So I just had a most excellent lesson with my teacher today.
We “met” on a Discord server in a group for people who are learning to speak and write kreyòl ayisyen. He was very kind, and suggested that we schedule a time to talk this week.
Except for the unfortunately bad connection (there is just a problem with phone lines connecting during rough weather), we had good conversation. Apparently, I’m speaking a bit better than I thought.
I want to work on my accent and rhythm, so we’ll spend about an hour a week. doing just that.
That makes three teachers, with formal lessons three times a week with two different teachers, and ad hoc lessons whenever my third teacher can squeeze in the time. (I’m not going to specify order or significance, but with three teachers I have to talk about them with some specificity.)
One of the reasons for having more than one teacher is that I learn different things from them. It’s not just the same stuff, and I get a variety of instructions and viewpoints and materials. All of those things help me, as does hearing the different accents they have (I’m beginning to hear the subtle differences), hearing the differences in their vocabulary (there are regional differences that identify where you were born/raised), and there are just syntactical differences as well between how you say something.
I think if I were to have done this at the beginning I would have been frustrated, but now that I recognize that I have three different people from three different regions and with three different life experiences, I’m learning how to “switch” accents and grammar.
Stay tuned!