Okay man, it’s getting serious now.
In the previous weeks of lessons with my tutor, we did a lot of work on elementary parts of kreyòl—nouns, articles, verbs, connections, sounds, spelling, the alphabet, the numbers 1-100, then how to count higher, and some work on simple tenses (participle, past). A few of the lessons felt a little much, in that they were using some alternate ways of saying things, and that’s fine! That’s how it should be—show me some ways to say something.
But then . . . we turn to the narratives of four people living in four towns in Haiti, talking about their families, their birthplaces, their jobs . . . and I am seeing words that I thought I knew get used in other ways that really bend my understanding. I am not minding that—kreyòl is a language, and not just a word-for-word transfer of “mwen” for “I,” “se” for “am,” and so on. So now I have a sentence like “Mwen se moun Jakmèl,” which isn’t difficult, but I saw it first as “I am [of the] people [of] Jakmèl,” and it’s really just straightforward “I’m from Jakmèl.” So, it’s like a little more challenging, which I like!
And I looked ahead to the next chapter (I’m almost done with this chapter), and . . . Lord, I am going to drown.
Mwen rele Moche. M se brezilyen. Mwen se antrenè espòtif. M gen 27 an. Mwen gen je nwa, nen pwenti, tèt mwen kale. Mwen wo, mwen gen gwo pòtray paske mwen bat fè anpil. Tankou tout moun, mwen gen kalite epi m gen defo tou. Mwen renmen fache anpil. Yo di mwen parese men se pa vre. M renmen travay epi m renmen ede lòt moun anpil.
Now, I’ve bolded every word I’m seeing for the first time. I can possibly puzzle some of it out from context, but I’m telling you, this is a lot, and there are a few more of these stories on the page. And as part of the assignment, we need to talk about what we read and describe these people using our own, new sentences!
I’m actually loving it, but it’s really a challenge.