There’s a rule of thumb in journalism that when you ask a question in a headline, the answer is always “No.”
DID KENNEDY HAVE A SECRET AFFAIR WITH QUEEN ELIZABETH? No, of course not. That would be more than a question in a headline. That would be all over the news. But KENNEDY HAD AN AFFAIR WITH MIMI BEARDSLEY would be a question that was answered in that headline. Yes, he did.
So it is with the title of this post, “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.
As usual now, we speak entirely in kreyòl. (Except for times when I’m searching for a word.) We never plan the conversation. My instructor shows up (online), we exchange a few pleasantries, and then he starts asking questions and has me explain things to him. Today it was a conversation about where I live, what wild animals (“bèt sovaj”) are in the area and what I’ve seen, what animals we have in the area, and so on. It makes me have to think quickly and try to figure out a way to say something with the vocabulary that I have. I am all over the map when it comes to grammar.
And yet – here we are, speaking in kreyòl. I struggle to get the right words, but I want to get it right. It’s nothing like school was for me when I was learning German or Portuguese. Those were not bad experiences, but I was learning those languages as drills and lessons.
With kreyòl, I’m learning it because I want to please my friends. Or speak to them in their language and show them my respect. Or to learn a new language because it’s fun and a challenge.
Somehow, the right mix of factors (what I want) and resources (two tutors, a set of books that I can just about read, exercises for reading and then responding to questions, several interactive Discord servers where all sorts of people gather who are either ayisyen natif natal or who want to learn to speak Haitian Creole, several YouTube channels of instruction and music and news, Duolingo, italki, and Lingbe) are helping me want to continue to dive deep into this language.
This week I picked up a resource of a YouTube channel that is a series of lectures in Haiti that are mostly in French, but sometimes in Haitian Creole, and I found that I was able to understand about 80% of what was being said w/o having to stop it and rewind. Not gonna say I understood to the point of having a conversation just yet, but the flow of words was going through my head and the meanings were sorting themselves out in the stream of the conversation.
So I felt good about that.
I have a long way to go. I know. It’s been not quite 180 days since the day I officially started with Duolingo.
But as my instructor said tonight, “you’re speaking kreyòl.”
And I will take that and hold onto it.