Haitian Creole

[nooj]

Too right! Here is a thing I like about languages with poor resources. It almost obligates you to meet with native speakers. Too often with big languages you can spend the first 6 months at home without every having contact. And I love meeting native speakers!

[Decidida]

I don't want to give up Spanish. I have come too far with it. I have plans for it. It is the language best taught at my school.

Today ... was a Creole immersion day. I don't know how not to seek to be included and understood.

I don't like the odds stacked against me. But I have been handed what I have been handed.

I find myself approaching the languages differently and with different goals. With Spanish, it is all about mastering the grammar and doing things "right" as much as possible. With Creole, it is so personal and immediate and applicable.

I have Spanish speaking friends, but my interactions with them are so different than my interactions with the Haitians. The Haitians expect me to be scribbling on paper and memorizing and to start using it TODAY. My Spanish-speaking friends expect me to be in classes and using professionally prepared resources. The Haitians draw me closer. The Spanish-speaking send me away.

I am fascinated by the difference in how people are interacting with me and what they say to me about language learning and language learners. I don't think I fully understand what I am observing.

[Decidida]

Learning who, when, where, what, why is so much easier when learning Haitian by immersion, than Spanish by textbook.

[Decidida]

I found the book I read many years ago.
The Quick and Dirty Guide to Learning Languages Fast
https://www.amazon.com/Quick-Dirty-Guid ... 1581600968

[Decidida]

Here is a very interesting concise video about the history and grammatical structure of Creole.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IuQCyIdePE

Struggling though a killer math class prepared me to learn a language from a hodgepodge of youtube videos. I learned how to efficiently take notes, organize those notes, and use those notes to master a body of knowledge.

I got to spend about 20 minutes today with a Haitian speaker. I helped him with his English and he helped me with Creole. He said I am learning faster than if he were teaching me, and that if he had my motivation, his English would be better than it was. He really helped me with some pronunciation and other things.

Learn vs teach: am I really supposed to use aprann to mean "teach"? Am I trying to apply rules that do not apply?

When Haitians pronounce "with" as "wif", is that a Haitian accent or something picked up here in the USA?

[iguanamon]

...Learn vs teach: am I really supposed to use aprann to mean "teach"? Am I trying to apply rules that do not apply?
When Haitians pronounce "with" as "wif", is that a Haitian accent or something picked up here in the USA?

The more formal verb you want to use for "to teach" is "anseye" which is cognate to Spanish "enseñar". "Aprann" is cognate to Spanish "aprender". It can be used for "to teach". The reason you are hearing "wif" for "with" is because the "th" sound in English doesn't exist in Kreyòl, nor does it exist in Spanish and many other languages. The "th" sound is very difficult for most ESL learners to reproduce correctly. You should start a log in the log section.

[Decidida]

Thank you.

I will start a log.

Is discussion of the TH sound worthy of a thread outside of a log? Maybe it has already been discussed to death. I'm not sure how to search for threads on a sound.