Update on the Language Journey
Time for some new stuff
It’s been a while since I last updated what I’m doing as I’ve been on the journey to learn Haitian Creole.
I started in March of 2022, just after Duolingo released its course in Haitian Creole, and after a month of daily practice I realized that I was just learning some words and some very simple grammar, but beyond that, the course was not as fully developed as Duolingo’s other, more mature courses. There were no stories, for example, and various other features were just missing. Plus, it didn’t go very far beyond some vocabulary building and some simple grammar. It’s good stuff, believe me, but it’s not going to get you to any kind of fluency where you could even pass the time of day.
I began looking for other resources, and so I found two Haitian teachers (online) who I began paying for weekly lessons, and a third generous Haitian man who wants to teach people to speak his language. (I send him money as payment, but he never asks for it.)
That has helped tremendously, and I’m slowly getting better to the point where I can kinda carry on a conversation. My downfall is vocabulary: every time I “fly solo” — that is, just talk about what comes to mind — I invariably reach a point where I just don’t know the right word, and I stop, flailing for what to say. Because Haitian…
