The Truth

Iraida Serrano

Gold Stream

Language Essay

The Truth

“¿Que Pasa?”

“What did you say to me?”

“All I asked was what’s up I don’t see why you have to get mad.”

“Please, for all I know you said something else in that made up language of yours.”

As he, one of my classmates from the 8^th grade walked away from me to join the swarm of kids that were outside playing at recess. As I turned to my friends and all I received was laughter. At the when that this happened I hadn’t been able to understand what he meant. As a way to avoid having this happen again I refused to talk to my friends in Spanish. To me what I had said was simple and easy to understand. For some time after that I felt stupid that I hadn’t switched back to talking in English as soon as I saw him walking towards me.

As I went through the routine of going to class for the rest of the day, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that what I had said to him was wrong. When I spoke to my mom at home that day, I had accidently spoken in English. Knowing that she barely understood me, I just decided to not talk at home. A few days later back at school, at another recess, the same kid came up to me and made fun of me.  He was saying sounds to act as if he was speaking Spanish. At his parting words he once again repeated what he had said just a few days ago, that my language was made up. This time I decided to gain the courage to ask him what he meant.

“Oh look, she don’t know about her dumb language.”

With that he left with his newfound friends, my friends. Ironically my next class was Spanish. I walked into the classroom only to see that the only seat left was the ‘danger seat’. It was called that because sitting there was a guarantee that you would be speaking in class. The boy was sitting two seats behind me and was laughing loudly with my old friends. The teacher went up to the front of the class to start her lesson.

            “O.k., I need someone to come to the front of the class to write and recite a sentence about what you do in the summer. Who would like to come up?”

Everyone had turned his or her head to the side and away from the teacher. I knew that if she picked on me I would have to speak Spanish in front of him again. If the language wasn’t real then what was the point of speaking it, but just my luck, the teacher had picked me. In a desperate attempt to get out of speaking I complained of a sore throat so I could only write the sentence. I did and went back to my seat when I finished.               As I sat there looking at the desk in front of me I heard some people saying that I thought I was better than them because I could write a sentence in Spanish. In the following month I started speaking in Spanish again at home. It was comforting knowing that somewhere, someone accepted the fact that I was bilingual. I now knew that I would have to change how I talked at home from how I talked in school to how I talked with my friends.

            In the words of James Baldwin, “To open you mouth…you have confessed you parents, your youth…and, alas, your future.” He believes that speaking a certain way can led people to figure out your parents, youth, and future and in a way he is correct.             If I hadn’t changed the way I spoke with my classmates, they would have thought that I was acting like a ‘know-it-all’ without even bothering to see if it was true or not. In their eyes, I was a kid with Spanish speaking parents and in the future at the school I would past every test in Spanish just because I spoke it. From then on I only spoke English in school and when in Spanish class I tried to make excuses or just try to not get called on.   I was starting to fit in again.  I was able to talk to my friends and gain new ones. I thought that not being myself had given me a new perspective on the things happening around me. Yet still, in the back of my mind a small voice wouldn’t stop nagging me, telling me that I should be myself and every time that happened I would just push the voice further and further into the back of my mind.

After almost three months of this, I found out the answer to the question that I had asked a few months back. I was helping my mom on researching different languages.       I don’t remember why but I do remember what I found out. Through the research I found out that Spanish originated from Latin. That was not the only one; there are other languages, such as Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian, and Catalan. I was surprised to say the least. I had spoke Spanish for so long thinking that it was its own language and to my amazement, I was okay with this not being true. I think it was due to the fact that I was apart of something bigger, something unique. It wasn’t just a few words that originated from Latin like in the English language; it was the entire language.

            After that I started to speak in Spanish more freely in other places that weren’t my home.  I finally realized that it was stupid of me to think that talking a certain way in front of people made me fit in. What made me fit in was the fact that I was being who I really am. Sure I lost some of my newly made friends but I gain new ones as well. From then on, I spoke how I wanted and even tried to teach other people how to speak the language, my language.