Lauren Learns Luganda

This was a fairly typical week for my language studies. I managed to reach my Omuzannyo point goal and spent a good amount of time working through the translation exercises in the Luganda grammar book that I'm using. I'm starting to get to chapters that deal with some of the more nuanced grammatical points, and so I'm trying to go slowly, pay careful attention, and aim for accuracy as I practice. An example of this type of grammar would be the use of  nga. Nga is used in a whole bunch of different ways and in service of different meanings, and it pretty much has always thrown me into a panic when I've come across it while listening or reading. When nga  is used before a noun it has one meaning, used before a verb it has a different meaning. When used with a prefix, yet another meaning, and used alongside the word bwe (which translates to when ), another. The list goes on. In sharpening my use of grammar like nga , I am inching ever closer to the superior proficienc...

This week was definitely better than last, but it wasn't a knockout week either. I felt pretty crappy throughout the first part of it and struggled to have the energy to get much done. And then, miraculously, on Thursday I woke up feeling 100% better. Hooray! One of the highlights of my week was reading the first couple chapters of a book I'd gotten through inter-library loan, The Oral Tradition of the Buganda of Uganda  by Immaculate Kizza. I'd checked this out in hopes of having a good selection of proverbs, but it also has several chapters of other oral traditions: legends, myths, and other important stories. On Saturday morning, I was idling around the house and decided to give the introductory chapters a read. I'm so glad I did! The second chapter outlines the main creation myth of the Buganda, the story of Kintu, which I've encountered multiple times in my language learning. It also gave a nice, compact overview of the legend of Buganda Kingdom's found...

Ugh, this week. I came down with some illness on Sunday, got hit hard Monday, and have spent the entire rest of the week trying to get better. Every time I've felt like I was over it, the next day I felt terrible again. Enough complaining, but all of that is to say that I had a bad week for Luganda study (well, for any and all study). Since the semester thus far has been pretty successful, I'm not worried overall, though I am ready to start feeling better and get back to it. Because I was sick all week, what I did manage to do was pretty limited/passive. I put in some time listening to a podcast and watching the Jesus movie. I had to cancel one of my sessions with Simon but was able to meet with him on Friday. One thing that I did manage to do was to keep with my goal of doing some work every day, even though I didn't feel well. So that's one win! Here is how it all broke down: Monday : 30 minutes listening to a podcast Tuesday : 1 hour of lesson work Wedne...