For my senior project I’ve been learning how to speak Twi. It’s a language that I’ve been familiar with for a long time. When I returned to America at age 6, I could speak Twi semi-fluently, and overtime I slowly lost the language. Although I can’t speak Twi, I can understand when people speak to me. Twi feels like something close yet far- a tangible piece of myself that I can reach out to grasp, yet its always out of reach. Sometimes my relatives speak to me in Twi, and although I always understand what they say, I can’t respond. The words don’t come to me. Learning Twi has been something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, so senior project is the perfect opportunity to take the time to do so.

This week I’ve spent my time learning about the Twi alphabet, which is very similar to the English alphabet, except for a few extra letters. However, the sounds that these familiar letters make are a bit different, so it’s been hard for me to read in Twi because I’m constantly reminding myself that the letters don’t make the English sounds. Learning digraphs has also been a bit of a struggle. For example, in Twi, the letters “Ky” make the “Ch” sound, which isn’t what immediately comes to mind when I see those letters. I’ve been working on memorizing these digraphs, similarly to learning English digraphs like “th”, “wh”, and “ch” in Kindergarten.

There are certain sounds in Twi that are unique to West African languages, however, because of my exposure to Twi throughout the years, they come very naturally to me. My parents have agreed to only speak Twi around the house so that I am fully immersed in the language, however, I have to keep reminding them to speak Twi instead of English. I’m hoping that my exposure to Twi and immersion accelerate my learning process. Learning Twi is pretty fun, and hopefully, I am on the path to fluency!