Cornelia Zangerl

Silver Stream

1/04/2011

The Identity Behind Speech 

“What rice want?” He snapped at me. 

“Pardon?” I asked. 

“What rice you want?” He asked a little louder. 

“Sticky.” I responded after a long pause. 

Besides the obvious facts like that he had Chinese characteristics and worked at a chinese store, you could tell he was from China. The way he spoke brought that out. He wasn’t a typical Asian-American but born and raised in China. Probably came to America as a teenager. He couldn’t have been older then 20. 

I got my food and left, pondering for a while. You could tell a lot by a persons speech. Walking home, I saw some guys standing at the corner. I don’t have a better way of describing them then ‘gangsters’. Oversized jeans closer to the ground then their bottom, boxers hanging out, nike high tops and dark hoodies. 

“Damn, tha jawn bad.” One of them announced, eyeing a woman that was now crossing the street.

“Yo, she hot.” One of the guys agreed with him.

“She ‘ard.” The third smirked. 

“You just salty cause you know you couldn’ land a chick like that.” The first guy teased. 

They were obviously from Philadelphia. Born and raised in the general area. The little bits I heard of the conversation indicated a clear understanding of Philadelphian slang.  Words such as ‘jawn’ and  ‘salty’  aren’t used anywhere else. And their accent sounded it too. Probably from North or West Philly. Not really surprising since I was in West but it was still fascinating how much the way they spoke gave away. It also made me think of who they were trying to be. They wanted to sound tough and chill. Class didn’t matter but they still managed to get across that they owned the place; Just by the tone in their voice. 

James Baldwin said that “A language comes into existence by means of brutal necessity, and the rules of the language are dictated by what the language must convey.”  He is stating that a language develops when it is needed, when people don’t have the ability to communicate with each other. This shows that with every language comes a history. A reason why it was created and a reflection of the people who speak it. An example would be ‘Black English’, which was pieced together by slaves who came to America from Africa and couldn’t speak to each other. Referring to this example, Baldwin also stated that “...And (he; African Americans) enters a limbo in which he will no longer be black, and in which he knows that he can never become white.” It means that with the language that a person speaks comes not only with a history but an identity. Language reveals a person, but also creates them. 

In the streets of London, England, the way one speaks gives away everything about them. The formality in their tone reflects their education which goes as far as signifying their wealth and the status of their family. Their accent shows the region they are from and their vocabulary gives of what they aspire to be or what they have become. 

The way I speak just as much reveals who I am. I speak a clear, proper English without too much of a specific accent. This makes sense considering I learned to speak the language in pre-school when I was two. I was taught standard textbook English. If you listen to me talk long enough though, I sometimes let German slip, that’s because I was born in Austria and it was my first language. Even odder, I switch between accents and slang when I speak fast. Since I live in Philadelphia, I’ve picked up some Philly slang but I also use Australian words and phrases, having lived there for a fair amount of time. If you heard me for long enough, you could probably guess my life story.

Speech is a dead giveaway when it comes to a person. It reflects your history and your current status as well as your emotions. The way you project your voice signifies how you feel in a situation. Your vocabulary shows who you are as a person. Your accent reflects your history. Though just simple words coming from a mouth, language is an identity. 

Keanu Farrow

January 10^th, 2011

English 10^th:

“Stewed Language”

 

 My language describes whom I am as and individual. It shows people how I can manipulate myself to not only understand other dialects, but also use them to my advantage to either speak to someone of lower power and higher importance.

Coming from a family of inhabitants with an education level of an esteemed college student, it was very easy to learn the “gifted tongue” of a politician.

Possibly the best demonstration of this was when I was in my last year in junior-high. Back at Cook-Wissahickon, a newly formed student government was formed and in need of a senator, vice-president, and president. I rose to the situation ran for office. I used my intelligence to guide my speech and persuade the community into allowing me to become 8^th grade president.

According to James Baldwin, “Language reveals the speaker.” In my 16 years of life my language has revealed that I was the type of child who had no reference of “casual speech” or in this case having no recall of making the way I spoke to the audience in a more casual way whilst using slang or “Anglicism”, words distorted by the English language.

As stated before, I came from a family who spoke the tongue of highly educated citizen, but when growing up my language hindered the process of making friends.

I once lived in one of the “un-safe” parts of Philadelphia known as Brickyard located just a bit further from Germantown. The inhabitants spoke a somewhat distorted version of English known as “Ghetto talk” by many other people. Slang was a big influence in all types of speech, as Philadelphia needs its own dictionary to understand the way its settlers communicate with each other.  I was put into the environment surrounded by people who talked very different compared to me. In any conversation it would either be repeated due to the fact that barely anybody understood my vocabulary since I spoke with such big words. 

Referenced by James Baldwin, “People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate.” Learning slang to communicate with others is somewhat an evolution in the way I speak. I manipulated my situation as a highly educated child in a bad neighborhood to speak the language of the other citizens in Brickyard.

 

There were times in my life where my language was put to the test and day by day; Anglicism was made a priority to get by. In the short story “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, the author Giona Anzadúa said, her language “Chicano Spanish is a border tongue which developed naturally.” I remember my family moving from different neighborhoods, to different cities, and eventually to a different state.

Virginia Beach, Virginia was my latest move back in June of 2004.  Back then I had mastered the “slang” vocabulary of Philadelphia and could manipulate myself to achieve power in conversations. When I relocated to Virginia, everything made a complete 180. I remember trying to talk to one of my newly made friends in Virginia. I asked him for some water, but in the Philadelphian accent I said the term “wood-er” to which raised eyebrows towards me. I never really fit in when conversing with the people of Virginia at first. To do so I had to learn their dialect as well as keeping up with my own “home-bred” language. I started hanging around children and adults who spoke a diluted version of “Cajun-country” a form of country speech that also has roots tie in from Louisiana. After about 4 months living in Virginia, I had mastered the tongue spoken in the state.

My language is really how it defines me as an individual. It shows me how I can literally alter the way I talk to gain not only friends, but power in almost everything. My language started out as one specific thing as simply one language. Throughout the course of my 16 years of life languages from all over the country have mixed in with mine and distorted my native tongue to create a “stewed-version’ of my language. To this day, my language represents who I am, and over the course of the future, I will have new languages mix into my language, manipulating my tongue and altering the way I can converse with the community.

Example!