Photo by Justin Heap on Unsplash

Looking back 300 days

I feel really good that I’ve gotten this far. I’m still quite incompetent, but there are moments when it clicks.

The Enchantment of Creole

I spent two hours transcribing what I heard, trying so very hard to get the meaning. It was good practice, and I think I got about 30% of the meaning. I just had moments when I heard a set of phonemes and syllables and thought “I have no idea what this is—it’s just a jumble of sounds.”

Liv kreyòl ayisyen fini!

So tonight I finished my first-year kreyòl book. I’ve been in it since April 2022*, and it has been a source of instruction and frustration as every single time in my lessons I discovered yet another perplexing element of Haitian Creole.

Duolingo fini!

I thought that perhaps learning Haitian Creole would be interesting. I did not imagine that it would be a transforming experience.

One thing more

There is a glass bubble around white people in America and elsewhere, a bubble that lets us see through to the lives of others, but that protects us from questioning the wisdom laid down in our schoolrooms and homes and churches about what events “really mean.”

Day 270 of the Infinite Journey

What better way to find connecting with people than to learn their language well enough to listen to them, understand, and reply in their own language with the full context of their culture?

2-3-5 are prime days for learning

So much of what I’m reading now in my materials assumes a deep knowledge of Haitian culture and history, so that a simple phrase like “tèt kale” turns into a discussion about Haitian leaders and how the phrase is used not just to identify them but to make a pèsonifikasyon

M sispann!

I so much want to be able to speak and understand this language, but if I can’t do this outside the classroom, then I just don’t know the language.

Pwofesè, tèt mwen chaje

Man, today was rough. My tutor and I talked lasted week about my lessons. (This is my third tutor.) I…

Nou monte ansanm

Another update on my language journey: Last night I was given a text to read that I’d never seen before.…

So much more

Listen, this is hard work. Not just the language. That’s hard because it’s new. Learning a new language means learning…

Thoughts about the past six months

More than 190 days now of learning Haitian Creole.
A few things I’ve learned along the way, in no particular order:
#AprannKreyòl #KreyòlAyisyen

man in yellow and black plaid shirt sits on bed looking at camera

History as Cassandra

Let me bring in a little history for you today. Let’s talk about Haïti . . . Haïti was once…

I are progressing!

Learning kreyòl ayisyen is a challenge, no getting around that. But eventually, it does come together!

Do This in Remembrance of Me

There were some who could eat right at the altar of sacrifice and restoration with hearts so hard that they would deny food to their own brothers and sisters in community because “well, if they wanted to eat, they should have brought their own.”

To learn a language is to see a new world

Creole is the language of the people, made by the people. It’s not a language that was developed by the elites. It’s a language hammered out to help enslaved people from Africa find a way to communicate to each other as they were deliberately isolated from their own people to keep them incapable of resisting their enslavement by building a movement to overthrow their enslavers.

Am I fluent yet?

“Am I fluent yet?”
The answer is, of course, “No, not yet.”
But I did have a good session with my instructor today. I am learning kreyòl and I am speaking kreyòl.
And I will take that and hold onto it.

Not so fast there!

Now, I’m not dekouraje paske mo yo se difisil pou m konprann, Ignorance is part of learning, and I look forward to it. But this stuff still surprises me. Well, I’ll keep plowing/ploughing through this book, and I look forward to feeling ignorant again when the next book comes.
And I know I would drown in any secondary school in Haiti. Tèt mwen anpil chaje.

Almost half a year!

Learning to speak/read/write/hear Haitian has not only opened a door to a new language but also opened a new world of culture and history and social organization and food and music and art and religion that I simply wasn’t aware of. #Haitian #Kreyòl

More and more mountains . . . sigh

The more I dig into this language the more I find that I do not know anything at all. My initial appraisal of the language and the way to learn it is nearly entirely false. The initial methodology of saying simple phrases is helpful to build confidence, but Haitians do not talk like that.

Get off my lawn!

And as language is used to mark who’s in and who’s out, so it is used in context between those who are within the culture of Haiti and those who are, like me, without.

The fun of learning

The best way to learn is to simply do. I’m trying that. I first must try out the first moments of wobbling on this bicycle, afraid to hit the ground, but determined to go on ahead.