32. Radio Stories about Haiti, including some segments in Creole

32. Radio Stories about Haiti, including some segments in Creole

"The Story" is a National Public Radio program where the host talks to both everyday people and famous leaders about the compelling stories of their lives. In the series of stories interviewing people from Haiti, there are quite a few segments in Creole/Kreyol, which are then repeated like an interpreter. The Wednesday, June 23 program featured a mother surviving under a makeshift tarp talking about daily life in this context, followed by Dean Hilda Alcindor, director of the only 4-year school of nursing in Haiti, the Faculté des Sciences Infirmières de Léogane (http://haitinursing.org).

http://thestory.org/special-features/stories-of-haiti/

Update on Post 03. Voice of America Creole News Service

Post number 03 on this site reviews the Voice of America news service in Creole. The VOA Creole service has just launched a brand new site interface, with easier audio access, RSS feed, and video clips. See what you think! http://www1.voanews.com/creole/news/

31. 2009 blog in kreyòl

Toutmounfocus.com is a website with french language news about haiti. The site also hosts bloggers, and there is a series of blog entries from 2009 available in Haitian Creole/Kreyòl.

http://toutmounfocus.com/focus/18/19/index.1.html

30. Haïti-Référence Online Dictionary

The website Haïti-Référence provides an online dictionary--thanks to a user of this site for suggesting it. http://www.haiti-reference.com/creole/diction/
Users can either look at a list of words with entries alphabetized in Kreyol (Creole), or can look up a word or phrase in English-Kreyol or Kreyol-English search. The dictionary boasts 8,755 words.
One nice feature is that for any word entered, multiple possible synonyms in the other language are provided.
Haïti-Référence is a site housed in Boston. Beyond the Kreyol-English dictionary, most of the site is in French, and provides what it promises--reference information on Haiti.

29. More Haitian Creole internet-streamed radio stations

In Resource 19, a radio station out of Boston is listed. In addition, Live 365 at http://www.live365.com/cgi-bin/directory.cgi?genre=search&searchdesc=haiti provides access, some of it free, to a variety of radio stations out of Haiti and in Haitian American communities in the United States. One of these stations that more consistently plays Haitian music is at http://www.live365.com/stations/konpamaniax Konpa Mix Radio. Many of the stations broadcast music and/or talk in Kreyol (Haitian Creole); many are bilingual with French too.

28. Haitian Creole language web TV (Tele Image)

Tele Image is a web-streamed, web-based TV news & news-entertainment station that also broadcasts on cable in some east coast United States markets. Much of the footage is in Kreyol (Haitian Creole). Because of the visual context of some of the news reporting, and being able to read lips & see gestures, this may be a much more accessible way to practice listening & reinforce vocabulary and grammar than the audio-only programming suggested in others posts on this site.

http://teleimagetvshow.com/

Programming sources vary, and some speakers speak French and English instead of Kreyol (Haitian Creole), or most commonly move fluidly among the three. There is some footage of post-2010 earthquake Haiti. Technical quality of sound and image varies. I found that my Firefox browser on a mac repeatedly crashed when using the site, but I was able to watch the footage consistently when using Safari. I haven't tested it yet in a Windows environment.

27. Long Haitian Creole/English medical phrase list

This resource is a 163-page document issued by Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technology Institute (http://www.lti.cs.cmu.edu/). It is most easily downloaded via the following URL: http://www.ngohaiti.com/disaster/downloads/englishpairs.pdf

The document provides English phrases that a medical professional might use or hear, in alphabetical order, and a translation into Kreyol (Haitian Creole). I'd be interested in any reader comments on the accuracy of the translations given. At first pass it looks like idiomatic turns of phrase and high frequency expressions are pretty good.

One way to use this resource as a phrase dictionary is to look up a word, such as "walk," using the Adobe Acrobat Reader "search" function. Then you can find where the Haitian translation(s) of that word show up in phrases. Walk, for example, appears in five different phrases, each time as "mache." "Pain" shows up more times than I can count, usually translated as "doulè," but infrequently as something "fe m' mal."

26. Haiti Hub free online Kreyol (Haitian Creole) classes via Skype

http://www.haitihub.com/ is the home of free online classes in spoken, conversational Haitian Creole. Right now, there is one teacher, and a second teacher is about to start, so classes have started up again post-earthquake. The program is located in the U.S. The curriculum is based on the Wally Turnbull book Creole Made Easy, so participants are expected to get themselves a copy of that book. All classes are delivered at a specific time via Skype, and registration is limited to one instructor and four students on Skype conference call at one time.

25. An academic article featuring a linguistic overview of Kreyòl (Haitian Creole) grammar

Michel DeGraff, Professor at MIT and renown linguist, recently published a quick but comprehensive overview of a variety features of Haitian Creole grammar/syntax--verb systems, sentence structure, and more. The article/chapter is called "Haitian Creole," and is published in Comparative Creole Syntax: Parallel Outlines of 18 Creole Grammars, John Holm and Peter Patrick, eds., London: Battlebridge Publications (Westminster Creolistics Series, 7), 2007. This chapter is not designed as a language instruction text, but for those with some experience in formal linguistics, the article can shed a great deal of light on how the structure of the language works, and how structure and contextual meaning interface.
A free copy is available for download on Michel DeGraff's recent publications page at MIT: http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/degraff/publications.html  Visitors may find DeGraff's other recent publications debunking colonial and neocolonial myths surrounding Creole eye-opening, and a helpful frame through which to view a lot of what is still written about Creole today.

24. Translated medical care sentences with audio (free) in English and Kreyol (Haitian Creole)

This site provides 52 common sentences that a medical provider might say in Haitian Creole in intake with a patient. Audio is provided for each one. The audio files are downloadable, also for free.
http://www.altalang.com/beyond-words/2010/02/16/haitian-creole-in-translation-medical-phrase-pronunciation-guide/

23. Free mp3 Haitian Creole announcements from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health makes available its public health announcements in downloadable .mp3 files in Haitian Creole. http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=eohhs2terminal&L=5&L0=Home&L1=Consumer&L2=Prevention+and+Wellness&L3=Health+Promotion&L4=DPH+Podcast&sid=Eeohhs2&b=terminalcontent&f=dph_c_health_note_haitian&csid=Eeohhs2
Transcripts are available in Creole, and an English version is available too. At 200 words, and spoken fairly slowly, these may be useful relatively topical listening for learning Creole related to medical care and public health. Nine episodes listed through January 2010 focused on flu prevention topics, including handwashing, covering coughs, and H1N1 vaccine.

22. Haitian Creole English Dictionary by Targete & Urciolo (free download)

The extensive Haitian Creole-English Dictionary (1993) compiled by Targete & Urciolo is available for free download in .pdf format from the publisher, Dunwoody Press. http://www.dunwoodypress.com/_Digital+Resource+Center.html

The introduction lays out the authors' lexicography challenges in detail and provides a bibliography.

Two interesting features of this dictionary are designed to aid English-speaking learners of Creole/Kreyol: first, nouns are listed with their associated definite article. (Definite articles, meaning approximately "the" in English, follow the noun and take multiple forms depending on the sound pattern at the end of a Kreyol noun.) Second, English cognates are followed by an asterisk (*) to draw the reader's attention to the similar vocabulary item in English and Creole/Kreyol.

Sample sentences are given, both from everyday life usage and from literature published in Creole. A list of source literature is provided.