13708: French / Creole

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

rom: NLaleau@aol.com
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I studied French in high school and college for a total of 4 years. I
studied
Kreyol with a Haitian linguist for a total of 4 weeks. And yes indeed, I
was
more adept at Kreyol within days of landing in Port-au-Prince than I was
in
French and my vocabulary grew quickly. French didn't help me at all, but
very
basic, functional Kreyol was easy to learn. I think this was because the
sentence construction similar to English, and the vowel sounds weren't as
complex as pointu French, and also because the Haitian people were very
delighted to see an American trying to speak Kreyol. Kreyol joke and
story-telling at parties was also easy to understand because of the
concrete
and emotional dramatization of the content. (I was laughing my head off
anyway
even before I learned to understand the words...) --nancylaleau