On what basis do you claim to know more about Africa than I do? Do you know me, to make such a comment? Do you know the very extensive contacts that I have had with Africans, especially those from Nigeria and Ghana? I happen to have been into village Africa and I happen to have observed certain things.
By definition of me being Afro Caribbean and you being African American makes me more African than you. This means that I am able to better penetrate beyond the urban areas and elites than you can, and also beyond the show that Africans will display to impress you, who they see as a westerner. So I am not fooled by any western Façade, and I am also fully knowledgeable of the fact that there is a vast cultural gap between the westernized elites of the major cities, and the ordinary people of the remote villages.
Unlike you I see it as is, and not as some attempt to pretend that we are all "brothers united by black skin" which seems to be your motivation.
I can also display youtube videos with Trinidadians singing in Yoruba, and interestingly the same songs which they sing Cubans also know. Its just like a liturgy among the very traditional Catholics who might still use Latin, or Muslims of all geographic origins using Arabic.
But the fact that the language is used in religious ceremonies doesn't mean that it is used daily. You see this is where you reveal your ignorance of what being an African is.
Now go and find a youtube with black Cubans playing dominoes, feeding their kids, or going shopping and speaking Yoruba. You will not find that, because they will speak Spanish, indeed almost identical to that spoken by other Cubans. Their speech being more defined by their region, and their social class than by their race.
As to your Bozal. It has mainly died out except in certain Maroon communities in Colombia. It no longer exists in Cuba. Yes there are CONTEMPORARY African influences in Cuban speech, but then the same can be said for virtually every where in the Caribbean. But the fact remains that the dialects spoken throughout the non Hispanic Caribbean retain greater distance from the standard forms of the languages spoken.
The reason is simple. And that is in Cuba blacks were a MINORITY, were numerically dominated by the Spanish, and so their speech became integrated into standard Spanish, with some modification. In places like Haiti and Jamaica black slaves dominated the islands, and were socially remote from the whites, and so weren't forced to fully adapt their speech patterns to meet the rules of standard French/English.
4 - Bozal Spanish of Cuba - University Publishing Online
So I await your videos of Cuban blacks speaking Yoruba while playing dominos. According to you, even though only 15% of the slaves to Cuba were brought from the Bight of Benin (not all being Yoruba) this is the virtual daily language used in black Cuba.
Krio Sierra Leone: Oonoo goh fuh lun how fuh taak krio.
Creolese Guyana: Ayoo gah fuh lorn how fuh taak creolese
Patwa Jamaica: Oonoo "af fi lern "ow fi taak patwa.
If you don't see similarities there God bless you. BTW on a trip where they were African Americans the locals spoke pidgin English with us, basically laughing at the African Americans and their need to pretend to be African. They knew that the AAs had no idea of what they spoke, whereas we understood, once we got the hang of the accent.
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