Latino Community

Fifteen and raised by a mexican family and lived in a latino community near North Philly. Spanish here and spanish there and spanish everywhere. I grew up to be bilingual by around the different hispanic race, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, and Mexicans. In this language autobiography you will find a record of personal, language-learning history of experience of different ways of using language around hispanics.  

Growing up in a latino community, you can learn all sorts of different culture and language. Threw out all the years I had experience around the latino community, I got used to the matter of the way the latinos use their cultures by the traditions, music, and beliefs. Growing up with different types of hispanic race, all different hispanics have there own accent as well and also realizing that every latino has there own way of language. My first experience was in a summer day in the middle of July at my friend house. I was over my friend house, Alex who I known for years now, is to be dominican and puerto rican and his mother was puerto rican. While I am sitting down on the couch relaxing while watching cartoons and not worrying about a thing. All of the sudden I heard Alex and his mother speaking in spanish. The conversation was so loud you can hear it from the living room. I didn’t pay Attention. Each word they spoke, I just couldn’t catch up. At that moment I realize that language comes in different ways.

Before SLA, I went a school where half of the school that was bilingual, english and spanish. In my home room, basically half of the students was puerto rican and african american and including me as the only mexican in the room. I didn’t feel different, I always knew that I would blend inn. Through all my elementary and middle school year, those were the only two race I spent, and never had experience going to school with any other race. Noticing between puerto ricans and african americans, both race would have there own matter in using their language and accent comparing to mine, its a different story. As a group of all latinos in school, we would talk spanish threw the whole entire conversation without anyone having trouble because of course they were born to be bilingual and so do I. "Supporters of bilingual education today imply that students like me miss a great deal by not being taught in their family's language. What they seem not to recognize is that, as a socially disadvantaged child, I considered Spanish to be a private language." (p. 17). Rodriguez explained to consider spanish to be a private language because   there was a deep intimacy with his family, so at odds with the painful feeling of public alienation. His teachers were aware of his problems with English, and his parents would only english in a way to learn english. Rodriguez still agrees that spanish is important and to support bilingual education.

My whole experience had change until I came to Science Leadership Academy for high school. The previous year before my freshman year, I had went to a school with bilingual students of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, Mexicans and also African Americans. They would all have there own way to speak their language, I may also get confuse on how to blend in and to connect with each other as we go threw a conversation. “It’s not possible for a child – any child– ever to use his family’s language in school.  Not to understand this is to misunderstand the public uses of schooling and trivialize the nature of intimate life – a family’s ‘language’ ” (p. 10). Rodriguez explained that Spanish was a language of family closeness and easiness. When they switched to English they lost the family bond. Rodriguez uses this essay to show how he fights through his childhood to understand English. Speaking clear English will help him to fit into society. Comparing the quote of Richard Rodriguez and my experience seems to be similar that everyday I would have to get the hang of english. Till this day I still experience the different language and accents from student at SLA. Learning all types of cultures, traditions, music, and beliefs. The moment I went through the doors at SLA, I knew something was coming. Looking around my surroundings, seeing different faces, race and I notice there wasn’t a latino that I know so at that moment I knew my life would change.

Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages without our knowledge or consent the very thoughts we wish to express? Everyone has their own matter in a way to speak language. Its all in the head, that everyone has an opinion, in what way is proper to speak their own language. Experiencing of different language can be mind blowen, with everyone different accents in able to speak.