I have two states of feeling when it comes to learning a language–I am either exhilarated or I am in the pit of despair.
This week my instructor gave me praise on my reading of a short story in kreyòl as well as on my answers in kreyòl, and as this came from an instructor who has very high standards, I was elated. Perhaps I am not as slow as I thought I am!
And he gave me some very simple instructions for this week: write a short story that has a similar situation (two people in a discussion trying to make several decisions in order to use some of the new terms I’m learning), and record myself reading a passage in kreyòl.
I’m not terrible at writing kreyòl. I’m limited in what I can write and how I can express myself, but usually, I can figure out a long way to say something. It’s slow, but I can do it.
And I can read kreyòl. Kinda.
I can read the VOA website for Haiti fairly well. It’s written in straightforward kreyòl for the most part, although it does not pay close attention to accent on the words—which drives me nuts! The accent marks are important for pronunciation—they mark not only the “short” vowels à, è, and ò, they also signify when you pronounce the following “n” in words like bekàn, jèn, and bonbon. (Sometimes you will see these words spelled “bekann,” “jenn,” and “bonbonn” as another way to specify that the “n” is pronounced.)
But when I go to read “regular” kreyòl, I’m just flattened. I feel like I’ve hit a wall.
You see, I decided to read some children’s books to practice my pronunciation. That would fulfill my instructions to read and record something. So I picked a short story from a children’s book “Nan Jaden Amoni” (“From Harmony’s Garden”): “Wa Bèf ak Chèf Sourit” (“The Cattle King and the Mouse Chief”). It is a loosely revised story for Haitian kids based upon Aesop’s fable “The Lion and the Mouse.”
Easy peasy. I know the story, so how could it be hard?
In the very first paragraph I see words I do not know. As I read I come across idioms and figures of speech—some that I already know from other contexts, but others that baffle me—and I laboriously must translate one word or phrase at a time so that I can read this story as if I understand. There are a few phrases that are idioms that never really make sense, so I don’t know where to put the stress or emphasis, or how to form it into a rising inflection used in a sentence.
This is a children’s book. For kids.
Now granted this is localized for Haiti. The story starts out with a reference to the earthquake of 2010, which was an extremely significant event in modern Haitian history. So I get that.
But golly, I’m just having a hard time.
And yet, on the other hand . . . there was an awful lot I got right away, even with the new words and idioms. I was reading and understanding. That felt good.
So the pits of despond, and the acme of accomplishment, all in one story that barely has more than 400 words.
Photo by Tina Floersch on Unsplash