Goodness, I am so tired. I feel, again, like I just can’t absorb any more, and it’s all mush in my little head.
I have two instructors who challenge me every time to go just a little bit further. (Well, to be honest, one of them pushes me to go way way further!) I kinda enjoy the challenge, but it’s not like I have some reserve of language skills that I’m not using. I’m just at a loss so often because I just don’t have the vocabulary for myself, and so many times when the language is spoken just a little too quickly I lose connection at some point and then everything that follows is . . . nonsense syllables.
I’m really trying hard not to think in English, but to think only in kreyòl. So when I hear a sentence that is in kreyòl that cannot be “translated” word for word, either because the word order is not the same as in English (the first sets of lessons often used phrases that did mimic English word order, which is a trap!), or because there are so many abbreviations that I just can’t sort them in my mind fast enough.
It does lead to something interesting in me, in that I can, on the margins, understand the sounds I’m hearing but can’t quite put them into meaningful words. That is, I recognize more and more the common phonemes that make up words, so I can understand that word like “siyifikasyon” is something that is a noun + the verb ending “syon” to mean a verb form like “information” or “supposition,” but I get lost when I try to search my memory banks for the root word “siyifik” (if it exists), and I can’t get the rest of the sentence because the speaker has just continued to speak. (For the record, I do know what “siyifikasyon” means, and I looked up the root as “meaning, significance.”)
So I’m not fluent yet. I get lost, easily, with the new words and new word formations. And I get lost in the sea of abbreviations. (Li pa t konnen ki lè li te lè pou manje maten ~ he didn’t know when it was time for breakfast, where “t” is the abbreviation for “te,” which usually means “simple past tense,” for example.) I can kinda carry on a conversation if I’m asked a question and get to respond, but lordy I just lose it all when someone is talking with me and starts speeding up because they think I’m smart or knowledgeable. Which I am not. Souple, pale dousman! Mwen se yon etidyan kreyòl ayisyen e mwen poko pale!
There’s a scale of fluency with (I think) at least four levels: A1, A2, B1, B2. (And maybe C1 & C2 as well.) A1 is the rank beginning who can say some simple sentences. A2 is someone who can carry on a conversation of known topics using known verbs/words. B1 is able to have a more sophisticated conversation, and B2 is more advanced.
I think I’m past A1, but lordy I barely qualify in A2. And as I listen to conversations online, or read tweet streams from native speakers, or listen to Haitian radio or TV, I just am lost.
There are days when I feel like I will never gain fluency. But it is what I so desperately want!
And I know the way forward is to be challenged by my teachers to push myself harder into that fluency.