For my inquiry project for this course, I have chosen to learn Yoruba, one of Nigeria’s three most spoken languages (as demonstrated in the map above with all of Nigeria’s linguistic groups). Of all the languages I could have chosen to learn, I decided on Yoruba because it is my boyfriend’s first language and is spoken by his family. I have slowly been learning based on the words he and his family have taught me, but I would like to build a more proficient level to converse with them.
This inquiry project will provide an excellent opportunity to explore different technological avenues that assist language learning and reflect on my progress. As someone who loves discovering and learning new languages and has a personal tie to the language, I will be motivated to pursue this inquiry through the term and beyond. To be able to do so, I am committed to researching various forms of media, like music, videos, TV shows, movies, etc, to assist my learning. Additionally, I will commit to one Yoruba lesson a week on a Nigerian language app I found called LangaApp (I will discuss using the app in my next post). It was pretty easy to find the app by typing “Learning Yoruba” in the App Store on my iPhone. Still, I also downloaded Duolingo and Babbel and found those platforms very limited in specific languages, especially in African languages. I wish that apps like those that are mainstream and popular would have more linguistic diversity, but I also understand they are businesses that choose languages that demographics would want to learn; however, if more languages are made available, would people be more inclined to learn them? It’s just food for thought 🙂
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