small wins and new resources

This past week was a particularly busy one for me, and yet I was able to keep up with my Luganda study pretty well.

One success of this week was simply keeping up with daily, small actions to support my learning. For example, I had several extended Whatsapp conversations with my friend Richard about the US election, much of which was done in Luganda. Richard continues to be good at correcting my mistakes, which happen a lot in this format since I don't look up words or agonize about my writing as I text. My lack of a crutch and his willingness to suggest better ways of saying things provides helpful real-time feedback. He clearly still really enjoys being a teacher.

I also found a couple new resources this week. Curious about what Ugandan artists might exist on Spotify, I searched for "Ugandan music" and was delighted to find several massive Luganda playlists. I listen to a lot of Spotify as I do other work, and it's great to have these playlists to turn to rather than the overly boisterous Radio Simba when I want some Luganda music in my life. I am increasingly able to pick out and comprehend lyrics in songs, an exciting development.

Mid-week, I was clicking a Facebook link from one of Uganda's major newspapers, when I realized that I could use Facebook to my advantage too. I found Bukedde, the most prominent Luganda language newspaper, and liked it on Facebook. Now, I can get little shots of Luganda while simply scrolling through my feed. I'd recently followed a Luganda news source on Twitter as well, and have been thrilled to see that I can understand most of their tweets. I plan to continue liking and following good Luganda language sources, to bring as much Luganda as I can into my daily life.

Finally, I found a website dedicated to lyrics of Ugandan music, a huge resource for when I use music videos for language learning!

Finding all of these new resources has been very energizing to me. Considering new ways of learning Luganda helps keep the language fresh and gives me new ways to explore, which keeps my motivation high. Because of this, putting in some of the harder, more intensive work of reading books and practicing my writing came fairly easily to me this week.

Just for fun...
A fun song I've been listening to a lot since seeing Queen of Katwe is this one, #1 Spice. Extra fun because of its real-time English translation on screen! (And, fun fact, Young Cardamom, the Indian guy in this duo, is the son of Mira Nair, the director of the film. I had dinner with him [and his mom, and his dad for that matter!] once it 2008.) I thought you might enjoy it too, to give you a little flavor of the wonderful Luganda language.

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