The First Week into My Learning Journey

As mentioned last week, I am setting aside Wednesdays so that I can really dive into learning the Cree language. This week I truly wanted to refocus on introductions and phrases you’d say in conversation. My goal for my learning journey is to become more fluent in speaking so that I can converse with peers and students in the future. I have learned some of the Cree language but have not used it in quite some time so it will take a lot for me to become familiar again with this language. I am going to list the words that I am learning this week and include them for you to read along. I have also included how I pronounce the words behind them in brackets.

  • Tânisi- Hello (tan-see)
  • Tanisi kiya- How are you (tan-see kee-ya)
  • Namôya nânitaw- I am fine (nam-oya nan-tow)
  • pihtikwê- Come on in (peet-i-gway)
  • Api- Sit down (ah-peh)
  • maskihkiwâpoy minihkwê- have some tea (maskee-gwah min-ee-gway)

The ê makes a “ay” sound in the word pihtikwê. I learned that the â makes an “ah” sound in the word tânisi. The last one that I practiced this week was ô and this makes the “oo” sound in the word namóya. I chose these words to start and refresh myself with because they are common words and phrases used in the Cree language. The Cree Language of the Plains is a workbook that I was provided to use while taking these courses and it was extremely helpful in my learning and is continuing to be helpful now as well. I was able to find a version of this text that is very similar right from the University of Regina that is free and this could be a great tool for you all to use if you wanted to take a look at it.

I am hoping to be able to converse with my students using these words and I was able to use an online tool to help me learn these phrases and even make them into a song. The song that I found on YouTube is called Tânisi Song by Brian MacDonald. This song is going through a conversation and uses the phrases that I mentioned above. When searching up the Cree language and conversation this video came up and it was a great tool to start me up and refresh me on the introductions of the Cree language. I went through the song and slowed down the speaking so that I could understand how to pronounce each word and that was also very helpful. I was looking through Brian Macdonald’s page and he has many videos that have him speaking the language. I plan to continue using YouTube following Brian Macdonald because he has already proven to help out with using Cree and placing them into songs.

Overall, this week I feel really good about my learning and what I accomplished. I was able to practice the introductory words and then listen to Brian Macdonald’s videos which helped me with pronunciation. I noticed when I wrote down words phonetically it helped me when pronouncing the words. Once I was able to sound the words out, I wrote them down and continued to speak them over and over. From here I plan on practicing these words over the next week and try to use them in context with my partner. I am very hopeful for the future of my learning journey and I think by the end I will be very proud of my progress and accomplishments over the semester.

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