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Hello Everyone!

Last time I had made a blog post was last year. It’s crazy to say it’s 2013! So far the Hurricane Sandy clean up is coming along well. One of Mom’s co-workers helped out with the clean up in Red Bank New Jersey which is right next to Asbury Park. She also had helped out with Hurricane Katrina. I had an interview with her and this is what happened....

Q: What was it like to help out everyone effected by Sandy?

A: It made me feel really good and I felt like I made people’s day. I felt like a hero in a way .

Q: What did you do to help?

A: I went and cleaned up debris all over the place. In Red Bank it wasn’t as bad as other  beach towns, but it was pretty bad. I helped people find their belongings and got them into a temporary housing unit.

Q: Is there any other things that were interesting?

A: Well when I was there I met a family that their house floated away literally and it was crazy that it happened. 

Lately there has been a ton of relief efforts made by celebrities, but the biggest one had of been the 12.12.12 concert held in Madison Square Garden in New York City. The concert was to collect monetary donations for the victim’s effected by Super Storm Sandy. Some of the biggest musicians of the century were there. Including the Rolling Stones, The Who, Bob Dylan, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Adam Sandler, Eric Clapton, Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, and the one and only Kanye West. It raised over $400 million dollars for the great cause. (source) 

The U.S. congress has just passed that gives $9.7 billion to insurance companies to help with flood insurance claims for the ones effected by Sandy. It lets the people that had their homes and businesses dusted by Sandy get back on their feet and try to get their normal live’s back. (source)

I really want to help this issue and I will be in a few ways. One will be in a saltwater fishing tournament in June at my dads yacht club and the money will go to sandy relief in Belmar, NJ. Another way I will help is do a donation jar system in local businesses around my neighborhood and I will donate the money directly to Red Cross. 

Bibliography 

1-18-13       Orange Stream

    The Causes of Poverty

Since my last post I have done a lot of research.  I did a survey to see what people’s views are on Poverty in Philadelphia.  I got a lot of feed back and a lot of different answers.  I also got to see a few different point of views.  My results will most likely determine what my agent of change.  It all depends on what people think we can do to help prevent poverty.

In my survey I asked people the questions that I wanted answered in my first blog.  First I asked if they thought poverty was a major problem in Philadelphia.  91% said yes they thought Poverty was a major problem.  My first thoughts when I saw that 9% said Poverty wasn’t a problem was “ What are they Thinking?”  But when you think bout it they have a point.  Philadelphia has so many other problems.  I know multiple people died on New Years Eve this year.  As a matter of fact my dad’s cousin was killed in a hit and run on City Line ave.  So I can see that we do have other major problems besides Poverty.

     Hello everyone! This is my second blog post for; You And The World. As you may know my issue is teen suicide due to bullying. In my first blog post, I informed you everything you need to know about teen suicide due to bullying. For those of you who didn’t view it, you can view my first blog post here. Ever since my last post I’ve found new research that relates to teen suicide. I also decided to do my own research by creating a survey with various questions for teens. 

    I decided to explore more about teen suicide, that isn’t due to bullying. According the Wexner Medical Center, suicide risk factors vary with age, gender, and cultural and social influences and may change over time. Risk factors for suicide frequently occur in combination with each other. The following are some suicide risk factors that may be present:

• one or more diagnosable mental or substance abuse disorders
• impulsive behaviors
• undesirable life events or recent losses (parental divorce)
• family history of mental or substance abuse disorder
• family history of suicide
• family violence, including physical, sexual, or verbal/ emotional abuse
• prior suicide attempt
• firearm in the home
• incarceration or the detention of a person in prison
• exposure to the suicidal behavior of others, including family, peers, in the news, or in fiction stories. 

    Research after research, I’ve became more curious. I wanted to find out about teen suicides before the year 2,000. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (nami), here are some of the few facts I found:

• In 1996, more teenagers and young adults died of suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia and influenza, and chronic lung disease combined.
• In 1996, suicide was the second-leading cause of death among college students, the third-leading cause of death among those aged 15 to 24 years, and the fourth- leading cause of death among those aged 10 to 14 years.
• From 1980 to 1996, the rate of suicide among African-American males aged 15 to 19 years increased by 105 percent.

     It is a hopeful sign that while the incidence of suicide among adolescents and young adults nearly tripled from 1965 to 1987, teen suicide rates in the past ten years have actually been declining, possibly due to increased recognition and treatment. 

       Taking research into my own hands, I’ve created a survey called “Teen Suicide.” This survey was answered by 59 teens. According to the survey 48 people out of 59 didn’t know anyone who died from committing suicide and didn’t help to prevent it. Which was awesome! In the other hand, 42 people out of 59 are unaware of the frequency of teen suicide in the United States. Also, 46 people out of 59 said that they were once bullied in their life. It’s unbelievable! Fortunately when asked “ What do you do when you see a person getting bullied? “ 38 people out of 59 answered, “ Tell an adult.” Seventeen people out of 59 answered “ Watch, and keep it to yourself." Only 12 people answered “ Participate in the action.” 

        Some of the responses on this survey affected me. They were quite confusing. For example, I couldn’t believe that amount of people who took the survey were bullied. It was more than half! I didn’t expect this. Also, I thought it was very surprising that some  people would actually answer “ Participate it the action “ when asked, “ What do you do when you see a person get bullied? “ That was quite unexpected. 

    Next time, I would be writing the last and final blog post. Action will be taken. I’m planning to do volunteer work for my agent of change. 

Click here for the story of one the most popular, but saddest teen suicides due to bullying, Amanda Todd.                               

Click here for my bibliography. :)

Lost Identity

When I was a little girl, I only remember my mother having been extremely controlling. We were hers and if we didn’t do as she said, we had broken a law, no matter how minuscule it might have been. There was no room for our opinions. Even in my education. She would have wanted me to be smarter. There wasn’t time for me to become better at my writing, I simply should have just been able to do it. There wasn’t anything natural about writing for me. 

She took my papers. She took them and crumpled them up. All my hard work. I was 10 years old. She didn’t think I was smart enough to write a decent paper. 

“Give me the fact list that you have on the woman,” my mother demanded. 

She wrote the entire paper. I could barely read her handwriting but she made me rewrite everything she did and turn it in as my own. I wasn’t allowed to voice my opinion. It wasn’t right, I knew that when I turned it in, but she would be upset with me if I didn’t do as she said. She was the boss.

I was always afraid when turning in my papers. They weren’t mine. I was little, and didn’t really care how intelligent they sounded, as long as I felt honest. The guilt of dishonesty that never went away. With the lies you must tell to please your parents. 

Getting sick didn’t end her tyranny. It was all that kept her from “being hyperaware of the pain.” My mistakes in language kept her mind moving. She thought that the idea of intertwining her expectations into mine would be helpful to me.

As this process continued I realized that what she was doing was beneficial to only her. My mother was living through me. I knew nothing different and so I simply went along. You don’t say no to a parent who is losing hair and is nauseous all day, every day. 

The constant revision of my papers did not end. Her sickness progressed and made her interest in my education dissipate. She was forced into not overseeing and reading all of my work before it was turned in. She got too sick to know I existed.

One of the main points from the essay “How to Tame A Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldía. “So, if you really want to hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity- I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself.” Language is the representation of experience, ethnicity, and family, all together to create the final melody. A perfect combination of sounds and a back story, that can all become known from a few simple words.

If language is your identity, who are we until we find our own? My identity was lost. As if mine were the clone of my mothers.

“A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him. And a child cannot afford to be fooled.” This quote, taken from James Baldwin’s essay, “If Black English Isn’t A Language, Then Tell Me What Is?” This states that any teacher who in fact dislikes children will not teach the child effectively. I connected this to my own experience because I learned from my brothers about the world and language. Much to their dismay. They saw I would never be taught by my mother who had taken the time to teach them. They must have been loved in a different way. I only learned from my own mistakes, and those of my siblings, when chastised for misuse of language.

I was forced to whine into a jar when I was young. I complained often I guess, but when I did, everything was gibberish. Nobody wants to hear words they can’t comprehend. The jar stayed on the kitchen counter until I was seven and a half years old. The way I spoke disgusted my family.

While my mother was sick, she ran a blog. She hated the term, so it was simply, her online journal. She began it the day after she was diagnosed. Wanting to be able to tell her story in the beautiful way that she knew how. Her writing was her everything. She touched people across the country. They read every post she ever wrote. So many people that didn’t know anything about us except what she wrote. I was 9 years old when her news crushed me. This was when I learned what a story could do. A person’s words were power. They moved mountains and could touch the heart of another without a physical contact needed. Even in Layman’s terms, her words sounded so honest. Despite the cliché, I find their overuse, very powerful and truthful.

“Dying is very inconvenient,” she wrote. Three days before her death, she knew it was coming. It isn’t about whether the language “intersects” with identity or not, but rather your identity is kept locked in your mind and soul. The only key to open it is your language. Whether writing the truest of true, or speaking, it’s poetry. She apologized to the people she never met, for leaving them. Her parting words made strangers burst into tears. Her story was public. But it was also over.

Language in my experience, is the power that kept my mother alive for longer than a year. It encouraged prayers from coast to coast. And it kept her mine for a little while longer, even if I believed she wanted to leave me. Language is identity. It also creates connection, whether healthy or not, the power of language is something to be worked on, not cloned.

It’s not easy being thrown into a situation where all of a sudden, you cannot comprehend anything. You are submerged into a new environment, a new culture, and a new language, and you are completely lost.

My whole life, I had constantly been in an English-speaking environment. Even if every person has their own American accent, I had been able to understand and converse with them. I had always been ordinary—speaking the native language and such. I’d always fit in, always blended into the normality of my surroundings.

All of a sudden, I was on the outside. The core thing that was needed to communicate, common language, was something that I did not share with the Nicaraguans around me.

I looked to my left into the face of a young child. “Por favor, señorita, ¿tiene dinero?” he begged. I shook my head numbly, unable to comprehend the words to explain to this poor boy that I was not allowed to provide him with money. I kept walking.

A man began shouting at me from my right, speaking so fast that I had no way to even get an idea of what he was saying to me. He kept repeating it, and he began to sound irritated.

“¿Por qué se mueven tan lento, poco chica blanca!” he said rapidly.

“I’m sor—lo siento, señor. I’m from America y no hablo ingles,” I said to him very slowly, in the best accent that I could muster.

“Chica estúpida. Tú no hablas español?”

“Lo siento, pero I have no idea what you are saying,” I replied.

“Me acaba de entregar su bolsa, ¿de acuerdo?”

“¿Cómo?

“¡Tu bulsa!” he shouted angrily, motioning to my bag.

“Oh, here. Sorry.” I said as I handed it to him and he put it on the bus.

“Americanos tontos…” he muttered, walking away.

All of a sudden, I was different. I stood out. I didn’t speak the language, and therefore, I felt like I didn’t belong. I was an outsider.

Feeling completely lost in terms of language was a new feeling to me. In my house and school, I spoke English. Everywhere I went, I spoke English with those around me and could communicate easily. I never felt on the outside because I spoke a different language than everyone else.

Not only did I speak English everywhere, I have always been confident in the way that I speak English. I never had a lisp or a stutter. I can formulate sentences and express my thoughts accurately and thoroughly. I speak properly to teachers, my family and my friends. I speak what is defined as “standard English”.

And suddenly, it’s like that was all tossed in the trash. I could not formulate Spanish sentences or think of the right words to express how I was feeling. When I did speak, it was slow, with lots of stops and starts. It was anything but smooth, and it was anything but what I was used to.  In “If Black English Isn’t A Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” by James Baldwin, he writes, “Language, incontestably, reveals the speaker.” I found this to be very true through my experience. My lack of fluidity of the Spanish language revealed something about me—I was a “gringo”.

At this point in time, I spoke very little Spanish and could not follow a normal conversation. In an essay entitled “Hunger of Memory” by Richard Rodriguez, he writes, “My words could not stretch far enough to form complete thoughts. And the words I did speak I didn’t know well enough to make into distinct sounds.” To me, this quote is extremely relevant and describes how I was feeling in Nicaragua. I knew exactly what I wanted to say, but I did not have the vocabulary to put it into complete sentences. I could not convey my point, and that was beyond frustrating to me.

After I was in Nicaragua for a couple days, I began to think about the experiences that I had with native Spanish speakers. When I was unable to understand them, I felt embarrassed. I felt like I stood out. I felt like I didn’t belong there because I could not communicate with those around me.

In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, author Gloria Anzalía writes, “There are more subtle ways that we internalize identification, especially in the forms of images and emotions.” From my experience in Nicaragua, I could not agree more with this statement.

There are so many ways to communicate in this world without ever speaking a word. Sometimes, you can gain a deep understanding with someone by simply sharing an experience with them. Sometimes it’s not even a word. It can be eye contact. Or it could be a smile. A nod. Language is one of the many ways that you can communicate with other humans, but sometimes you create more special bonds when no words are spoken at all.

By the time I boarded the plane back home from Nicaragua, I was at peace with the fact that the entire week, I was seen as an outsider. While there, I realized that even though I did not speak the same language as them, we shared experiences and feelings that bonded us in a way language never could.

Kenyatta Bundy Jr

Chameleon Language  

“Yo wassup?’ I say to one of my friends as he walks over to me.

“Wassup OG Yatta, you chillin?” He replies in his normal jargon.

“Chill don’t call me “OG Yatta” though.” I say in an intimidating tone.

“Ard my bad bro.” He replies quickly.

“You chillin yo, but I’m bout to dip off with my girl.”

“Oh true, where yall goin’?’ he asks

“Don’t worry bout it young. Sike naw we just bout to go get something it eat real quick.”

“Oh you right. How are yall? I don’t never see yall together no more yo.”

“Yea I know, cause we hardly ever get a chance to chill together anymore. My mom be

drawlin as usual, so I never leave the house to see her or whatever, and since we don’t got the same lunch or nuffin, we hardly ever chill. Shit be drawlin forreal!” I reply somewhat angrily.

“Yo chill YMCMB Yatta. You snappin forreal.” He says quickly.

“I know yo, it’s just annoyin forreal. And chill with the YMCMB Yatta shit for I get ya girl on you.” I reply.

“ Ard chill she ain’t bout that life though. She not about to mix me though.”

“I mean I guess, let me see you say that to her though. Watch you fold yo.” I say jokingly.

“Naa I ain’t bout to fold though.” He says.

“Watch yo she gonna treat you just like Aateeyah used to.  She gonna have you on the floor cryin n shit.” I joke.

“Ard that’s dead like gingerbread.” He says.

I reply with a simple, “Fuck outta here Jaaz you not tough yo. You really boutta fold like that fat bull in that World Star video.”

He chuckles as we walk away.

If you're not from Philadelphia, or a teenager between the ages of 13 and 19 you probably have no clue what is being said by the people in this scene. Well those people are my friend Jaaz and I. That person is the most natural side of me, and the side you would see if you were with me in my everyday life. But it's not just me. As time has passed, I have begun to adapt my speech based on the people I am most often around, and these people happen to be my closest schoolmates and friends. This as defined by James Baldwin would be me keeping up with my heritage and not "disowning" my African roots. But this is not how I speak in every single situation. Like the chameleon, I am able to adapt to a few different surroundings. Although I only fluently speak one language, I often like to look at myself as multilingual in the fact that I am able to speak with different dialects than just my original.

By James Baldwin’s' example, I believe I would be somewhere in between and I am okay with that. The ability to change my dialect with my surroundings in order to fit in and be comfortable should not be going "against my origin". If African Americans did what he thought was right with language, I believe we would be even more suppressed and discriminated against than we already are. It is this ability that allows us to succeed in society, and slowly begin to level the playing fields with race. Ignorance gives you no power now a days and not being able to speak to different people in different ways would be purely ignorant. The way that I speak is a reflection of not only where I come from, but also the intelligence that I also master.

“Hello Kenyatta, I am Mr. Johnson and I will be the person in charge of interviewing you today. How are you doing this morning?”
“I’m great, thank you. I would just like to start by saying that this is an honor to even be considered to be a member of this prestige academic society.” I reply politely.

“ It’s our honor. Okay now let’s get right into this so this can be as quick and painless as possible. So the first question for today is simply; what do you plan on pursuing as a career, and how do you believe you attending the Temple University Medical Summer Enrichment program will help you achieve these goals?” he asked.

“Well Mr. Johnson, from as long as I can remember I have had the desire to be a doctor, it was just the matter of what type of doctor I wanted to be that was the question. When I hit the age of 14 I knew that I wanted to either be a doctor that associated with the heart, or the brain. It wasn’t until I hit 16 and my grandfather passed away from a heart attack that I decided that I wanted to become a cardiovascular surgeon, or heart surgeon. So I believe that attending this summer program would not only give me some type of insight into what it is that I decided that I want to do with my life, but also would give me an opportunity to meet new people with the same interests as me as well as being able to make many associates that could potentially help me if needed in the long run. I’m sorry I began rambling, but yes I believe that wraps it up in a nutshell.” I reply.

“No it is no problem. I love meeting people with a true interest in the medical field, especially people who are as seemingly as passionate as you seem to be. Ok now for the next question...” He continues.

            From what you just read you would most likely believe that this person is a totally different person, from a totally different place, and in no way the same person as in the original scene but you would be incorrect. As said before, it is very much possible for a person to speak one dialect around a group of people, and a totally different one around others.  This was just one example of this, and can be demonstrated in a number of other ways. But I hope this was able to give you a new understanding of some people, and you will think differently when you see a group of loud, and seemingly rude group of people and begin to think about how uneducated they must be, because looks can be fooling.

Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

“AAaaaAAaHHhhh Max, you have been growing so much since th th the last time I have seen you!” 

Who this woman was, I did not really know. I was given the basic information on the drive up to New York by my Dad. We were meeting his aunt who is in town from Israel and staying at his second cousin’s house in Midtown. That was all the information I was given. Whenever I’m thrown with the obligatory, “oh you’ve grown up so much blah blah blah,” I usually just uncomfortably smile and say something meaningless like, “Oh, uh, it’s great to see you too!” Unbeknownst to me, the people I was meeting saw right through my attempt at politeness and became (strangely) upset. 

“What... you do not remember me? Do you not care about me or your family?!” 

My father’s aunt aggressively spurted this jewel out in my general direction when I met her for the first time last year. This is what I get confronted with from my extended family members. 

Sometimes when I speak, people mistake what I say for sarcasm. I’m only being sarcastic like 70% of the time. That’s a joke. You laugh now. Many people tell me that my voice just always sounds like I’m being sarcastic and condescending but honestly, I don’t mean it to be. It’s just the way I speak. Yes, I realize that sometimes the tone of my voice can give whatever I’m saying a bad connotation but it usually isn’t on purpose. It’s the difference between a “Yeah!” and a “yeah.”  The people close to me have been able to adapt and understand when I’m being sarcastic or not but people that I don’t know very well usually hate me for it. Especially if they don’t speak English very well. 

My Dad’s family was originally from Morocco and when Morocco gained it’s independence many jews thought that the rest of the non-Jewish population would start religiously persecuting them. My Dad’s family decided to move away from their home. For the most part they went to three different places; the wealthy ones went to live in France, the middle class members of the family made the journey to Canada, and the more adventurous and, well, poor ones made the move to Israel. My Dad’s parents were part of the group that moved to Canada, making him a first generation Canadian citizen. Almost all of his family members speak French and Hebrew. Those are the common languages that connect everyone. 

Because of the family splitting up, I know very few of my paternal relatives. My Dad has many relatives that live in Montreal and the surrounding areas but close to none of them speak distinguishable English. They all speak French and through just being around them I’ve learned a few words but I have nothing close to what people would call conversational skills. Many of the older people in my family have a more traditional French accent and I’m able to catch a few words every now and then. The younger generations, like the people between me and my Dad have a much stronger Québécois accent. In my professional opinion, it just sounds like a grosser, more sloppy version of traditional French. I cannot understand the Quebec French for my life. 

In the essay If Black English Isn’t A Language, Then Tell Me What Is? James Baldwin claims that, “one may speak the same language, but in such a way that one’s antecedents are revealed, or (one hopes) hidden.” If an average French person from, say, Paris, were to hear any of my Israeli or Moroccan relatives speak French they would probably subconsciously begin to judge them. Generally, French speakers from France tend to look down on those with dialects from any African country or even the Canadian dialect. Hearing me attempt to speak French, any posh Frenchman would assume that I’m just an uneducated American snob. They would never think that I came from a long line of French speakers. I think Mr. Baldwin is trying to tell us that the way you speak directly causes you to be stereotyped. 

Every time I see my grandmother she greets me with, “Bonjour mon cheri! Blah blah blah uh huh huh!” That’s my poor interpretation of her proceeding to speak French to me. I always reply with, “I’m sorry, what did you say?” Once she realizes that I haven’t learned French since the last time I saw her she’ll say something like,

 “So, uh uh uh, m m max how is your schooling? Are you doctor yet?” They aren’t stereotypically Jewish in most ways but they pretty much define the stereotype that every Jewish parent/grandparent wants their child to be a doctor, lawyer, or accountant. When I reply to her I’m usually trying to be sarcastic so I’ll say something like, “No, I failed out of school a month ago.” This kind of thing never goes over well with her because of the language barrier and her inability to understand comedic genius. Anyone that knows me would have been able to tell by the inflection in my voice that I wasn’t serious about failing out of school. This misunderstanding is partly my fault because I know her English isn’t that great but, I mean, she’s been living in an predominantly English speaking country for about 50 years and she hasn’t picked up anything other than the basics. 

Since my family lives all over the world, they’re dialect for some of the common languages can make it seem like they might as well be speaking whatever distant language they also speak. This makes it difficult for me to understand whats going on when I’m around them. On the other end, they don’t understand the way I speak very well so it’s kind of a lose-lose situation for us all. My Dad’s family thinks I have a stupid American accent. Lots of the ones that speak decent English usually avoid talking to me because I guess they can’t handle hearing how I speak. But it’s a fair trade off because speaking slow enough for them to understand can be straining after a while. 

Seeing that side of my family always makes me feel like an outsider. I have a feeling I always will feel like an outsider until I take the time to learn every language my entire family speaks. Even then I’ll probably still have the feeling because of the culture gap. Knowing myself, I’ll most likely waste the time I could be using to learn French or Hebrew by like, reading about useless things on Wikipedia or something. My point is that even though we share a blood line, it means nothing with no communication. And it’s made even worse with massive amounts of sarcasm induced misunderstandings. 

Timothy Ingram

Different Environment 

“Hi guys how you been?”

The way I talk depends on the environment. Growing up in a hard neighborhood people expected me to say, 

“Wassup or ayo.” 

When I move to a new environment meeting diverse people. I started a new year in at a middle school called Upper Merion located in King Of Prussia. It was a big move from West Oak Lane to KOP. We are different in a lot of ways. The main thing that was different was the way we talk and the color of our skin. I walked up to people saying,

 “Wassup or ayo”, 

and they looked at me like I was crazy. In the first week of school I met a Caucasian boy who I walked up to saying “Ayo”.

He looked confused and said, “Sorry I don’t understand what your saying.”

In my head I was thinking I was in my original neighborhood but I thought about when I was walking around hearing everybody say “hey or hi”. It felt very different I walked around hearing things like,

“Dushbag, Cracker or Anis.”

As the school year continued I really started becoming known from my cousin that went to the high school. She was a very popular student who knew people from the high and middle school. I then joined the basketball team and first thing that people asked me was “Hey where are you from?”

“I am from a neighborhood called West Oak Lane.”

People either say “what is that or where is that”, shake their head or look at me with a confused face. I was at the point when I wanted to move back to West Oak Lane because thats where my real friends were but time and time my cousin just told me it a better environment so just try and change your language. In my head I was thinking thats a good idea and how about I let them know my language. As a new week started the same Caucasian boy walked up to me saying,

“ Hey you’re really quiet. Why don’t you talk to anyone?”

 I told him, “I don’t know anyone and it seems like I am so different from everyone.”

I started telling him how I use to talk in my old neighborhood and how people talk different. I told him people talk with slang in my old environment and people down here talk weird. I really felt uncomfortable telling him the differences. But he told they have slang to just like every environment have there own slang. Then he said,

“How about you teach us some of your slang and I’ll teach you some of our slang.”

 In my mind I started feeling comfortable but I didn’t know how people would react to some of the slang but I just decided to tell them the some slang or the short for things we say everyday. After telling him some known words that people in my old environment  the boy started laughing. At this moment I didn’t know how to react. I wanted to ask him, “what was funny?” After he stop laughing he begin telling me slang words that I heard when I walked around the school. He said,

“Dushbag, Cracker, or Anis.”

I asked, “what do the words means?”

He look, laugh and said, it has no meaning people just say it.”

 As he started walking away I was confused so I started walking around saying them words to people when we had funny conversations. Taking that advice from the Caucasian boy help me a lot. I started becoming friend with random people I didn’t know and I felt comfortable in this new environment.

My story connects to another story I read which is “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Glona Anzaldia. A quote that connects with my story is, “ We need a language with which we could communicate with ourselves, a secret language.” This quote connects with my story because the environment I move to is as a culture had their own language that they could only understand and not people from outside other environments.  After learning that moving to new environment I learn not to give up and try new things.

The first thing that I added to the slide were pictures of football stuff, since this is my favorite sport. Cam Newton is my favorite player in the N.F.L so I put a picture of him doing his signature Touch Down celebration. On the opposite side diagonal to that is a picture of his cleats. Also on this slide there is a picture of a football hemet. 

In the future I want to go to the University of Oregon. So I put a picture of the Oregon logo. If I go to this college I would want to play football. This is why I have a picture of the Ducks mascot Puddles.

  At first I thought the project was easy to make a slide. Then I found out that we had to explain the advertisement of the slide not the slide itself. It hard to explain why I did something a way if it was random. Now I learned from my mistakes.

Ever since i was a little kid, i spoke “weird”, as people would refer to it. Some said it was  “cute” or unique, and they couldn’t quite imagine me without the lisp. I completely agree with them. Without my lisp, it doesn’t make me unique from others.When i talk, i try to speak in a manner others can understand me. But sometimes, the words just stumble out of my mouth, tripping into the air mistakenly. Simple things i say can be entertain meant to others.

“hey, does anyone have a chore-ja?” i say curiously.

“A what?”

“A chore-ja”

“Hahahhaha, yeah i have one, just say charger one more time”

If indians speak with an accent and they speak with their native language, that is just a normal routine for them since they talk that way everyday, and they were raised. The same is with me. I was raised where at home, it was okay to speak sluggishly, and not care if i pronounce a word wrong. My family would still understand me. But i got so accustomed to it, that whenever someone tries to correct me, i am somewhat confused.  People would consider those on TV, speak quite normal. Not everyone speaks normal, because that is them. Speaking “normal” may not be part of their character. I think everyone speaks normal, because normal is what makes that person them. There is no “correct” way to speak, its just correct if others can understand you.

Try to imagine this :

Say today is a new start. You are about to get a new job as a commercial advertiser, and you are excited to apply. Now this job requires that you speak to advertise certain products, or introduce a clothing line, or whatever the case may be. Once you get there to apply, you sit and wait for this process to go through. After you fill out your information, you take a “speaking evaluation” so they can hear how you sound. After speaking the lines they provided for you, they announce 

“Sorry, but you don’t have the qualified, normal speaking voice”. Your heart shatters right there on the spot.Thoughts spin around over and over like merry-go-round. As you mope your way home, you wonder...

“What is the right way to speak?” What is the normal way to speak?” “How do i speak correctly?” 

As an american, a person living in the community, I can say that there is more than enough diversity in my neighborhood. We have people from different countries, with different accents. There is a wide selection of accents. Some that are common around my area is Chinese, Indian, Southern accents, and european accents. I myself have a “Boston” accent. I talk in a different manner than some of my friends do. They sometimes have to ask me to repeat myself again. Talking the way I talk, makes me who I am, and its a part of me. Its been a part of me all of my life. Now who’s to tell me I don’t speak normal? They would surely be talking to the thousands of others who have accents and lisp. 

Why are people expected to speak normal? What if being normal isn’t really quite them? Being who you are “reveals the private identity and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger,public, or community“ (quote from “if black isn’t a language identity, then tell me what is” by James brown). What does your language say about you? Language should not only build your character up, but show to the world your identity. This includes your personality, where you are from, and your diversity in the way you talk. It makes you feel confident or low about yourself. Its decides whether you wished you didn’t have that accent or lisp...or if you take self pride in it. Even if you don’t speak people expect you too, that automatically does not make you “weird”.  You have something that they don’t have, and thats a cool way to speak.People still are amazed by the way I speak. Its somewhat like entertainment to them. It makes them laugh. I have adjusted to my speech. I’ve had speech classes and therapy for this “disability”. People have been trying to correct me for years. I’m okay that I don’t speak like the regular people, with just regular speaking voices with no accents, and no speaking disability. That not only goes for lisp and accents, but it also goes out to the people who have mental diseases like down syndrome, which tends to make their speech slurred. I’m glad I don’t speak normal. It makes me the person I am,while building my character up. I believe that speaking normal, isn’t quite normal at all. Its just that some people sound like one another, and they consider that normal. Everyone is special in their own way, and everyone talks slightly different from others. Thats what makes them normal, in my opinion.

All in all, i believe that everyone is different by the way they talk. Some accents sound the same, some sound completely different. Me and my friends that have lisp speak more clearly than others. Its what makes us different. People may look at us and judge us by the way we talk, but they don’t understand the people who we truly are. There is no normal way of speaking, The way people hear you is just the way they consider you normal or not. You are normal no matter how thick your accent is, or how bad your speech is slurred, you will still be normal because there is probably hundreds of people out in the world who sound just like you.

“ Hello my name is Arshelle. What is your name?”

“ uggh my name Shay” 

“ Oh nice to meet you.” I say politely 

“ Why you be talking like that” Shays asks

“ Like what?” I ask bewildered 

“ Like, you be talking like a white person” Shay says rudely

No one has every said that to me, I don’t believe that I speak any different from anyone else. I was around the age of ten when this incident happened at summer camp. My mom sent me there because she had work during the day even though I really didn’t want to go. When I meeting this girl Shay  was probably the worst day of my life. She kept telling me that I didn’t fit in and that my voice was to different. She said I didn’t talk like a black girl. The girl Shay seemed to be the “leader” of the group of black girls so they of course they agreed with her. I had never been ignored or made fun of before because the school I went to and the people I was around spoke the same way I did. I told my mom that they were not being civil and were calling me white girl, she said it was because of ignorance and the fact that they were unaware of people that spoke in a different way. I understood what she was saying sort of, but I did not understand that I spoke a different way. I was taught to use correct words and to say please and thank you. I was taught to say yes not yea. 

When I was at that age I did not know that there is a right and wrong way to speak. I just knew what I was taught. When growing and even now my parents have a mixture of friends but one thing they all have in common is that they are all educated. I guess growing up around people with a good education and a good job has rubbed off on me.

In the essay by James Baldwin called “ If Black English isn’t Language, Then Tell me What is” he talks about how black english is a language that blacks should speak. He also talks about how it is a part of the culture. He then talks about how when the slaves came over they didn’t know english so they learned from listening and they made their own words. He thinks that blacks should speak black english which in America is viewed as incorrect english. In the essay he says “ We, the blacks, are in trouble, certainly, but we are not doomed, and we are not inarticulate because we are not compelled to defend a morality that we know to a lie.” He is saying that the english language to blacks is a lie.  

I do not believe in any of his views. In the world that we live in now if you do not speak the correct way you are looked down on. The black community is looked down on in a way cause people say they do not speak well. That it is to “Ghetto”. In our society getting a job can be a very hard thing to do. Employers look for a well rounded person and someone who can speak well. People make assumptions  just by the way you speak. They can tell where you are from how you grew up and your education. Baldwin writes “ It goes without saying, then that language is also a political instrument, means, and proof of power... It reveals the private identity.... or communal identity.” I think he is trying to say that the way you speak determines what kind of power you have in society. The people who have the higher paying jobs speak what we Americans call proper english. 

In the short story “ How to Tame the Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anazaldua she says “ Chicanos and other people of color suffer economically for not acculturating” The definition of acculturating is to assimilate the cultural traits of another. This is saying that some cultures suffer because people do not understand the cultural traits of others. This can be related back to Baldwin’s essay society doesn’t understand why some blacks speak the way they do “ black english”. Society has set a standard of speaking and if someone does not speak in that way they are seen as different or wrong. In the short story “ How to Tame the Wild Tongue” the author is talking about how people don’t understand way she speaks the way she does. She talks about how people suffer because of that. The way you speak doesn’t always determine how smart you are. Every person is an image of their environment. 

The way I speak has really been a big role in me becoming the person that I am. I feel as though your voice can be used as a tool to get the things you want in life. I think there is a right and wrong way to speak but only because that is what I was taught. In other neighborhoods of the city people speak differently cause that is what they were taught. I do not believe that your speech should hold you back from becoming a “Model Citizen”. Grant it when you do speak standard english in the corporate world it looks better but because you speak “wrong” shouldn’t stop you from doing want career  you want.  I feel as though you should not be labeled as uneducated by the way that you speak. 

Growing up was harder for me cause when I went to middle school I ran into the same problem. Even though my middle was one of the best in the district there were still black students that did not understand why I spoke in the way I do. I got to the point where I would wake up in the morning and not want to go to school cause they would always torture me. I still did not understand why they made fun of the way people spoke.

We have been told what is the right way to speak and what the wrong way to speak is. In our society when black people do not speak in a way people think they should, it is a surprise. I guess I am the surprise, I don’t believe that I speak white because I don’t believe that you can speak white. I think there is a right way to speak english to pronounce words right and understand what you are talking about. But I don’t think that proper english belongs to just white people. Anyone can speak proper. I am comfortable with the way I am and I know that I should never change it. 

As a bilingual speaker, language plays a big part in my life. It represents me as a person from two separate countries, meeting at an invisible line and separated by the border of language. In the essay “Borderlands/La Frontera” by Glona Anzalúna she writes “Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity.” For me personally I find the quote to be totally true. My ethnicity is Mexican and it does reflect on my identity of a Spanish speaker. Yet I also know how to speak English which creates a second persona.

My parents brought me over to the United States from Mexico when I was nine months old. They came here knowing close to zero English, thus making Spanish the first language I learned to speak.

“Di: Perro”

“Pero”

“No, Pe-rr-o”

My parents would ask me to pronounce words that desired the famous Spanish “rolling r”, like “carro” and “padre”, and being  2 years old,speaking was something new. My parents brought me over to the United States from Mexico when I was nine months old. Learning a language that was full of accents, “ñ”, double r’s and l’s was tough. My parents taught me how to speak, read and write Spanish. After a while it began to come to me naturally. It was all I knew how to speak. Spanish was the only thing I needed to know how to speak.

When my parents decided to enroll me in preschool I kind of looked forward to it. I remember the first few months of preschool as being really tough because I lacked English speaking skills. The only words I knew were “no” and “yes”. I had trouble communicating with the teachers and other students at first. 

“Me usar el baño”

“What? Speak up.”

“Tengo que usar el baño!” 

“Hey! You, come here and tell me what he wants”

The classroom was always full of children who were English experts compared to me. Not being able to speak English in the class room made me the outsider. With the help of my teachers I began to speak English and use it to communicate with the other kids. My difference began to fade away slowly as the year progressed. I remember how I would use stencils that came in all sorts of shapes; insects, animals, and cars. I would choose one and make a booklet filled with stencil drawings. Then my teacher would help me write out my name under every picture I made; to show that I was the artist yet learning to spell at the same time. 

From then on things were a lot easier. Being with people who only spoke english for 7 hours, 5 days a week really helped shape the way I spoke English for the rest of my life. It was a matter of learning English or continuing to use hand gestures like an advanced gorilla for the rest of my life. 

Being a bilingual has forced me to switch from Spanish to English and then back again depending on my situation. My parents’ little knowledge on the English language makes me their main translator. In elementary school, whenever I mentioned that I spoke Spanish. People would ask me things like: “Are you fluent?” or “Do you speak Spanish at home?”. Being bilingual sort of gave me a title. I didn’t understand why my friends were so amazed when they heard me speaking Spanish with my parents. I guess they saw it as a gift. In my opinion it was just who I was; I didn’t choose to be bilingual. Some people take courses or get a tutor to learn another language. I just happened to have Mexican parents who helped me learn Spanish before English in a country where English was the dominant language. 

I don’t speak much unless I’m close to the person I’m speaking to. The amount of words I say also depend on what language I’m speaking to them in. I speak English with my siblings and cousins who all grew up here and learned English as a second language too. English represents my “Americanized” persona; the part of me that feels like English is my first and only  language. This probably comes from the fact that I have probably spoken more English than Spanish in my life, because of my environment. I usually only speak Spanish whenever I’m talking to a relative or my parents.  My parents also never forget to remind me of my ethnicity and encourage me to speak to my brothers in Spanish so I won’t lose touch with the language. I don’t talk to my brothers in Spanish because they were born here and had me to teach them english before they started school. I see that as an advantage and that creates a difference between us. When I do speak Spanish with someone, especially with someone who doesn’t understand it quite well, I tend to feel a sense of pride. I take into account that it was my first language and it represents my Mexican nationality. 

I do agree that my linguistic identity is a representation of my ethnic identity. I am what I speak. In “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me. What Is?” by James Baldwin he speaks about the relationship between language and identity, saying “It is the most vivid and crucial key to identity”. Knowing how to speak two separate languages gives me two different identities. Using spanish at home and the houses of my relatives I am more formal,using words like “usted” instead of “tú” and “mande” instead of “que”. Speaking with people who are fluent makes it seem more normal and that makes me speak more. This is my identity as the polite Spanish speaking, culture proud Mexican. The part of me that is more seclusive around non-hispanic people.  Anywhere else I use my other identity, the Americanized English Speaker. I grew up learning English and using it most of my life because everyone around me spoke English. Learning English as a second language made me into a part of the American society, where it is useful to know to speak the common tongue. 

“Yo Jul! You commin’ to go play ball latah?”

“When?”

“After school, we haven a stream game.”

“Oh arright, sounds chillin brah. Imma fry! just watch!”

Being asked to go play basketball by my friends was something that pretty much never happened to me before I went to SLA. When I started going to high school, everyone was always talking about basketball: basketball video games, SLA’s basketball team, college basketball, but mainly the NBA. It was really different for me because nobody in my household was really into basketball. My parents are from Iran and Italy so the main sport in our house was soccer, but there was also a lot of American football because of the Philadelphia Eagles’ success when I was younger. However, basketball never really came up until the middle of 8th grade; maybe because only a select few of my classmates followed it or maybe because the Philadelphia basketball team had been playing very poorly lately. Anyways, during my last year in middle school, I started playing occasionally and watching Philadelphia 76ers games when I had the time or did not forget about them. Then, when I went to high school, I was surrounded by such a basketball enthusiastic community that I developed an obsession with it too. Of course I rooted for the Philadelphia 76ers because I have “Philly pride,” even though they had not been doing so well. Once my close friends realized that I really liked basketball, they started inviting me to games and gave me a chance. I had never been that good at playing but I always had a great time. As weeks and months went by I started talking like my basketball friends did. I picked up on all the terms that they used on and off the court and in a way they started accepting me more. It was like I became one of them. Speaking in that manner was becoming who I was. I would use them all the time; at home, school, with my friends. The year before that I did not really talk with that much slang and modern expressions. It would even effect the music I listened to; it got to the point where I could sing along to rap songs with my friends. When my older brother got back from college for Christmas break, he was very surprised and thought I had changed. It was odd for him because I balance in between my original self and the new person I changed to. I would go up to my friends that use very proper english all the time and mess with them by using slang. They would either react by laughing because in their minds it was different or weird for a “white boy” to be speaking like that or they would just feel awkward and not say anything. I became the “go-to guy” for those friends when they did not understand what somebody said.

“Yo she bad for real!” Jaaz said.

“Hey Julian,” Emalyn whispered “What does he even mean!?”

“He’s is trying to say that she is hot or pretty” I responded. This was different for me because nobody really asks me about what things means unless it is in another language or about sports.

Then one day at school things changed. 

“Yo Nigga whatchu up to after school?”

“I’m not sure yet man, but yo I’m white.”

“Naw Nigga you black! You an inside out Oreo!”

I feel like the use of bad words or derogatory expressions have become part of our everyday language in my high school community. On the other hand, I find my parents using curse words very seldom. For them, it is only necessary to make them a part of their vocabulary when they are in rough situations, but my classmates and I use them as a way to express ourselves at any point in the day. There have been times where a curse word or two slipped out in front of my parents. Since my brothers and I are maturing they do not usually “freak out” but they do not encourage speaking in that manner. I also feel like it is not right to go home after a long day of school and say all types of profanity in the presence of your parents. This why my conversations with my friends at school can sound very different than with my mom or dad, even if we are talking about the same thing.

I feel comfortable talking to my friends like that because they are part of this generation as well. “Fuck this bullshit. Bullshit of course is everything you and the others fear is beyond you: books, essays, tests...”(I Just Wanna be Average by Mike Rose). That is something that I would say to my peers at school if I feel that certain way, but never to my parents. Even if I was okay with saying anything like that to either one of my parents, they would still not comprehend the slang and expression that I use regularly. 

I conclude that society and age affects language. Communication is something used everyday and how we use it can have an impact on our personalities. Language can influence someone and their relationship with other people. All these experiences changed who I am and how people view me.

Digital Story:

Language Is All Around Us

Jennysha Cruz

It’s funny how a simple “hello” can sound so differently depending on where you are or whom you’re around. The variety in accents could be different from country to country even town to town. Through geographic location and public exposure people take on accents to better adapt to their environment. You learn and change the tongue you use to fit in with others, to feel comfortable, and most of all welcome in the community that you’re in.

“W-AH-T-ER, that’s how I’d pronounce it.”

“Really? People from Philly usually don’t say it like that, more like W-O-T-ER with an “O” sound ya know?” That right, I lived in Philadelphia all my life and commonly hear people pronounce water like that. It’s a normal thing to hear that though. On the other hand, he’s a Jersey person if anyone spoke with an odd accent it was him, or at least that’s what I thought.

“Or what about the way people say orange” I asked.

“Like AR-ANGE”

“There’s an “O” in that ya know. It’s OR-ANGE, no “R”.”

“Well you know people usually pronounce things differently depending where they were raised or how their parents expect them to speak.”

This was the first time I was actually confronted about the way I spoke, it was in 7^th grade my math teacher over heard a conversation I was having with another on of my peers and he explained to me that people don’t only say things different because of where they lived but the way they were raised. He went on to tell me the way he pounces creek isn’t like I would say it but more like “crick,“ instead. It’s an odd thing language is but it’s what got me thinking, do I speak right to others or do I sound as goofy as my math teacher when he tried to say creek. A difference in language was always something I could recognize easily. Though the thought of sounding a certain way depending on where you were from never really occurred to me. I use to think people from different countries had some big fancy accents like the Austrians who greeted one and another with a cheery, “Good ‘ay mate!” or “Top of the mornin’ to ya” as the British would say. Through out middle school I was quite the observer. I didn’t speak much but sure as hell listened a lot. Though once I went to an international camp I was flooded with all different types of accents from so many people. “Hello,” “Hi-ya,” “Ello,” and “Howdy,” were the new greetings instead of my ordinary “hey,” or “what’s up”.  I pretty much had this image of everyone sounding completely the same because; well we were all from the U.S. If anything people from different countries were the ones that sounded differently. I didn’t recognize that there was such a great variety in accents.

I went to a camp in 2009, this was my first ever time staying at an actual sleep away camp. People my age had a similar way of communicating yet different at the same time. I made lots of friends that could fit into the stereotypical New Yorker accent or Jersey accent. The Jersey girl had an odd way of saying; “talk” hers would sound more like “twalk” instead. Living in Philadelphia one would think since Jersey isn’t so far away but really she did sound a bit funny to me when she spoke but I’m sure she got the same feeling toward me as well.

I took these observations home with me I suppose I can honestly say I started noticing things differently. After camp I thought of the way people spoke and that is how I became interested in making my speech better. Becoming quite the grammar Nazi when I spotted someone saying something incorrectly. I was often judged by my brother’s friends or other family members because I didn’t have the Latin tongue that they had. They’d call me white or the smart one in the family because of the way I spoke to them. I didn’t change from English to Spanish like others in my family did. I spoke English with them, mostly because it was my comfort language. I do have to say the names they’d give me were pretty strange, “blanca” or “cana” which were both words to describe a white girl. My family had this idea that because I spoke properly and didn’t mix my Spanish and English tongues together that I was considered white. They were stating that race had a direct connection with the way someone spoke. Also, they’d frequently told me I was expected to do well in school because I spoke properly. They were always judging me because of that one thing, my speech.

Even though my family often judged me I wasn’t always the victim especially in my immediate family, when household members would pronounce or say a word wrong I’d often correct them. For example, one that was commonly used in my house had to be the word of possession “mine” when my parents or brothers tried to say something belonged to them they’d say “mines”. It was really annoying for a long time. Even today they still use the wrong words. I’d still correct them on their mistake though I realized with my brothers especially he couldn’t break the habit. Unlike myself I go to a magnet high school while my brother goes to my community high school. So you see I’ve learned that accents can be found not only in an international environment, such as my camp but also in different communities and where people tend to spend their time the most such as their school.