Kreyol Lessons

Tonight will mark my third Kreyol lesson in two weeks. We've arranged for one of our local friends to teach us, in exchange for English conversation. As far as I can tell, we're getting the better end of that deal. We met Joseph at Giant, our favourite supermarket. He was a friendly, and constant face, and gradually we began to chat more at each of our trips to the grocery store. Joseph had asked one of the other teachers in our complex about English tutoring, in exchange for Kreyol lessons. While that avenue fell through, the rest of us were happy to offer our services. Now we meet twice a week (on Tuesdays and Sundays), at this great restaurant called La Reserve. The atmosphere is fantastic -like sitting on a patio in the middle of the jungle. It's dark and quiet, unless they're playing jazz-lounge remixes of 80s and 90s pop songs.

We're working out of a book that teaches the basics of Kreyol in 16 lessons. It's great having a native speaker to reinforce pronunciation and word order. There are some definite advantages to knowing French, however, the spelling of Kreyol is so phonetic that at times the French root word is unrecognizable. Pronunciation also differs greatly from French. It's exciting to learn another language though and the reaction I get to even attempting to speak Kreyol is well worth the effort.

My favourite word = bagay (stuff), pronounced BAH-GUY.