Inquiry Project Post #4: Trying Bluebird Yoruba!

E kaasan, good afternoon, and welcome to my fourth Inquiry Project blog post!

The last time I posted, I talked about music in Yoruba. I discovered the linguistic diversity of Nigeria by figuring out which songs are in Yoruba or one of Nigeria’s many other languages. Today, I will discuss a new app I started using to learn Yoruba! As I mentioned in my second post, the app I was using started not working after I reached a certain point. I found a new app called Bluebird Yoruba, which I briefly mentioned in that second post. A bit about the app: They offer language learning in other languages and not just Yoruba, and they have different apps for each language, depending on which one you want to know!

When you open the app, on the home page, there are multiple learning categories to choose from: core vocabulary, essential verbs, creating sentences, powerful phrases, conversation and daily lessons. Most categories are, unfortunately, locked because you need to pay to access them. Still, the core vocabulary and daily lessons are unlimited access, which I need for my learning. I started doing the daily lessons every day this week, and it has been super fun! (Side note: I did say I would do one lesson every week, but they’re short, and it’s better to do it consistently). The lesson is an audio recording teaching you step-by-step how to pronounce a saying, and it repeats it multiple times and allows you to say it back. My first lesson, for example, was to learn ‘o wiregbe,’ which means ‘he or she chats.’ It taught me to say ‘ọrẹ,’ which means ‘friend,’ and put everything together to learn the sentence ‘o ma n wiregbe pẹlu ọrẹ rẹ’ which means ‘he or she chats with a friend’ and ‘O wiregbe pẹlu ọrẹ rẹ’ which means ‘He or she chatted with a friend.’ Once I practiced the saying, I did a quiz where it tested me on those sayings. There is also a pronunciation analysis where you record your voice, and it gives you a score out of 100% on how good your pronunciation is (I got between 70 to 90 percent on most words so I’m pretty proud of myself self 😁). There is also a voice comparison where you record your voice, which plays the speaker’s voice to see how close your pronunciation is, which I found super cool!

Bluebird Yoruba has been super promising so far, so I hope it continues to help me progress in my learning. While continuing my daily lessons, I’m going to look into finding some movies and TV shows in Yoruba to help me learn my language!

Last but not least, today’s word of the day is ‘ọsẹ,’ which means ‘week.’ The spelling can be a little tricky, as ‘ọṣẹ‘ means ‘soap,’ so it’s important to know which letters are used for certain words for spelling and prononciation.