Language has feelings.
Language has feelings too
September 1, 2008, was a new beginning for my family and I. It was our first day In America, This was my family’s dream, that one day they’ll see the status of liberty and be able to tell people back home, how awesome America is. It was a dream come true for them, but not me. You might be asking why was that??? Well you’ll find out as I get more and more into the story.
I somehow knew that Mandingo was not too relevant to Americans. Since I was in Africa I always had this thought of why can’t other people be able to speak their languages or express themselves, without being laughed at in America “Land of the free”. I mean at least that’s what we was told, and this feeling of I will not be accepted because of the way I spoke or what language I knew was going to be a problem. As I got use to the society I saw was I was afraid of.Right before we landed, the flight attendant was announcing things, and the only phrase I remembered him saying was “Welcome to America”. The plane landed and since we were at the back of the plane, we weren’t out until ten minutes later. After waiting for the others to get off, my family started to get off; I was the last person to get off. When I walked out I started to look everywhere, with a very confuse and slightly happy smile on my face. Everything was beautiful and I was happy because my family was having the moment of their lives. Then we walked to the front desk where we got our bags, and paper work done. The person behind the desk was speaking English to us, and none of us, could understand anything that came out of her mouth. Therefore they found us a Translator who can speak both Mandingo and English. He did an awesome job at translating what my mom was saying. At the moment every English word sounded like gibberish to me. I wish I knew what they were saying. Most importantly I wish I knew what the flight attendant was saying, until this day, I’m still curious of what was said.
What most people in our Country don’t realize is that English is not the only language that you can use to communicate with others. A language like Mandingo would be totally irrelevant to Americans, most people would think that well since Mandingo is not a well known language and doesn’t break or make us, how about not worry about such thing in our country, which make sense when you’re thinking of what language will get you more jobs and things like that. It was very shocking when I found out that “America” Has a Mandingo speaker that can actually translate Mandingo to English. It was a sign of respect.The night before first day of school was so exciting for me, I was all set for first day of school. I had my uniform whitch was blue tops and khaki bottoms, and a new sneaker I didn’t care about the brand because it didn’t matter to me back then. I tried to go to sleep early, so that the night can go fast, and apparently it did. In the morning I got up and rushed in the shower, after getting ready my dad took me to school along with my brothers and sisters. I was happy and I thought it was going to be good day, but it turned out I was wrong...
Sitting in the office for about twenty minutes, waiting for somebody to come get me so that I can go to class. After walking up the stairs, and walked into my new class. My heart was beating very fast like I had just ran a million miles, and if I’m not recording this wrong, I almost peed on myself. I felt the negative energy killing my vibe. I was convinced that I was nothing but a stupid African girl who is going to be bullied. I knew it, I had the feeling. I was up front nervously moving around as the teacher introduced me to the class, and said “be nice to her she’s from Africa and doesn’t know anyone.” Then she assumed I was from Mali and introduced me to a girl named Nahawa. I had to sit with Nahawa, even though I was not Malian I just pretended She was right because I couldn’t say anything to save my life. I sat there and Nahawa and I spoke Malian, I can only understand because I used to live with people that spoke Malian. As the day go by, every time Nahawa and I speak the students in my class starts to laugh and make sounds and noises, trying kill our vibe. They personally had me, because I was very mad about what they were doing, they tried to make fun the language. I was sitting there thinking to myself, do you know what you are dealing with, I’m not quite. Not knowing how to speak English didn’t mean that I was stupid, or anything. But that’s the message they got from me not being able to say anything.
Some students in America, don’t know what diversity of language means, they just assume you are stupid because you don’t sound like” OMG what is for dinner” Or ayo my nigga what was the homework” Which makes it hard for people like me because not only that I was struggling from language problems, but it also became a form of bullying. Language doesn’t make you smart it just make you different, and to me if they didn’t think that being different was a good thing, I guess I didn’t want to be in school, nor be bilango. I started losing my identity because I felt like I could not be cool speaking a language other than English, and when I spoke to Nahawa from that day on I whispered, Not because I was scare but because I wanted to be accepted and cool, but now I can speak any language at anytime, with any accent.
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