The title of this post comes from a popular expression in Haiti: Behind every mountain is another mountain. (Literally, behind mountains are mountains.) Haiti is a mountainous country, so it makes sense on one level, but it also is a truth that when you see a mountain and climb to the summit you will see the next mountain to climb.
There is no “last mountain.” It’s climb, achieve, rest, stretch, climb…over and over.
So let’s have a summary of the past four months.
Started from scratch in the last few days of February, and have been learning/practicing kreyòl ayisyen every day, for one to three hours a day. (One hour every day, sometimes two hours if one of my instructors has time, and then another hour with my other instructor.)
Sometimes I think I should be farther ahead than I am, but other times I think I’m doing fine. I can have simple conversations about families, jobs, food, and health. We’re about halfway through the printed curriculum in my night classes, and so I feel okay.
In a fit of inspiration, I bought a few more books on simplified kreyòl. One is a children’s picture book with a thousand words and pictures to match (when it makes sense). Mostly the words match what I’m already learning, although there are slight differences in spelling because kreyòl isn’t yet standardized like American English is.
Another book is a phrasebook of Haitian Creole. Again, the words/spelling are slightly different, but it’s useful to have as a reference book for common nouns, verbs, and phrases for various situations.
But the one that’s killing me right now is “Creole Made Easy,” with sixteen lessons. The first few aren’t too bad, but holy moly does the book not let up in those lessons. It is “you will have one chance to learn this word/phrase/meaning/use, and then you’ll be translating complex English sentences into complex Creole.”
I skimmed through the lessons, and after about lesson four, my brain was fried. I continued because I wanted to get the feel.
I cannot imagine how this might be used in real life. It is much too challenging for a student to learn the language unless they have some grounding already in the language.
And yet, I think I’ll use it, not as a way to “teach” me Creole, but to test my understanding. There are a few stories in the back that are useful for reading for comprehension, and I’m going to take some time every so often to read them.
Wish me luck! My aim is to learn this language fluently!