Right now my days are consumed with language study aside from the other daily activities of cooking and washing. I had thought I found the perfect language helper but unfortunately all that fell through and at the moment I am on my own. Actually, I am not really on my own at all because I am surrounded by people speaking Kinyarwanda all day long. So between help from my brothers and sisters and my own independent study of a Kinyarwanda lesson book, things are going pretty well. It is exciting to study hard and be able to see the results. I love when I can sit back and listen to my siblings laughing and telling stories and begin to recognize words and concepts. As tedious as it is, it is rewarding as well.
The language itself is quite challenging. It is a tonal language which means you can have a word that looks the same and sounds almost the same but means something completely unrelated. There are high toned words and low toned words and I cannot usually hear the difference. So I am spending much time just listening and trying to train my ear to hear the different sounds.
Turns out the other day, while trying to tell my brother’s little boy (my nephew) Charukhan to wash his hands, I instead told him to wash his banana tree! This is challenging but fun too!
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