Art in Every Language
When I was in the second grade, my mother decided to transfer me to an all english class because my oldest sister was in Masterman, and she struggles because she wasn’t as good in english like the rest of her classmates were. I was delighted because not only was the class different, but it was also a better opportunity for me to have a better understanding of English. When I entered through the door of the classroom, a teacher greeted me. She said “Hi, I’m Ms. Lombardo, how do you pronounce your name?” I said “Cha.ve.liz” She tried to imitate every single letter the way I said it but it was useless. My name became “shavaliz” to her. It wasn’t as delighted with the pronunciation but well I just went along with it.She then said “ Follow me to your new seat”. I did as she said and I saw my friend Jose. He transferred the week before because his mother thought the same as my mother. English should be a priority since we are in an english speaking city.
Learning english at an earlier age was going to benefit us when we grow up. Other than Jose, I didn’t know people who were in that class, and my life shifted completely. There cultures were completely different right of the back because even though a lot of students in that class were hispanic, they did not know spanish as well as I did. I had my desk, my name tag, my books everything. And even though my name didn’t stand out from the rest of my classmates names, my background did. From the way I spoke English and Spanish, things changed completely.
Change is not a bad thing. Its something that we have to adapt to. Change is good.It was really easy to make friends too. When you’re the “new kid” everyone wants to be friends with them. The same day, I became friends with Gennyliz and Andrea. Gennyliz was Puerto Rican like I was and Andrea was African American and white. I went from the new girl to the cool girl. Jose was also there and it was good to have a friend. They were extremely friendly. I keep thinking about the day I met them and it wasn’t hard to adapt. WIth Gennyliz, I spoke both english and spanish to Gennyliz and Jose. But with Andrea it was only English. It was easy to be friends with them but sometimes I couldn’t find the correct words to respond. Sometimes when I spoke english, I responded with a spanish word. Not because I chose to, but because I didn’t know how to respond. Sometimes instead of saying okay, I would say “ o okey”. You were able to tell that english wasn’t my first language. It didn’t make me angry, it just made me want to learn more English.
Sometimes, I came home to hear my family speak in english then spanish. We called it Spanglish. The word itself sounds like spanish and english combined and thats exactly what it is. One of the biggest disadvantages might have have been pronunciation. When I said Beach, it used to sound like something completely different and well there goes a laughter. My family and I always corrected each other when the words came out wrong. it’s not because we wanted to harm each other but to strengthen our vocabulary and pronunciation. English was not our first language. So we had to work harder when we were younger in order to stay in tip top shape. Everything had to be easy for us because we had and still have to be successful.Being a canvas isn’t always easy. You are once empty with no words. But as soon as you learn your first word, you will be trained to learn more words until your canvas is only full. Especially when you speak more than one language. Knowing more than one language is a blessing but at the same time, if you don’t keep up with the languages then you will be lost. Creating a story is easy but the hardest part of it all may be deciding which language will be used to develop the story.
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