The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

[iguanamon]

...just stopping by to say that the kind of stuff you write about in your log is exactly the kind of stuff I love to read here. I learn something from your entries, like your explanation about Vodou and Papa Gede. Very interesting. Learning Haitian Creole is not on my to-do list, but learning about a culture of which I know little is very rewarding...

Mèsi anpil/Mersi muncho, Ogrim. That's why I do it. Haiti, its people and its culture are unique. In a world where conformity is the norm, its the differences that attract and interest me. We can all learn something from them.

November 2 was All Souls Day in the Catholic calendar which in Haiti is celebrated by the vodouwizans (Vodouists) as "Fèt Gede a"/Gede Festival. It's a national holiday in Haiti with Catholics going to church and vodouwizan y'al nan simityè a/vodouists go to the cemetery. I watched a couple of news reports from VOA Creole/Lavwadlamerik last night about it which I'll share below.

In Haiti, the Guédé (also spelled Gede or Ghede, pronounced [ɡede] in Haitian Creole) are the family of Loa that embody the powers of death and fertility. Guédé spirits include Ghede Doubye, Ghede Linto, Ghede Loraj, Guédé Nibo and Guédé Ti Malis. All are known for the drum rhythm and dance called the "banda". In possession, they will drink or rub themselves with a mixture of clairin (raw rum) and twenty-one habanero or goat peppers. Fête Ghede is celebrated on 2 November, All Souls' Day ("Festival of the Dead"). All boons granted by the Ghede must be repaid by this date or they will take their vengeance on you.

The video below was a report broadcast on the afternoon news (pwogram apre midi) which I watch in the evenings on the Lavwadlamerik website. The reporter is describing the events of Fèt Gede nan simityè Pòtoprens (Port Au Prince). It's well worth taking a couple of minutes to watch. French speakers will be able to understand some of the Kreyòl.


Also a report on the bad state of the main cemetery in Port Au Prince and the economic impact of Fèt Gede where small merchants set up to make a little money during the celebration. Prensipal Simtyè vil Pòtoprens lan Nan yon Trè Move Eta.


I'll be writing more about Vodou in the weeks to come.

...You'll probably hear this every other conversation now, of course. This happened to me during the exam. The same word - gynna - came up twice in the reading comprehension section. I had no clue what it meant in the first instance, when it appeared in a question about familial equality and time taken off sick from work. The second time it came up was in a text on something basically unrelated, and I was able to understand the meaning from context. Surprise surprise, I restarted a podcast on gardening that I had half listened to et voíla: there it was again! I had listened to that section of the podcast before but simply didn't hear the word because I didn't know it to listen for it. I imagine now it will pop up in every Swedish text I read for the next three months.

That's what I like about learning vocabulary in context instead of purposely. (Of course, in the beginning stages much vocabulary has to be learned purposely.) That word, "pannkotis", is mine now in the same way that "gynna" is yours now too. There's something about making my own connections that serve to help me learn better. Somebody can tell me something a hundred times and I may not remember it but let me discover it on my own and I will. That's something I learned a long time ago and it continues to be the basis of how I learn languages.

[lingua]

The forum can seem to be very goal oriented- Six Week Challenge, Super Challenge, TAC, 10000 SRS Challenge, Course Completion Challenge, NaNoWriMO, progress bars in signature blocks, etc. I'm not saying this is necessarily "bad". I just find it doesn't work for me. Goals can be good for motivation but they can often have another side that conflicts.

I wish that I didn't need goals and/or challenges but I'm an undisciplined overachieving procrastinator so it helps me to stay focused in the same way that I have to create to do lists in order to get anything done around the house. However, I enjoy your log and am trying to take more of an iguana approach with Thai.

[iguanamon]

Haitian Creole
Bonjou zanmi'm yo, m swete nou te pase yon bon semèn. So, in the past week, I am still doing listening training, chatting, reading and listening to music. This is part of what it takes to move a language to advanced (C level). In the past week I've spoken in a Haitian Creole mix with two St Lucian Creole (Kwéyòl Sint Lisiyen) speakers I happened to run into in the course of my job. I haven't started a new book yet, but I will soon.

One of the joys I have within the process of language-learning is when listening becomes clear after training it. It doesn't happen all at once but for me, it happens in bunches. I'll sometimes hear long stretches of speech clearly. Right now it's just a few minutes at a stretch but I can feel it becoming clearer and clearer the more I listen.

Portuguese
Daily listening to RFI Brasil and Deutsche Welle Portugês para África. This is a habit. I'm up to episode 5 of "Os Boys" from RTP Portugal. Daily reading online is also a habit, curated by my twitter feed.

Spanish
I finished El amante japonés by Isabel Allende. According to Amazon the hard copy has 352 pages. I've read several of Allende's books before and am never disappointed. This one can be described as a love story but is much more than a love story, it's four or five love stories and a history lesson. The history lesson is about the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II- a particularly shameful episode in my country's history. It also tells of the story of the Jews fleeing the Nazis in Europe and the difficulties that they had trying to make that happen. It's all tied together by the story of a deeply scared and troubled young immigrant woman from Romania. The love story is more like five love stories, each showing the infinite capacity of the human heart to love and the power of love to heal the human heart. Allendes's stories are often complex and intricately woven. I find that I don't get lost but that it serves to wrap me deeply into the story. Isabel Allende is a US citizen now who lives in the US. Several of here novels are set in California.

Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol
As I said earlier, twitter serves as a curator for me and leads me to materials I wouldn't come across if I had to follow several websites. I'm surprised that more learners don't use it for this purpose. It definitely makes life easier. So, via twitter, I came across this article about a Ladino-speaking Sephardic-American, Albert Adatto, who immigrated from Turkey as a two year old. Djudeo-espanyol was his mother tongue and household language.

Lieutenant Colonel Adatto was a poet in addition to being a military and Sephardic historian and a Ladino bibliophile. He wrote a poem called Meustro Padre, Muestro Rey inspired by a liturgical Poem from Rosh Hashanah called Avinu Malkenu (“Our Father, Our King”).

Inspired by the Rosh Hashanah liturgical poem Avinu Malkenu (“Our Father, Our King”), a petition for God to show mercy on His people, Adatto’s poem Muestro Padre, Muestro Rey expresses his hopes and fears for the years to come. Written in anticipation of President Ronald Reagan’s meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the 1985 Geneva Summit, Adatto’s poem prays for wisdom to come to world leaders, including those of the Arab states and Israel. “Forgive our leaders of state that profane religion in making war in Your Blessed Name,” he writes. “Give wisdom to the leaders of the Arab countries and of Israel so they can make peace and so that they will remember they have the same patriarch.” “Da saviduria a los kapos de los paizes Arabos i de Yisrael para ke agan pas i ke se akodren ke tyenen el mezmo patriarka.”

Colonel Adatto wrote the poem in the Ladino cursive Rashi script called Soletreo/Solitreo. The article contains a link to the 11 page handwritten poem. It comes in straight Soletreo, Soletreo with Latin script above and also an English translation. It wasn't easy to get this offline because the text is only available in image format. So, I copied and pasted the photos (enlarging them to fit letter sized paper) into OpenOffice and then printed the documents to pdf format. In the past, I said that I wanted to learn Soletreo (incomprehensible squiggles), but I just wasn't ready at the time. This poem has inspired me to do that.

I have the necessary materials to learn Soletreo- A Guide to Reading and Writing Judezmo (interview with the author below), another 200 page pdf with Soletreo script above Latin script, the Ladinotype website and access to the original soletreo diary of Sa'adi Besalel a-Levi. I have already read it in Latin Text as A Jewish Voice from Ottoman Salonika . The original soletreo is also only in image format. To make it easier to read I'll download and print to pdf ten pages at a time, eventually getting the whole book into pdf. Based on past experience reading Rashi script, I'm pretty sure that this will do the trick for me.

In the spring of 2014, Prof. Bunis sat down for an interview with Prof. Devin Naar, Chair of the UW Sephardic Studies Program, to chat about the history of Ladino and its alphabet, which is called soletreo.

I hope to, one day, volunteer with the Stroum Center transcribing Soletreo and Rashi texts to make them more accessible to modern readers. I also believe I can design better parallel texts for learners to use to train reading. Soletreo will come in handy in reading the older, handwritten documents. Being able to read Soletreo would make me more complete with the language. I will do this, slowly but surely.

[lingua]

Haitian Creole
One of the joys I have within the process of language-learning is when listening becomes clear after training it. It doesn't happen all at once but for me, it happens in bunches. I'll sometimes hear long stretches of speech clearly. Right now it's just a few minutes at a stretch but I can feel it becoming clearer and clearer the more I listen.

Completely agree. I am doing marathon sessions of Thai Iron Chef and even though I understand very little of what they say the words I do know are quite clear to the point that I'm surprised. Since they're cooking and it's apparent what is happening I can concentrate on listening and attuning myself to the cadence of the language. If you think about it, when we were toddlers and heard those around us speak we might have understood only a few words but over time we understood more and more. I'm hoping that as I learn more cooking and food related words that I will hear more words that I understand.

[iguanamon]

Haitian Creole
Bonjou. My listening continues to improve. I can now listen to Atravè Labib without a transcript and catch 90-95% of it. Atravè Labib is the bible-study podcast of about half an hour. It has one voice, that of Pastè Storly Michèl. I believe that when a learner is training listening, it helps to get used to a small subset of voices. In this case, it was just one because this is one of few resources that I could find that comes with a fairly accurate transcript. It has helped me when listening to Lavwadlamerik (VOA) news which I am now getting most of it when I listen.

For reading, I am running out of pdf books to read, which is my preferred way to read in HC. With pdf books, I can make notes electronically plus copy and paste words for look-ups. The Atravè Labib podcast comes with an 11-12 page (letter sized/A1) transcript. If I were doing the Super Challenge, it would be about 80 pages of text per week in itself, but as regular readers know, I don't need the challenges to motivate me to learn.

Pastè Michèl says that the podcast will get through all swasann dis (70) books of the Bible in five years. I doubt that I'll make it that far. It's a lot to go through, around 1,325 podcasts/broadcasts in five days a week for five years- maybe I can make it about six months or so. I do find it to be useful in training listening and also a useful learning experience. The pastor shares personal anecdotes from everyday life so it's not just straight bible-study.

In addition, I read and listen to the Vodou Archive from the University of Florida via the Digital Library of the Caribbean. This excerpt is from a speech by Oungan Pyè on youtube called "505 Years After". The Vodou Archive had a parallel text of the transcript ready-made. Though I no longer need a parallel text, they are very useful for learners and are an often overlooked resource by many. The word "Ayibobo!" is sort of like "right on!", "amen!", "woo-hoo!", "hallelujah!".


I've done some youtube research looking for more Haitian song lyrics and found this version of "Ayiti Cheri"/"Dear Haiti" by Jak Sovè Jan/Jacques Sauveur Jean. The Kreyòl word "pawòl" means "word" or "lyrics". When searching for a song video with lyrics, it helps to use the TL word for "lyrics" along with the title or artist in the search. You may be surprised by what you may find.


Djudeo-espanyol/Ladino
Like this song in Ladino from La Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino


When responding to the thread about "how much do you spend on language-learning". I got inspired to search the site where I found the Bible in Rashi script Biblioteca Virtual del Patrimonio Bibliográfico in Spain. There is a certain amount of interest in Spain about the country's Jewish past, the Sephardic diaspora and their language- Djudeo-espanyol. I searched for "Ladino" and hit a treasure trove of secular books and short stories (yay!) written in Rashi script. I've already read two of the 16 I downloaded in Roman script before- one I struggled with because the scan was so poor- in Rashi quality makes a huge difference. The one from the library in Spain is actually legible! I am looking forward to much more reading in Rashi script, . More, later.

I also came across a short Djoha tale via La Boz de Sefarad. This is the first one I've seen with it's own English translation, so, I didn't have to inflict my own upon you all.
Unas kuantas oras antes ke empesara el Moed, djusto kuando el kasap estava echando la yave a su karneseria, Djoha vino i empeso a abatear la puerta kon muncha fuersa. Deshame entrar, Djoha rogo kon gran desespero. Me olvidi de merkar una gayina, i mi mujer me va matar si no le traigo una gayina.
Entonses el kasap le disho, aspera aki Djoha. Entro el kasap al konyelador a ver lo ke tenia. Aya topo la ultima gayina ke tenia, ke era una flakita, kuero i gueso, i se la trusho a Djoha. Esta esta muy flaka, disho Djoha. No tienes otra?
El kasap tomo la gayina, entro al konyelador, i despues de unos puntos salio kon la misma gayina i se la dio a Djoha. O, no, le disho Djoha. I esta esta flaka komo la primera. Es mijor ke me des las dos.

It's the day before the Holiday, and the butcher is just locking up when Djoha begins pounding on the front door. "Please let me in,” Djoha pleads desperately. "I forgot to buy a chicken, and my wife will kill me if I don't come home with one."
"Okay," says the butcher. "Let me see what I have left." He goes into the freezer and discovers there's one last scrawny chicken left. He brings it out to show to Djoha. "That one's too skinny. What else you got?" says Djoha.
The butcher takes the chicken back into the freezer, waits a few minutes and then brings the same chicken back out to Djoha. "Oh, no," says Djoha. "That one doesn't look any better. You better give me both of them!"

Portuguese and Spanish
After a week of avoiding the news, for obvious reasons- sick of politics, I am back to listening to RFI Brasil, Deutsche Welle Português para África, watching CNN en Español, listening, speaking and writing. Had a nice talk with a Brazilian tourist I ran into here. Spanish and Portuguese do indeed take care of themselves. Still, I will be getting back to doing more with them sooner rather than later.

M'ap swete nou yon bon semèn. Mèsi anpil pou li tout sa. M'a wè nou pita, zanmi'm yo.

[LadyGrey1986]

Dear Iguanamon, if you don't mind I would like to ask you a question about Haitian Creole. On Sunday, there were presidential elections in Haiti, which were discussed in le Journal en Français facile. At some point, the correspondent in Port-au-Prince interviewed a Creole-speaking Haitian. His Creole, however, was dubbed. This made me wonder. Would dubbing Creole be necessary for a French native-speaker?
Even I, as an intermediate French-learner, am not lost when I hear Creole.

[iguanamon]

... Would dubbing Creole be necessary for a French native-speaker? Even I, as an intermediate French-learner, am not lost when I hear Creole.

I'm not a native French-speaker, nor do I speak French, so I will have to defer to someone who does. Stelle is a native French-speaker and she reads my log, but she and her husband are in Guatemala now. She wrote this back on page 17 of my log after I wrote a passage and provided a translation

... I tried to read the Haitian Creole and couldn't make anything of it, until I read the English translation and then all of the French words jumped out at me. ...

Yes, I would say it is necessary to dub Kreyòl into French for most native French-speakers to fully understand. While somewhere between 90-95% of the vocabulary is derived from French, it is modified- just a little bit different enough to not be readily apparent at first listen. The grammar is different and the vocabulary is modified and based on 17th century French, or, "maritime French" as it was called. Despite this similarity, it takes effort and exposure for a native-speaker of French to understand it because it is, indeed, a different language. Similar, but not the same as to the way that Italian and Latin diverge. It may possibly be somewhat similar to the relationship between Afrikaans and Dutch to some extent, but I believe Kreyòl and French to be more divergent.

I think we, as experienced language learners, are more attuned to figuring things out and have a more refined "ear" for languages than most of the general public who may not have had much exposure or interest in language-learning. Perhaps that may explain why you, a language-learner, may be able to understand it, because you're making an effort. We language-learners are always making an effort to understand something. In a one or two minute news report which includes perhaps a 30 or 40 second interview, it's probably too brief of a time period for an average native speaker to "tune-in" enough on a similar language to truly get an understanding.

Sometimes when I am listening to a Brazilian or Portuguese (Portugal) newscast, they will leave bits of Spanish un-dubbed when the meaning is obvious, but generally it's dubbed for greater audience comprehension of what's being said.

Still, though I don't think any native French-speakers read my log, I'd like to hear from anyone with an advanced level of French as to what their comprehension may be of some of the Kreyòl audio I've posted here on my log at the top of the page.

[Whoustatich]

hoping I'm gonna learn here more.. thanks for these posts as for now.

[Ogrim]

Still, though I don't think any native French-speakers read my log, I'd like to hear from anyone with an advanced level of French as to what their comprehension may be of some of the Kreyòl audio I've posted here on my log at the top of the page.

Well I am not native but my French is pretty good, and I must say that listening to Kreyòl is kind of weird, if I can use that word. Sometimes I think I get the meaning of whole sentences, but then suddenly there are too many words I cannot make sense of. I think for most native French speakers it would be the same. I mean, I have seen Quebec French being dubbed or subtitled on French TV, and that is closer to standard French than Kreyòl is.

Generally, don't overestimate most people's ability to understand a similar, but different language. Even on Norwegian TV you will get Swedish or Danish programmes with Norwegian subtitles, although they are very similar. The same is the case in Spain for Catalan or Galician, although the latter is very close to Spanish. I sometimes watch Galician TV and I would say I have 95% comprehension although I've never learnt Galician (or Portuguese, its closest relative). As you say iguanamon, experienced language learners are eager to understand and make the effort, but the average Monsieur ou Madame Lambda will not have the same attitude - they want it easy.

[Serpent]

Very true... I sometimes get paranoid that a stranger on the metro will understand what I'm reading in Spanish or Portuguese based on their knowledge of English

As for Stelle's post, this was about reading, right? afaiu the similarities are more noticeable in the spoken language, because to recognize the French words in writing you need to figure out the pronunciation based on the spelling? (which is an additional step)