Michael Miller
1/8/08
English
Language Autobiography

    I never really realized how important language was to me until I entered the fifth grade. My mother just got married and we moved from the suburbs into west Philadelphia. I was transferred into Daroff elementary, one of the toughest schools in West Philadelphia (or Philly). There the children were different, and you couldn’t stay outside after a certain time. I also was not used to the gunshots.
 After I lived in West Philadelphia for a while, the children would stay funny things about how I talk. They would ask me things like “Why do you talk like that?” and in the beginning I had no idea what they were talking about, but what stood out from the rest of the questions, was one statement, “Why do you talk so white?” This question stunned me. What did they mean by white? For the next few weeks I tired to explore this question and found out what the children meant. I found out that to speak white means to speak proper or to pronounce your words correctly. But I don think it has to o with race. I think it is more along the lines of where you where raised up.
    Why did the children use the term “white” to describe they way I talk? Why is there an issue to speaking properly? Where the children not used to me speaking a certain way they were familiar with?  How come the children rejected me? Is it our nature to reject people who do things that are not familiar to others?
    
    

    There was another situation where there were some Hispanic people speaking in Spanish, and the girls seemed to be attracted to it. So this rules out our nature to reject people rejecting others because of lack of familiarities. But did the children use race as an example of how I talk.  The children do have a point, though. When I attended school in the suburbs, the majority of the students there were white, so I guess I would sound more along the lines of a white person.
    The longer I stayed in Philadelphia, the more I started to pick up the accepted language. It was basically slang. I mostly used words like yo, chill, wassup, and jawn. Yo, is a term off acknowledgement. Chill means to calm down. Wassup means how are you. Jawn, is a word that can be used to name anything, but is used mostly to name a girl (I barely use jawn).
    There are some advantages and disadvantages to speaking in slang. On one hand it can sometimes be easier and simpler form of communication. But it can also slip into your professional world. You have to know how to control it and know when and when not to use it. An example of me using slang at the right time would be when I am talking to my friends on the phone.
“Hello?”, I said
    “Yo, Mike wassup?” Ryan said.
    “Yo Ryan, how you been.”
    “I’m pretty good man, finally gettin a break from college”
    “Yo, I know what you mean, I feel the same about high school. Yo    , when you supposed to be comin over?”
    “I’ll be over in like five minutes, I’m walkin over to your house now.”
    “Alright man, I’ll see you there, peace.”
    We all have forms of languages we use to show our identity. I think that we all should be comfortable with them. I do not think that language identifies us towards race, but as an individual.