Andrew Chalfen Essay

Both of my parents speak a very high-class sophisticated English dialect and that’s because that’s how they were raised. When I was younger, I would say that’s the only English I could speak as well. As I got older and started making my own friends, I learned new slangs, words, accents, and definitions. For example the word bad has changed a lot for me. The way I first learned it “bad” was a way of expressing something not good or wrong. Such as, “Every time you go get into trouble, it’s bad.”

Then as I started hanging out with more friends from my private school school, and they would use bad this way “Sneaking into the movies is so bad! Way to go!”

After a couple of years I graduated from that private school, this is when I started making a lot of new groups of friends. Some of my good friends came from playing basketball in west Philly. Their definition of bad would go like this, “That girl is so hot she’s just so bad”

Another of group of close friends are involved in a rap group called “OCD” Since there rappers they find creative ways to use words. When their talking about “bad” it means real or true reality for example “I’m living it big so completely bad, don’t even hate because I know you mad”

Now-a-days one language isn’t enough. You’ll need to have two different languages and at least three dialects for each. For me I speak Spanish and English. My dialects in Spanish are whatever I learn in class but in English I create or choose my own dialects. There’s prep, ghetto, church, sincere, political, respectful, and many more. I’m a pretty diverse person when it comes to groups of friends and I’d say I could fluently speak all those dialects of English.

Maybe if I had traveled more I would have picked up even more dialects but Philly is a pretty diverse city. Different areas require different words so sometimes I do have to consciously switch my dialects to sound respectable. The thing is, if your speaking in the wrong dialect your in for some serious ridicule. If I spoke slang to my parents they’d ask me if id forgotten how to speak English, but if spoke prep to my neighborhood friends they’d tell me I sounded like a bitch. If you don’t know the people the key is to listen to how they speak and then imitate their dialect. You have to be careful with this because you don’t want to sound like a poser. Another rule to imitating speech is to stay consistent with that dialect, you don’t want to be talking like a hipster for an hour and then tell a story speaking like your mom. I’ve had times where I didn’t recognize a dialect. This just makes you feel awkward because even if you have something interesting to say you don’t know how to say it without sounding stupid. I was in North Carolina visiting my cousins he was with his friends using words I didn’t understand with inside jokes that could only be recognizable if you lived in the area. The worst was when they asked me how Philly cheese steaks were and I responded, “what’s a Philly cheese steak” because to me it was just a Cheese Steak. Next time my cousin comes to Philly ill be sure to tell him to get some “wuder ice” and that “use guys” should get some “baagel’s”

Mike Rose wrote that “Growing up where I did I understood and admired physical powers and there was an abundance of muscle here.” Here Mike rose it talking about how when your young the strong or most mature kids have an easier time then anyone else. I find this to be true and that for the most part stronger people do well throughout life. But this is not to say that being strong is all that is required to have a successful life. Now relating physical strength to language switching is connected to the amount of social interaction that a “popular” kid will have. The more popular you are the more people will try to talk to you and that translates to an improvement in social skills. People with more social skills will be better speakers because they will know how to use words to their advantage. One problem with this though is that some people will dedicate their adolescent life to social skills and not develop academic skills, which are also extremely important. This creates an unbalanced society.

Society is an idea of civilization coming together to create a social and community-based world. As the human race advances so does our society. Human’s advance through industry, economics, government and humans advance through culture. A culture grows through constant reconstruction. The amount that the today’s world is different just from two thousand and one is marvelous. When talking about culture speech is one of the most important pieces. Languages changes from culture to culture and since there are millions of cultures there are millions of languages. This vast pool of language creates a necessity to learn many dialects per language.

Some languages become so used though that they become a main basis for all speech like proper English, proper English is somewhat used by every person who speaks English because that was the starting point for the English language.