Rondel C. Language Essay

Rondel Calloway                                                                                12/14/10

Juniors’  step was where we hung out when we weren’t at my house. It was like our second bat cave.  “Yall drawin.”  Yall always tyrna flame somebody.” (Rondel)  “Chill we only do it if they deserve it.” (Phil) “So everybody who walk by deserve to get flamed.” (Rondel) “Yea depends on the way they look.”  (Savon) Savon is the second tallest of the crew, he is also the second lightest and the second tallest.  Savon is also known “Arab” because he had the most facial hair but he was the one of the youngest.  Savon was best at playing basketball.

 It was probably due to the fact that getting a rebound off of him was like trying to jump and touch the top of a skyscraper.  “You see this bull wit his cowboy stroll, he look like a donkey and a koala bear.” (Phil) Phil was the lightest out of all of us and the clown.  Phil’s about 5’9 and muscular, he always made all of us laugh.  Phil always found   something fun for us to do when we were bored.  Even if meant talking about people who walked down the block.

It wasn’t anything personal; it’s just what Phil came up with when we were bored. “Yo lo…” (Dean) “Chill be quiet it’s my mom.”  (Rondel) “Hello.”  (Rondel)  “Where are you?” (Mom) “I’m on Forrest Ave.”  (Rondel) “Okay I want you home before 12:00 am.”  (Mom) “Okay mom, love you.” (Rondel) “Love you too baby, be careful.”  (Mom) This is what usually happened, when our parents called our speech changed.

  My friends and I would be talking slang then one of our parents would call and there we were changing the way we spoke.  It’s actually pretty interesting, “I can’t wait to get a whip” turned into “I can’t wait to get a car.”  Seeing this change was like a magic trick.  You think that you know someone then his or her speech just changes when a new variable is introduced.  Sometimes you forget where you are and you forget to make that change in your speech.  “Is that you?” (Mom) “Yea” (Rondel) “Where were you this whole time?” (Mom)

“I was out chillin on Forrest Ave. wit the crew.” (Rondel) “What did you just say?” (Mom) “I meant to say I was on Forrest Avenue with my friends.” (Rondel) “You might talk like that out there but you don’t come in here talking like that.” “Especially to me, I’m, your mother and you show me the upmost respect.” (Mom) “Okay mom.” (Rondel) My mom was very strict about talking to her with respect.

To talk to my mom I had to code switch.  Conversations between my friends and I were different between adults and I.  To adults I said “Hi” or “Hey” instead “Sup” because it is the way that society says that we are suppose to talk to adults.  So in some ways society supports code switching, with adults you are suppose to speak “Standard English” instead of, in my case Ebonics.  Many people worry about being their self, but how can you be yourself if you have to code switch depending on who your talking to.  Basically what I’m saying is that Society makes you contradict your self.  By code switching you can’t be who you really are because by code switching you are hiding the way that you truly speak.