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Safety monitors
That Good Samaritan did a good thing to someone in distress, and if the story stops there, then we have learned a good lesson, right? But what the story doesn’t tell us in the background, and doesn’t tell us “the rest of the story.”
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De Kestyon, Reponn (Two Questions, Answered)
This kreyòl version is blunt: “Lè Josèf leve nan dòmi an, li fè sa anj Senyè a te di l la. Li marye ak Mari. Malgre sa, li te tann jouktan pitit la fèt anvan l te antre nan zafè sèks ak mari. Li rele pitit ki te fèt la Jezi.”—“When Joseph woke up from his sleep, he did what the angel of the Lord told him. He got married to Mary. Despite this, he waited until the child was born before entering into sex with Mary. He called the child that was born Jesus.”
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Short stories and lengthy processes
This week’s follow-up assignment was to write my own story, in Haitian Creole, using the grammatical constructions, and build out a similar example of dialog, interaction, and choices. Then, after writing it, I had to read the story and record it, and send the recording to my instructor.
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Binary confidence (Binè konfyans)
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…
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Ayiti se yon lide—Haiti is an idea
It’s hard to overestimate the effects of that quake upon Haiti and Haitians. Twelve years later and so much has not yet been repaired. It was an earthquake that traumatized people—some who today cannot even handle being in a parking garage when a large truck drives by because the floors begin to vibrate and shake.
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I begin “Chita Pa Bay”
So I’m really loving this book because I have to read it and understand it to know what’s going on – but even better than that is that the story is engaging and challenging and funny. I can just see the interactions between the valiant Mannwèl, who’s curious and active in solving problems, Jèvilen, who carries the anger of his family towards Mannwèl and his family, and Anayiz, who’s seen as someone who “belongs” to Jèvilen but who will make her own choices!
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The Real 300
Haiti is called the first Black republic in the New World, and what is unusual about it is that it was not a nation established by colonizers (England, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and so on) but a nation established by the kidnapped and stolen population. Those who were treated as cheap and expendable labor found themselves and created their own nation, throwing France—their oppressors and enslavers—out of their own lands, setting up their own nation, a Black republic, differing in origin from all the other nations in the New World at that time.
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Looking back 300 days
I feel really good that I’ve gotten this far. I’m still quite incompetent, but there are moments when it clicks.
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The Enchantment of Creole
I spent two hours transcribing what I heard, trying so very hard to get the meaning. It was good practice, and I think I got about 30% of the meaning. I just had moments when I heard a set of phonemes and syllables and thought “I have no idea what this is—it’s just a jumble of sounds.”
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Liv kreyòl ayisyen fini!
So tonight I finished my first-year kreyòl book. I've been in it since April 2022*, and it has been a source of instruction and frustration as every single time in my lessons I discovered yet another perplexing element of Haitian Creole.
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Duolingo fini!
I thought that perhaps learning Haitian Creole would be interesting. I did not imagine that it would be a transforming experience.
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Looking back 300 days
M toujou ap aprann – I’m still learning
Great Unexpectations
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One thing more
There is a glass bubble around white people in America and elsewhere, a bubble that lets us see through to the lives of others, but that protects us from questioning the wisdom laid down in our schoolrooms and homes and churches about what events “really mean.”
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Day 270 of the Infinite Journey
What better way to find connecting with people than to learn their language well enough to listen to them, understand, and reply in their own language with the full context of their culture?
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2-3-5 are prime days for learning
So much of what I'm reading now in my materials assumes a deep knowledge of Haitian culture and history, so that a simple phrase like "tèt kale" turns into a discussion about Haitian leaders and how the phrase is used not just to identify them but to make a pèsonifikasyon
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M kontinye aprann kreyòl ayisyen
It’s just weird how the cycle works. I reach a point where I just cannot absorb another thing in kreyòl. I am tired. My head is full of mush. It is all just sounds, and sounds that all seem the same. Then in a few days—sometimes almost overnight—it just clicks. Again. Last time I posted (a week ago) I was unable to do anything more. I canceled my tutorial lesson, did the minimum each day in Duolingo, did almost nothing the entire week in my homework (the printed book we’re using for my lessons), and in general mostly just checked out. I hadn’t given up. But I was just .…
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M sispann!
I so much want to be able to speak and understand this language, but if I can't do this outside the classroom, then I just don't know the language.
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Pwofesè, tèt mwen chaje
Man, today was rough. My tutor and I talked lasted week about my lessons. (This is my third tutor.) I am okay with reading kreyòl—I can typically read a text and comprehend what I’m reading because I’m translating as I go, and I pick up a lot of context clues. But I’m seeing the words and phrases at a glance, and that helps me translate quickly. So I said to him, we should spend more time with you talking and me listening & then responding. That is, not using a text but instead listening to actual kreyòl being spoken. Now, all three of my tutors are very well educated, all…
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Nou aprann nan kominote nou an
I think I’ve hit another wall. The first wall was after the first month or so of learning kreyòl ayisyen (Haitian Creole, or HC) when I realized that Duolingo wasn’t doing enough for me. It was helping, sure! I gained the essentials of vocabulary and grammar, and as I continue to use Duolingo (I’m on Day 214) my vocabulary continues to increase to the point where I now “know” about 700-800 words. (To be fair, many of them are reusable words that have many meanings, so “pa” and “konnen” and “fè” and “mache” are doing a lot of work to hide a lot of what I know. And don’t get…
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Nou monte ansanm
Another update on my language journey: Last night I was given a text to read that I’d never seen before. I read it out loud to my instructor, then answered questions about the text in the same language. My instructor said it was a pleasure to hear me read out loud. I got most of the questions right—we’re getting into the territory of idioms and figures of speech, and let me tell you, there is no other way to harvest that field without rigorous plowing and tilling—and we ran out of time not because I got stuck but because we were so deep in the conversation. Totally not saying I’m…
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There are so many more mountains
“Dèyè mòn gen mòn.” This is one of the very first phrases I learned in my Haitian Creole book. (In fact, it was on the same page as the other phrase, “Pale kreyòl, aprann kreyòl.”) As is with such sayings, there is the surface meaning (“Behind mountains there are mountains”) and then there are the more subtle meanings. Haiti, “The Land of Mountains,” has a history that is shaped by its physical structure as well as the underlying tectonic movements. Mountains and earthquakes have shaped Haiti, and still do. But it’s more than that. Behind the strong people you see, there are hidden people you don’t see. That’s another meaning.…
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Nou aprann kreyòl ansanm – we learn kreyol together
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…
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Tools for learning Haitian Creole
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…
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So much more
Listen, this is hard work. Not just the language. That’s hard because it’s new. Learning a new language means learning new sounds and rhythms, learning new ways to think about something because “they don’t say it that way” becomes more and more frequent. You don’t just assemble words and phrases to match English syntax and vocabulary. For example, there isn’t the idea of passive voice, so saying something in kreyòl ayisyen that’s expressed in English in the passive voice means rethinking what it is you’re trying to say. So learning the language is going to be hard the deeper you go because you’re going to have to learn how to…
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Thoughts about the past six months
More than 190 days now of learning Haitian Creole. A few things I've learned along the way, in no particular order: #AprannKreyòl #KreyòlAyisyen
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History as Cassandra
Let me bring in a little history for you today. Let’s talk about Haïti . . . Haïti was once called the “Pearl of the Caribbean” because of its beauty and its profit for the colonizers. Of course, that profit came at the cost of human misery, torture, sexual abuse, and death. But that doesn’t matter when profit is the highest good. The original inhabitants were turned into creatures of labor (“slaves”) by the colonial slave-masters and rapidly died off because hey abuse and beating and torture and all the rest ends up killing the people you’re trying to make a profit from. So the slave-masters started importing Black Africans—teachers,…
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I are progressing!
Learning kreyòl ayisyen is a challenge, no getting around that. But eventually, it does come together!
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Do This in Remembrance of Me
There were some who could eat right at the altar of sacrifice and restoration with hearts so hard that they would deny food to their own brothers and sisters in community because “well, if they wanted to eat, they should have brought their own.”
