmy, totally agrees with the way the report was done.

A technical committee should be set up in the near future so that more precise questions concerning the spelling can be dealt with. Vinesh Hookoomsingh is adamant that the committee’s proposals can –and should – be subject to developments. A language is made to evolve and Creole will have to experience changes as time goes by. The minister of Education is of the same opinion: “It is a question of harmonising and not making it uniform. It is the population that must use this tool to bring it to its full development.”