This is going to be a long post at the behest of some others who want to know what tools I have been using to learn Haitian Creole (kreyòl ayisyen).
The first tool I picked up was Duolingo (duolingo.com, duolingo app on Apple/Android). This tool is an easy-to-use app that uses “gamification” to not just help you learn, but to get you to want to learn because you get points for consistency and accuracy, you find yourself in competition with others, and there are silly interludes that can make it feel like it’s fun to learn a new language.
Duolingo has been around for a while – I first signed up for it in 2014, but never really pursued using it. However, when a good friend from Haïti suggested that I learn their language by using the app, I decided to jump in. After all, what better way to show honor and respect to someone than to learn their language?
I used Duolingo for about a month, advancing at my own pace. I was writing everything down that I was learning because everything was so new. I didn’t understand anything about the grammar, the pronunciation, the spelling, the syntax, the idioms, the history and culture. I was just dropped into the language, and struggled to make sense of it because, like all languages, there are rules and then there are the worn paths across the middle of the rules where people exclaim “Oh, we don’t follow that rule, really—we say it like this.”
Duolingo gave me a very good grounding in the basics of Haitian Creole (hereafter “HC”).
What I found, though, is that I wasn’t learning quickly enough for my own tastes, and because I didn’t really know anything about the language, I wasn’t comfortable exploring on my own. That is, if I could say “The pen of my uncle is lying on the table,” I didn’t know how to say a similar sentence “the pencil of my aunt is lying on the ground.”
So even though I continued to use Duolingo, but after my first month of learning, I began to look around for other tools and resources. I found lots of YouTube videos, which were very, very helpful to pick up the sounds and rhythms. I found some Facebook groups (listed at the end of this post) that have been helpful with some very, very gracious teachers who have patiently helped me with some of the trickier grammatical constructions. And I found some podcasts where patient instructors teach listeners how to speak HC.
But what I found that has turbo-charged my learning is to pick up a tutor or two. I found one on Facebook itself, someone living in Haiti, who against all hope believes I will be able to speak HC fluently before the year is over, and I found a few more on another site named italki.com (with a companion italki app for Apple and Android). There are many such sites, but this one works for me. I found my first instructor there, and from the moment we started in our weekly thirty-minute sessions, I began to learn to speak more confidently. Our sessions increased in length from thirty minutes to forty-five minutes, and then to an hour by the end of that month. By the end of the second month, we were only using HC in our conversations. Depending upon the instructor you find, you might have a curriculum (which I have) or you might just spend time in conversations.
I just picked up my second tutor on italki to add to my two existing tutors so I will have lessons of some kind five days a week.
To help with my reading and comprehension, I started looking for websites that published content in HC, and the best one I found for me (at my level) is the VOA site (Voice of America) that has news and information in HC. It is a mix of Haitian news and international news, and it is written in fairly easy-to-understand HC.
I also began to look for books written in HC, especially children’s books because such books are usually designed to use a limited set of words and grammatical constructions so that a child isn’t challenged too much. Perfect for me at my level!
The first book I picked up, “Manman, Mwen Bezwen Wou Mwen Yo!” (Mom, I need my training wheels!), is about a boy named Edi who is challenged to ride his bike without his training wheels. He is scarred and uncertain, but because his parents help him and believe in him, he goes ahead and tries. Even though he falls, he gets back up, and finally discovers that to ride a bike is a joy unlike any other. (Why yes, it is a direct story about how we learn to do things and finally discover the pleasure of doing something we never did before, like learn a new language!) I found that this book was written by one of the YouTube people I follow. A second edition was released with a longer story with many more words, and I found that it was revised by one of my tutors! (It’s a small world in Haiti, I guess.)
I read this out loud several times, not knowing much of what I was saying. Then I wrote everything out by hand, and translated what I could by hand. What I couldn’t translate, I looked up in my Haitian-English dictionary. I read it a few more times, recorded it, and sent my work off to one of my tutors for them to correct my pronunciation. Of which they had plenty of suggestions.
The next book I picked up was “Nan Jaden Amoni” (In the garden of harmony), which is a collection of folk tales that have been revised for Haitian children or are tales from Haitian culture. That book comes with an audio version, so I read it several times with the audio to get the sense of the cadence.
The third children’s book is “Verite Sou Tanbou Nan Jaden Timoun” (the truth about kids’ drums), and I haven’t yet started reading it. I just got it.
I also have found many resources on the internet published by several U.S. universities that have HC curricula and degree programs. The University of Kansas has many free materials (especially “Ti Koze Kreyòl,” a manual of how to have a conversation in Haitian Creole), as does MIT, where Dr. Michel DeGraff teaches. Dr. DeGraff is from Haïti, and has developed a great curriculum for students, and is one of the people responsible for advancing the use of HC in Haïti in all classrooms. (Because of French colonialism, the French language is often used in education even though most kids don’t speak or understand French.)
Many libraries have free access to the Mango language program, which is like Duolingo in that it teaches you the language. But it doesn’t do so by using games. It’s fairly direct. However, it does have one excellent feature: when it teaches you how to say a word or phrase, you can record your voice and compare it sound-for-sound to see if you’re saying it right.
Another tool I use for learning HC is Discord, a system of distributed servers that focus on various topics. I am in three HC servers, some that have a mix of HC and English, and one that is strictly HC only. (If you try to use French or English or any other language you are sternly warned.)
And I’m also in a few Whats App discussion groups where we have live conversations with people in Haïti or with students who are learning from the same teacher. (The most stressful part of this is talking with Haitians living in Haïti using HC because I am sure I am murdering their mother tongue, but so far I am not completely unintelligible.)
What it all means is that I spend about 2 or 3 hours every day in some kind of practice. I think for many people that’s unsustainable because they have many other activities, but because our kids are grown and moved away, my job is online only, and I get up at 4am because who wants to sleep the day away, it works out that I can easily find those 2 or 3 hours every day.
I started around the beginning of March, 2022. Now it’s September, and I’ve been learning/practicing for more than 200 days. I’m not fluent, not at all – I really can speak only elementary sentences, and there is a world of complexity that is still locked to me because I’m ignorant, but I’m learning as best as I can, through repetition and sheer doggedness that I will speak this language fluently one day.
RESOURCES:
Learning/tutors
Duolingo.com (https://www.duolingo.com/enroll/ht/en/Learn-Haitian%20Creole)
Italki.com (https://www.italki.com/en/teachers/haitiancreole)
Amazingtalker.fr (https://www.amazingtalker.fr/tutors/haitian_creole)
Free resources
Michel DeGraff (THE guy to follow) http://lingphil.mit.edu/papers/degraff/degraff2007hc-ccs.pdf
University of Kansas (Leavenworth) Institute of Haitian Studies Scholarly Works
Chita Pa Bay (standard lessons) https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/10931/ihsku_hatlang_chita_pa_bay_2004.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y
Websites
Learn Haitian Creole https://learnhaitiancreole.com/
The Haitian Creole Language Institute of New York https://haitiancreoleinstitute.com/
HAITIAN CREOLE : Beginner’s Grammar Cheat Sheet For Learning Kreyol https://www.lunionsuite.com/hacking-haitian-creole-beginners-grammar-cheat-sheet-for-learning-kreyol/
Ti Koze Kreyòl Ti koze kreyòl: a Haitian-Creole conversation manual
Notes about Creole https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YTuko7SZf5ZuMud9SW2vHYhGRgzudeWK6LAbNUXzjK8/edit
BUSM (Boston Medical Center) Creole https://www.bumedkreyol.com/
YouTube Channels
Learn Haitian Creole channel (P4H) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9WtgViewqjKl7ydyA3vJr46fkHYliNJ2
Haïti Hub https://www.youtube.com/user/HaitiHub
Learning Haitian Creole https://www.youtube.com/c/HaitianCreoleMsCreole
AnmweTV (Local video/news/commentary https://www.youtube.com/c/AnmweTV
AyiboPost (Local TV) https://www.youtube.com/c/AyibopostAyiti
Radio Television Caraibes (a mix of Caribbean stations, but a lot of HC) https://www.youtube.com/c/rtvchaiti9422
Rodeson School https://www.youtube.com/c/RodesonSchool
Learn Haitian Creole 2022 https://www.youtube.com/c/LearnHaitiancreole2021
Learn Haitian Creole with Fé https://www.youtube.com/c/LearnHaitianCreolewihtF%C3%A9
Viv Jezi TV (Haitian Praise Music) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXOdObpdpgpBmvVMDMoMixA
Haitian Creole Learning Practice https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe-lSjon4Qs-S1JP1yCD1UQ
Emilienne Creole Kitchen (grandmother who cooks Haitian food – her Creole is easy to understand) https://www.youtube.com/c/EmilienneCreoleKitchen
Haitian Proverbs & Idioms (I can’t stress enough that you have to get to know these because so much of Creole is not just words but these idioms and clever turns of phrase) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpP5tYThE6k
Interview in HC with various people https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFiOB2WflE4qmijFiLQIX7_sXj6tqrxL6
Facebook: Learn Haitian Creole https://www.facebook.com/groups/learnhaitiancreole/
Facebook: Learn Haitian Creole 2022 https://www.facebook.com/groups/476854572986124/
Facebook Guy Wewe (local entertainment/news/commentary) https://www.facebook.com/watch/GUYWEWERADIO/
Books
Nan Jaden Amoni https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09YPK6KQN
Creole Made Easy https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0967993717
Learn Haitian Creole for Beginners, My First 1000 Words: Bilingual Haitian Creole – English Language Learning Book for Kids & Adults https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09QFKHCJ6
Haitian Creole Phrasebook: Essential Expressions for Communicating in Haïti https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071749209
Manman, Mwen Bezwen Wou Mwen Yo (Haitian Edition) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1735092819
Verite sou Tanbou nan Jaden Timoun: Rakontay Vèdi https://jadentimoun.com/storybook/
Creole language dictionary https://creolelink.com/language-dictionary/?dictionary_type=cre/k/12
Haitian Creole – English dictionary https://www.hopeforhaitischildren.org/hfhcmedia/Haitian_Creole_English_Dictionary_2nd_printing.pdf
Children’s books https://www.amazon.com/Gina-S/e/B07W1BX8R7
Hap Hap (Hip, Hop) – Board book (young children) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595726950
Children’s books https://bloomlibrary.org/language:ht
Lasiren ak Labalen https://mit-ayiti.net/resous/lasiren-ak-labalen/
Films
Haitian Creole films, global dialogs https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL812C3FDF246445A5