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Language and Memory
Yesterday I was talking with my Haitian friends in Haitian Creole for about an hour as we were planning how to set up our class to teach Haitians how to speak American English. Per my request, they talked a little more slowly and with fewer idioms than usual (although they did throw in an idiom that I got right away with my brain rapidly connecting the imagery with cultural aspects of Haiti, and man did that feel good that I did that!).
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M toujou ap aprann – I’m still learning
One day I’ll be good enough to interact with native speakers who don’t know me and who don’t give me grace for my mistakes.
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Thoughts on My Last Day at Work
I had my retirement lunch today with my team, along with a few people who showed up unexpectedly from past, and it was really wonderful. I am just myself at work the same as I am in life. I put people first, mentor people and coach them, treat them as unique and wonderful and worth loving. I’ve done my job as a technical editor as a job that I loved, but still, it was a job. It used my passions and skills and talents. But the more important part was helping other people improve their skills, find their passions, and be released into what made them who they were. Not…
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When We See Them
I’ve come to know many Haitians who are delightfully unique in their outlook on life as they are in their accents and vocabulary, which gives me no end of headaches as I try to figure out yet another idiom or unique word play I need to understand so that I can grasp their meaning.
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Chèmèt chèmètrès
Adventures in translation This was my “wrapped the chain around the axle” moment today. My assignment this month is to read a long-form essay, understand it, and then read it out loud & record it for my professor. It’s not a terribly difficult essay, but it taxes my brain because it’s a lot of content to read with comprehension well enough to explain it. Then I came across this word: “chèmètchè-mètrès”. Having no clue what this might be, I looked it up in my dictionaries (plural). No entry. I used Google to search the web. In all the world, this essay is the only place where it occurs. I have…
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Two Things
Back in July or August of 2023 my left thigh started bothering me. Certain kinds of clothing irritated the heck out of it, but even without anything touching it, I’d have this numb-prickliness
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My Year So Far
My previous post was in January of this year. It's just turned June. Where did the time go?
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Great Unexpectations
Why does the world exist the way it does that a people confined to a third of an island in the Caribbean are seen as less-thans? How do they grapple with the faith that comes from white people to their land, given to them to give them hope, and yet used as a tool by those same white people to call them despicable names and degrade them?
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What I’ve Learned in 2023
I wanted to reflect upon what I learned this year, and also think of how my knowledge will affect my choices and behaviors in the new year…
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My First Foray into the Field
I had already decided to make my order entirely in Haitian Creole. Which was a good choice, because the staff at the restaurant were not speaking English.
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When the Pot Gets It Wrong About the Kettle
The oppressing side in its acts of oppression is doing wrong by nature. There is no “just” oppression. Whether it is cruel or superficially “kind,” oppression is wrong and cannot be redeemed either by language or a reduction in cruelty.
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Eighteen Months In
Well, I will continue my journey. It’s been a wonderful adventure that not only has helped open up a language and a culture and a people I never knew before, but also has changed me in how I see the world and understand those who live in.
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Seeing with a New Tongue
in those decades of following Jesus, I’ve listened to uncountable sermons and Bible studies, often led by people with great earnestness, who have said “oh, if you only knew the Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic you’d see stuff in the scriptures that are hidden to you because you only know English.”
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Ki kote m ye?
It is weird to me that I can read these materials and kinda get the gist of them, but golly they are way more complex (to me) as an English-speaking student who has so little comprehension of Haitian culture and idioms.
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Update on the Language Journey
It’s been a while since I last updated what I’m doing as I’ve been on the journey to learn Haitian Creole. I started in March of 2022, just after Duolingo released its course in Haitian Creole, and after a month of daily practice I realized that I was just learning some words and some very simple grammar, but beyond that, the course was not as fully developed as Duolingo’s other, more mature courses. There were no stories, for example, and various other features were just missing. Plus, it didn’t go very far beyond some vocabulary building and some simple grammar. It’s good stuff, believe me, but it’s not going to…
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Food Is Family
You just can’t get into Haitian culture if you don’t try pikliz. It’s colorful, flavorful, with a kick of spice, & epitomizes Haitian cuisine and culture.
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Sometimes our brains tell the truth while our emotions lie
I felt so slow and ignorant. I’m not that advanced, not at all, and I am a slow learner who is just not going to get much further along than I am. I’m feeling so discouraged.
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When you think you want to help
If you see Haiti and you have the urge to “help,” I would suggest that Haitians don’t really need you to come help them. Haitians, like all humans, have great intelligence, drive, creativity, and their own sense of self-worth. If you want to help, find and support Haitians who are doing that work. It doesn’t give you a place to be centered and it won’t provide photo opportunities of you “helping” Haitians. But it will help Haitians by letting them do for themselves.
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When it is too much to bear but must be borne
How do I make my faith work anymore (and maybe it never did) when such a very Christian nation seems incapable of seeing the violence we are initiating, celebrating, and dismissing, often while claiming the name of Jesus?
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When we resist, we resist completely
You want to terrify politicians? Take away their signs of power which are "respect" and obedience and decorum and complacency. Trip them up, make a point to oppose them at every turn, continuously point out their failures, and continuously refuse to accord them the power to silence you.
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Maurice Sixto and His Stories
There is a lot to unpack here, and while the story is interesting, it’s difficult for me because I don’t understand some of the references to the local customs.
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Mwen damou pou Vava – a story
I could hear this young kid narrating this story. “My friends, you know me, and you know I wouldn’t tell you stories. But one day I met a girl—or maybe I just saw a girl—and I’ve not been able to remember what life was like before she existed.”
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What makes someone a human?
Rather than seek to deny the humanity of gay people and trans people, what about using your religion to help you decide to know more about them so that you can love them better?
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It’s Been a Minute…
It was 365 days ago I first started using #Duolingo to begin my journey learning Haitian Creole (#kreyol #ayisyen). Why?
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Day 360 : Se Papa Li, Se Pa Pa Li
There are times when I feel pretty good about my abilities, and then there are other times when I think I am the most ignorant and ill-taught student ever.
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The Subtle Traps for the Unwary Learner
But then you start constructing your more complicated sentences and paragraphs, and it seems that every phrase has another chance to pick the not-quite-right grammatical construction or phrase or word
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Bogs and marshes and slogs oh my!
Yesterday in class I read two pages of text, out loud, and then translated them on the fly, to the point where I was laughing out loud at some of the more ridiculous events in the story.
