Advanced Essay #2:The Art of Language

                                           Introduction

 This essay helped me develop a better writer. My goals for this essay was to show that language isn’t just Spanish and English. I wanted to show that their are more pieces to it . I wanted  for my audience to be able to connect these pieces through my essay and understand the bigger picture of language and why we need. Need. My goal was to be able to connect my experiences to a major theme and I think i succeeded. I’m proud that i was able to make an essay that people from all over can relate too, no matter your age,gender, or race. It’s a universal thing. The thing i could improve on though would be just making it a bit more in detail .

                 The Art of Language

 Literacy comes in all shapes and forms from political literacy, to media literacy to even visual literacy but the one literacy  that we all have in common even when we don’t know what it is, is cultural literacy. Cultural literacy “is the knowledge of one’s culture” stated by the website digital Is. There are a lot of things that surround culture from the music you play, to the clothes you wear, to the food you eat but overall language is one of the most important because language is the way you communicate with the culture. It’s the way connect within in your culture A lot of people think language is just Spanish,English,Chinese,French, Vietnamese, Italian, and so much more but truthfully language is so much more than that. You could be speaking the same language but not the same language at all. Let me explain clearly what I mean. If you speak  modern english and I speak old english, we may be both speaking English but not the same language. When I was about ten years old I actually had my very first experience with cultural literacy.

 I hadn’t seen my niece, Destiny  in a long time. I only got to see  her every 3 years ,maybe and I know a lot has changed since then. I packed so much stuff that day, unnecessary stuff. I was only going to be at her house for a weekend but I packed like I was going to be there for  two weeks.My mom unpacked some of the clothes and gave me the stuff that was actually nessary. “Take a jacket” my mom said. I  looked at my mom “Why? It’s summer” . My mom gave me a look back “Because I said so. It’s going to rain. Now take the jacket. If you don’t need it then don’t wear it.”  She said as she walked out of the room. I put my jacket inside of my bag and soon as I did I I heard the doorbell ring. She’s here I said in my head then out loud. My mom came down the steps with me . I said Hi to Destiny and her mom. My mom and hers had a little chat before we left. We were off to quakertown. This was my very first time ever going to quakertown but i thought it be fun. When we arrived the very first thing I noticed was all the snow and i’m not  talking about actual snow. I was wondering if there were any black people?I never seen so much white people in my life but I wasn’t closed to making some white friends. My elementary school  had been with all African American students so I was looking for some diversity. Most of the day we spent watching disney movies, eating chinese food, and walking across the train tracks. It was slow but i was having a bit of fun. When nightfall came i thought  we were going to play games in the house and relax since it was 10 o'clock at night but my niece Destiny had other plans. Her and I were going to go see her friends. We left out without her saying really anything to her mom but we will be back. We went behind this shed where she met her group of friends who were smoking weed. They were a wild group of kids who all basically did whatever they want when they wanted but  that  was really none of my business if they listened to their parents or not but things got weird when i tried to talk to them and make some friends.  “Wassup?” I said to one of the white girls. “Hi she said.”  flipping her blonde hair. I tried to start conversation. “U always lived here or nah?” I was bad at it at 13 but it was my attempt. She stared at me for a while before she actually spoke “I don’t understand what you are talking about?”  she said.  “I’m  saying have you always lived quakertown.” I said rolling my eyes. She laughed with her friends. “Oh yeah” she answered.  “That’s cool I lived in Philly my whole life, that jawn sorta poppin” I said awkwardly laughing. She looked at her friends once more as if i was speaking another language or something but to them i probably was. “Why do you talk like that?” she asked. “Talk like what?” I answered. “Like a gangster” she said. I didn’t know how to respond so I didn’t At this point I  honestly thought she was trying to be racist and maybe she was  but without the knowledge I have now I wouldn’t have ever thought that maybe we just weren't speaking the same language.

 Language will always be crucial to cultural literacy, it makes up most  of the definition and whether we like it or not when we step into diverse situations we experience what it feels like and without  speaking the same language we won’t be able to understand what each other is saying. If we can’t understand what people are saying then we can’t connect  as humans and as humans we long to connect with another person that’s why Language is so important.  Language bonds us together , Language   helps make us a culture. Language is beautiful. A quote in How to tame a wild tongue reminds us of  this  it states “Who is to say that robbing a  people of their language is less violent than War? “Pg (53) Ray Gwyn. My response is  that it’s not.  If you rob a group of people of their language then you rob them of their culture.