As a language learner and cultural explorer, I have found that I am resilient. I have found that the joy of language learning overrides my overall frustration with having a better short term memory than a long term memory. I learned the specific features of language learning that are important to me and which features I would prefer not to focus on. Learning Twi with my instructor was the part of the semester out of all my courses that I enjoyed the most and I am grateful to this class for giving me the opportunity. I never thought I would have the opportunity to do so in my entire life. No matter how much time I spent scouring the internet, I could not find any grammatical breakdowns of Twi. My parents speak it and write it but their ability to translate to English is shaky and not very efficient so it ends up making the topic that much more complex. I loved trading jokes with my instructor and learning pedagogy from 105. The presentation that I did for my classmates about High life music in Ghana is actually the first time in my life that I have shared that part of my background and it is one of the highlights of my academic experience in college. I think that my experience with language learning has historically been so exhausting and fast that all I ever had the time to think about was how to keep a passing grade in the course. This course was a breath of fresh air because it was truly about learning and it rang true in every way from the manner in which we were taught to the manner in which we were assessed. I think that I will continue my learning with more practice with my mother because learning Twi through this class has allowed her to feel more comfortable speaking to me. It became that way when she saw that I had a real interest in my roots. The readings that I found the most helpful were the ones that broke down the importance of cultural education and different features of society, like power distancing, and eye contact.
I would like to learn more about the dialectical relationship between neighboring languages that are also in the Niger-Congo language family. I want to know to what extent Igbo, Yoruba, Twi, Hausa, and Fula are related and the reason that I want to know is that it might help me make sense of the societies that existed before the modern-day colonial states. Developing ties between speakers of these linguistic groups might be the only way for people to return to a more regional way of sharing culture that is not tied to borders developed by European countries. Musically, we share a lot in common and have no problems when it comes to pop culture but when it comes to resources and knowledge about each other, we are lacking. We are most lacking among the diaspora because we are also removed from the physical space of being on the continent of Africa so we are forced to really boggle down on culture.
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