Creole Greetings (Lesson)

[stephenmatlock]

I'm lost in the greetings. I feel as if I've gone from comprehensible (Basics/Food) into some land of phrases that I'm not really understanding. I'm trying not to think in English and then translate into Haitian Creole but to think in Creole directly, but even in that, I feel like I'm repeating sounds without understanding why they mean what they mean. And because the greetings feel like idioms, I feel like I'm just doing rote learning instead of comprehension.
example: M ap boulè == I am strolling -> I am going along well -> "I'm fine; not much"

I think it's good to be stretched! I'm not complaining! But I'm feeling like I've gone from the concrete to the abstract in very few steps. This is what language is, after all--it's not math; it's communication. And just like the famous Darmok episode of TNG, the how of communication is the secret of a language. Still, it's way harder now than I expected!

[stephenmatlock]

Follow up -

It just takes time/practice. What I'm learning is that I practice the old lessons every day. It takes time, sure, but it helps me get into the rhythms of the language and even get more used to the sounds. I am hearing better the "swallowed" letters and sounds (I don't know the name for it, but when I hear "renmen" used in a sentence often it seems to eat the ending of one word and the beginning of another.)

And I appreciate that as the lessons progress the fluidity of the sentences is changing as well. there is still the crisp enunciation I've grown to associate with kreyòl as compared to French. But it's not just one word after another plosively expressed as if I'm listening to word-typing, but a more fluid, flowing feel to the phrasing.

Still some sounds that i listen to a dozen times and don't get.

Really good job on the setup, and props to the individuals who gave so much of themselves to create this course.