New language: Haitian Creole!

I've been involved in immigrant advocacy work for nearly two decades, and one of the current needs in the Boston area where I live is short-term housing for migrants who are currently sleeping on the floor at Logan Airport.  Although I decided several weeks ago that I wanted to participate in this program, I won't be able to actually open my home for a few months due to family visits and other concerns.  I've figured out where I'm going to direct my energy while I wait: I'm going to learn Haitian Creole.

Through others who have been hosting migrants, I know that many of the families come from Haiti, and while some of them speak Spanish -- a language I already have -- not all of them do, and one way in which I can prepare to provide as welcoming an environment as possible is to learn enough Haitian Creole to carry on a basic conversation.  I've been on both sides of a language barrier often enough to understand well how even a little bit of connection can help with feelings of fear and isolation, and I've got the time, skills, and resources to be ready to lower that barrier.

So how will I do it?  I'm highly motivated and I want the fastest path to conversational Haitian Creole in two months.  I thought of Duolingo, an extremely popular app among my friends that I've used for Italian and Greek in the past.  But five minutes into the first lesson, I realized that learning the words for water, tea, and mango was not what I wanted or needed.  What I needed was Pimsleur.

I get why Duolingo is popular.  It's free, it's gamified, it's got a cute green owl that bugs you when you don't study and celebrates you when you do.  As I mentioned, I've used it when the stakes are low and I just want to have a bit of fun.  However, I've never believed that it's the most effective self-study method out there.  In my opinion, Duolingo focuses too much on individual vocabulary words and not enough on full sentences, and the sentences are frequently nonsensical or otherwise unlikely to be useful in a real life setting.  It's not my intention to knock anyone for whom Duolingo works -- after all, the best method is the one you're going to use -- but for me right now, and for this purpose, I'm looking for something different.

Pimsleur is another self-study tool I've used for Mandarin and a bit of French, and while I haven't yet found a system that is complete in and of itself, it ranks at the top of my list for effectiveness.  In a half hour lesson I learned various combinations of "I understand"/"I don't understand"/"Do you understand"/"Haitian Creole"/"English" as well as basic words like "yes" and "no," enough to hold a basic conversation on the subject of language ability.

I think a good language learning session is like a good workout; I feel tired but also energized.  Pimsleur requires enough concentration that I wouldn't use it while driving, and it's precisely this level of mental engagement that makes it so effective.  Admittedly, Pimsleur isn't free, although it's come a long way from the days when you had to buy packs of CDs at hundreds of dollars.  A monthly subscription is only $15 a month, and a premium all-language subscription a few dollars more than that.  In my opinion, it's well worth the investment.

The other major drawback of Pimsleur is that it's audio-only, which can be a challenge for visual learners like me.  But the premium subscription (which I have) gives you supplementary material like flashcards and quizzes which let you see the written language, or one can look up phrases on the Internet.

I'll see where I end up in a couple of months.  In the meantime, m konprann kreyòl ayisyen tou piti.