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I. Intro and Reflection:

During this project, I had many struggles. I describe some of them in the essay itself. Other than the ones in the essay, I had a hard time finding out what I wanted to write about, or what I could even write about. After I figured out what I wanted to write about, the hard part was narrowing it down to fit in 750-1000 words. I learned a lot of different things about my own language identity. I talked about things like how my mom grew up in the south, how I had speech therapy when I was little, and how code switching has effected my life.

II. Final Essay

When I learned that I was going to have to write a language autobiography, I thought I was never going to be able to do it. I thought that I was doomed because I was taught to speak proper and correctly my whole life. When we were reading about people who had large opinions on language identity and what language was, I couldn’t relate to any of them. I never thought about language and I never really needed to. My family didn’t come from a foreign-speaking place, I didn’t have to translate for anyone, and I didn’t have any family members who spoke with a heavy accent or bad grammar, dialect etc. I was so worried that I had nothing to write about. Then something hit me. I had tons to write about! So, that being said, let me start to tell you about it. 

When I was growing up, my mom always told me to speak correctly. As I got older, she would correct me if I didn’t pronounce a letter or syllable or anything else in a word correctly. Sometimes I will keep saying the word wrong and she will yell at me. I always get really mad at her because I feel like home is someplace that I should be able to talk in an informal way. Instead, I have to talk like I do in class. I never thought about it too much until we started talking about language in English class. 

When I was getting ready for school one morning after talking about language in class, I started talking to my mom. I told her that we had been talking about proper English and stuff like that. When I said that there was not really such a thing as “proper English”, she flipped out on me. She said that there was defiantly such a thing as that. She told me that she doesn’t like bad grammar or other things like that coming from out of my mouth. When she flipped out, I got really angry. We probably both over reacted because it was so early in the morning but I can remember how I felt. I balled my hands into fists and I felt like throwing the hairbrush I was holding at something.

“Why are you flipping out? I just really hate when you yell at me just because I said something wrong!” I yelled at her.

“I want you to make sure you never slip a slang word or something similar to that out during something really important like a job interview” She shouted back.

We both argued about the same thing until I stormed out of the room, my head filled with rage.

When I was in the car going to school, I remembered that we had been learning about the fact that “standard English” existed. We never said anything about “proper English.” I felt really bad. Throughout the day, I realized that I did have lots to write about in my essay. I could just write about what it was like to have to speak proper. 

Even though I speak pretty well now, I don’t have the greatest history with language. My mom grew up in Louisville, Kentucky and she mostly lost her southern accent when she came to Philadelphia for college. My grandmother (her mother) lived in Kentucky her whole life up until this summer. When my mom would go to visit her, she would always have a strong accent again for about 3-4 days. Sometimes you will hear me say certain words they will have a slight accent on them. 

A very large issue I had with language in my life was when I was little. I had very bad speech. I don’t remember it much because it stopped after I was five, which was after I had speech therapy. I could not pronounce a lot of words. For instance, I would pronounce “no” as “go”. As you can imagine, because those words are complete opposites, it never ended up well. If I wanted to say no to something it would come out so that it seemed like I meant yes. It was hard for people, including my parents, to understand me. 

Even though I might talk really proper at home, I still use slang and a bit of bad grammar when I am talking to my friends. Mostly, we have words or phrases that only we say. Words often start out as something that only one of us said. Then the rest of us would catch on. I have noticed that this happens a lot with everyone. We get it from our friends, family, and even the internet. 

I think that it is really important for all of us to know how to code switch. Code switching is when we talk differently in different places. For most people, they speak more formally in school, in a job environment, and presentations. The talk however they are most comfortable when they are with their friends and family. With me, its changed a bit. As my mom said, she wants me to be able to code switch easily and that’s why she wants me to talk properly around her. In the essay Mother Tongue by Amy Tran, the author says that the limited English limited possibilities in her life as well as in her mother’s. That’s what my mom doesn’t want to happen to me in life. 

Before this assignment, I never thought about any kind of language identity. I’m still not positive what mine is quite yet, or if I even have one. But I know that I am in the process of figuring it out. I might even have multiple ones. I do know one thing for sure though, I once thought I didn’t have a story to tell with language but now I know I have a huge story. It’s just still in the process. 

Bibliography

Tan, Amy. "Mother Tongue, By Amy Tan I Am Not A." Scribd. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Jan. 2012. <http://www.scribd.com/doc/13297165/Mother-Tongue-By-Amy-Tan-I-Am-Not-A>.

III. Video 

At first I didn’t think the project would be difficult to do. But as soon as I started to get into the paper I realized that it’d be harder then I thought. How was I supposed to write something about language when most people atomically assume that I’ll speak once I open my mouth? This often made me think about how when I’m at home the way I speak, but when planning for interviews I like speaking over the phone first so they can at least give me a chance to impress them without them judging me by my looks or race. But during this project I learned that if your courageous and optimistic then things might not always be the same. In other words, people will start thinking more highly of you, and depend on you more because of it. I was always kind of afraid of what people would think of me because of my race. And most times I would shun the fact of speaking “black”. But now I realized that it’s fine that I can code switch. While when I do talk “black” it isn’t a ghetto way. I’ve realized that no one will ever be able to be his or her selves because the world as one expects too much from one person to be like everyone else.

Language is a funny thing. It either helps you be accepted into a group of friends or a job, while other times it can make people deny your existence or just deny yourself. To me, language is a beautiful thing. And it’s even better when you know a lot of them. Language is like trying to perfect an old family recipe, it takes time, but it’s fun experimenting with the thing you love the most. It’s what defines you for you and not how others would group you into the same stereotype because of the way you look.  

There are 6,500 languages being spoken right now as we speak.

What most people don’t know is that language is actually a beautiful song that a lot of people can sing, it’s very heard to learn for people who want to understand other languages. There are years of practice that others have to go through that’s behind the secret of singing the song of language, but not all languages take years. Some languages are just slang that can be picked up anywhere in any continent, in any state, and in any language when you’re around a certain type of dialogue for a long period of time.

When your around a language for a long time, you eventually start speaking and sounding the same way as the people you were around. In my situation, my language is slang. I don’t always speak slang, but I do understand it. As my brother likes to say, “All coons should know how to translate Ebonics.” When needed I can be as proper as the world wants me to be, but when alone, with friends, or with family I can speak freely as much as I want because I won’t be judged or looked at funny for it.  Either properly or with slang or mixed with a little bit of both. An example of this is when I was in my room trying to sketch out a design on my bed “por Español mañana” (For Spanish Tomorrow).

It was comfortable and I had my laptop right in front of me listening to music. My legs were crossed as if I were a pretzel and that’s when my brother walked in. “Can you help me with my Spanish?” he asked with confidence. I looked at him with a strange lift of my eyebrow.

“But you’re in Spanish 2 just like me. Why do you need my help?” I stated.
He protested me with jokes and small talk more and more until he finally got a “yes” out of me. He explained what his task was for the Spanish project he had to do where he stood in front of the side of my bed.

He began to ask me how I would say simple sentences in Spanish. I started to slowly tell him because I was new at it too but he quickly cut me off saying, “Look dawg, and just type it into Google so I can just get this over with.” I grew angry.

I thought “why would you ask me for help if you were only going to cheat?” Why even bother explaining things to me?  I sat there quietly while he typed his directions into Google translate and mumbled from time to time, “Oh, I should have knew that” or “I’d learned that already.” He began to try to start small talk and I just kept answering him with a couple of, “I don’t know” and “The translator is right there”.

My brother began to stopped smiling and eventually stopped trying to make attempts to cheer me up with the method he was using. He looked up at me from re-writing the Spanish translation onto his notebook and said, “Why you always gotta do me like this? You drawlin cuz, all I asked was to help me and you want to make it all complicated. You’re a kill joy yo.” I stared at him for a minute before I said, “I tried to help you and you denied my help. You went to a translator when I warned you it wasn’t going to come out right. So when you fail, don’t blame it on me.”

He finished taking his cheated notes and left angrily because he knew he was wrong and because I was angry with him. After a little while I heard my mom scream, “YO! Done or raw.” And I quickly got up quickly and told my angry brother that it was time to eat. He then seemed to have settled down because he was using my Spanish dictionary and playing NFL on Xbox 360 sitting in his big spiney chair that has 2 arms and feels like fluffy clouds. I waited until he turned around and told him again. He looked at me with calm eyes and said: “okay.”

              During this time in life, “YO”, “DAWG”, and other phrases that could be seen as a “code”, was mostly understood by Black people. I’ve notice that as a black culture there is always a new word or an update on a previous slang going around. “Bye Qurl” means in today’s world “End of discussion” or a more known word “Period”, after something important has just been stated. These words are a special connection between blacks since we don’t really have our own language. It represent us. But Blacks don’t have their own language because we were forced to speak, some what “Standard English” during slavery time because Whites wanted to understand what Blacks were saying.

Even though others don’t understand Blacks all the time, we can instantly switch from “hood” talk to proper English when we need to. But because most people stereotype Blacks as “Ghetto” it’s a little hard to be taken seriously by some people. Not all black people are rude,  ghetto, or can’t speak “correctly”. And if there are, then maybe they just can’t receive the same education as other races can. There are a whole bunch of blacks that can speak well and speak in “our” code without a second thought and can still be a business man, a writer, or even an artist. Just because Blacks pronounce or use a different word to describe something doesn’t mean they’re not “well educated”. Blacks are perceived of this because Black slang is not the easiest thing to catch onto or understand quickly.

Also, a lot of people who speak “hard” Black slang are usually from the projects and those people are usually uneducated as well. But it doesn’t go that way all the time. You can be from the projects and still become something better and more. So because of this, it’s hard for other races to understand Black slang terms that a majority of Blacks do speak because it’s shorter and easier for Blacks. It matters for Blacks more because there is still some racism going on, and because of that Blacks are getting shot down jobs and being accused of other things because of their accents, or the way they speak.

And because of that, a majority of Blacks are stereotyped of speaking the exact way.

For example, my brother has amazing writing skills, though if you’re talking to him and your a close friend it wouldn’t seem like he would know great grammar. However, he gets A’s in English all the time and recently received an amazing score on his PSAT’s in writing. This shows you that we as black people speak a certain way to describe how we feel or to describe ourselves in our a chill, comfortable way. It’s apart of us. But because of the stereotypes most blacks just threw away the whole “code” to begin with to fit in. In a short story called, “Tongue Tied” by Maxine Hong Kingston her mother cut her daughter’s frenum which is under her tongue so she would be able to speak any language. At first, she was afraid to speak in class because no one else had their tongue like that from her family and she thought others would view her differently. But later on in the story, she learns to build her confidence and starts to talk in class more because she realized that even her sister was afraid to talk and she didn’t even have hers cut.

It has come to a point that more and more blacks have been acting ghetto, which I dislike to the fullest extent. Trying to show how rude or disrespectful they can be by following the stereotype gives other races reasons to think that a lot of Blacks aren’t educated. Even I have stopped using a lot Black slang. But, I can still fully understand new terms and black dialogue. I guess you can say I’m taking a break from the “Black Code” and learning more of a Japanese one. It’s always good to learn something new I suppose after so many years of the same thing. It’s the way of language to absorb, and migrate once you’ve learned everything there is to be learned.

Intro: Hola Amigos! Mi nombre es Alexis y este mi vida y mi queridos los.

Yo:  Mi nombre es Alexis Dean, soy una estudiante de primer año aquí en SLA. Soy de Filadelfia. Soy Boba, Sociable, and Amoroso Me fasicna leer, dormir, estar de vago con mi familia, y praticar deportistes.

Ella: Su nombre es Alyssa, Su es mi hermana menor Alyssa es adorable. Alyssa tiene tres años. Le fasicna baliar, eschuchar musica y cantar. Sin embargo Alyssa encanta su hermana mayor Alexis mas. La adoro porque su mi hermana menor y es mi todo mundo. 

Ellos: Ellos es mis primos Nicky y Astasia. Son de Filadelphia. Tienen una familia grande. Les gusta Jusgar Videojuegos escuchar musica y mas o menos en amor con Facebook. Ma caen bien porque ellos son mi primos y son mi mejor amigos.

Ellas: Ellas son mi madre y mi amiga Tytiana. Son de Filadelphia tambien. Ellas son guapas, comicos and bobas. Les gusta escuchar musica. Ellas casi siempre tener auriculares en. Ma caen bien porque ellas son siempre hay para me cuando yo necesidad ellas.

Nostros: Nuestros nombres son Gabrielle, Caryn y Alexis. Somos sociables. Tenemos los ojos moreno. Nos encanta Basketbol, escuchar musica y comer. Nos llevamos bien porque es mi favorborita amigas.

REFLECTION:

            For the longest time I wasn’t sure what to write about. I don’t come from a family straight out of a foreign country. And I’m not  “Off the Boat” Italian as some others are. I’m just me, Anthony. So I thought about it quite a bit before I finally thought to myself that I do have some dialectic things in my life. My grandparents say things, my friends say things and even I say things. So I just decided to write those occurrences into this paper that you see here.

            I will never fully understand the way people go against one another for speaking differently, even when it’s in the same language. To be speaking different languages is one thing, I mean you can’t understand the person, but there’s no reason to bother others for sounding differently.

             Here in Philadelphia, we have several different ways of saying things. These can include the way we pronounce bagel (Beg-gull), water (wooder) and some other words as well. We’ve even made up a cluster of words such as jawn, jawnski and yous to name a few. Basically jawn is a way to say thing when at a loss for words while yous is a hybrid/contraction for saying you guys and you girls. Somebody use these constantly and love using it while others don’t bother using them whatsoever. Personally, I find myself using yous a lot but refraining from using jawn as some consider it to be improper.

            I don’t exactly see how words can be improper. I mean I understand how some people associate poor grammar with poor working. Some people can be told entirely from their speech. The person who seemingly can’t structure a sentence is more than likely differently clothed than somebody using complex words in a casual conversation. This doesn’t necessarily meant that the person is incapable of doing the actions of the proper speaker granted it isn’t a public speaker in most cases.

             I had a friend in grade school, his name was John. We were always good friends even though we were different in several aspects we managed to be great friends and get along in most cases. Out of everything we’ve done the most memorable would probably be our routine after vocal assignments. Time and time again we would get up there in front of our uninterested class of 24, scuttling up to talk about how the weather is changing or the history of pancakes. Each time, we would say almost a synonymous speech with only replacing a few words. I’ve always been a proper speaker save for how fast I talk in some cases while he tended to abbreviate his words and use words that we swear were made up. And each time I would laugh at the response on his face when his grades were 5 points lower than mine for no reason. Half of the time he’d be given the better-worded speech too! 

             Although even with this proof I guess the wrong idea is being presented. People shouldn’t be afraid or ashamed to use their own way of speaking, or “dialects” if you may. Some are just treated differently than others. More than likely you have others around you that speak as you do. I mean people need to learn form somewhere or else we wouldn’t know anything. If I were to say something common to me in school, it’s almost assured that nobody in the room would understand what I’m saying. A perfect example of this would be my grandparents. We say our own plethora of words being together as a family. The most predominant however would have to be Marone, which is basically considered to be a burden or a quarrelsome statement. The next one is called a gavone. A gavone is considered to be a pig and a glut in several instances. Here’s an example of just that 

  Trips to my grandparent’s house are always fun. My grandmother, or Mommom as we call her, is always so fun and the most amazing cook. And my grandfather, or Poppy, is one of the coolest people to me. Going to their house is always another venture in itself! We always go together as a family, so their house always has my family, my aunts and my uncles, my cousins, and until recently, my great grandmothers. As with so many Italians getting together, we always get into some minor bickering and fun quarrels.

“Well what do you mean we can’t go to the Christmas party this year?” “I already told you why! I don’t work with them anymore!” “So? What’s the problem?” “Marone, what’s the matter with you?” These are most of the arguments between my Aunt Monica and my Poppy. We manage to get into arguments over everything and it’s hilarious every time. I remember last Christmas Eve when we went to my grandparent’s house for our annual holiday tradition. We always eat so much more than we’re supposed to and wind up making somebody starve to death because we’re such “gavones” as my family says. And we are. “Here you go, the last pizza guys!” My Mommom said twice with a grin on her face. I never got how she could be so happy in making countless pizzas on Christmas Eve. “Hey guys we’re finally here!” My Aunt Joanna said while her and my newest Uncle Mick walk in from the blistering cold. “Oh good just in time for the last of the pizzas,” replied my Mommom still happy. “What pizza…?” replied my Uncle, clueless as ever. My Mommom quickly looked down at the table to see nothing left. “You guys are such gavones!” she sparked at us after devouring all the pizza. It was worth it though.

            There are several examples in the world where dialects are found. Everywhere in the world actually. Your dialect shows just that. It tells you everything from where you’re from to whom you hang out with throughout your life. Don’t be ashamed of what you have, but be happy about your own life and where you’ve come from to this point.

“snip snip” the sounds of the lips going back and forth, Spacing between each curve in a way that cannot be defi ned. Imaginary it must be, not being able to understand the new language she has brought in this house. “You don’t want ta listen to me you know.” Foreign, it must be; this isn’t English. What is this? Training as the time goes on, the peers get used to it and try to learn it. They understand what I am saying . “I am tinkin about movin.” The strange talker says. As the speaker continues, we learn to understand the dialect. Morning rises, only the kin are around the change in the dialect changes. Code switch it ay be called but how. How can you change what you sound like in an instant like a whole new person. I wonder how that happens to a person. Now I feel different wondering about this situation. Lingering the words slur as they are still correct. One chance to change ones dialect and it happened. Tick tock fortifying with greatness. You now know the difference between languages. Ding dong “hello”. Conversing back in forth they are. Once again the dialect changes I don’t understand the fast speaking the horrid.

No holding back the foul language coming out my mouth, talking as if I don’t know English. Friend laughing and joking around waiting for a joke with that French word of justice. When around my family the French word is obsolete. As if the word never existed the loud talking the distant hearing of the parents. Walking outside getting my code switch started. A friend comes up and now it’s on the code switch is in. Finally I’m free. Don’t under stand why It’s like this but it is. Can I change it I don’t know. Depending on how I feel during the moment, sometimes.

Throughout all the times a friend speaks to you do you ever wonder if they always speak that way. Maybe they just speak to you that way.

In school i always try to make up lines that would make people laugh. My most recent line was “chew the gat” although many people don't know what it means that's a good thing. If they did I wouldn’t be here. Sometimes people laugh sometimes they don’t. When I’m around other people tat line doesn’t come up in my vocabulary. I try not to just randomly say it.

My friend in school says some pretty wierd stuff, he says ”what are youuuu talking about” then he like repeats it in different ways. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t say that around his parents.

I actually like code switching how you feel the rhythm in the words coming out of your mouth. You feel you coming out. You can feel your mind spinning as if you never heard anything before it feels so new. When you talk to your guardian most of the time your actually talking to them in a way that won’t get mad at you. Hopefully that gazing eye upon that word which cannot be named because it has not been thought of. That word your gazing looking upon finally opens up depending on you your around with.

The more time you spend thinking about that word it’s hard to decide weather to use it or not. It’s basically an unsolved mystery until you have to say the word.

Conversations come differently. When you converse with someone they feel as if that you, they feel that is how you speak. People tend to speak proper at placed they feel are proper. Like Balls, business offices etc. I actually like code switch because it show me how many of “MY” languages I actually know. People don;t know my language only because they don’t code switch the way I do.

Sometimes my mom doesn’t even realise she says “tinkin”. When I do bad on my report card and I’m always on my laptop. She says that I’m not “tinkin” that I’m not tryin. To her family it’s a lot different  when they tinkin and then at the end of the sentence it “you know”. That’s their way of speaking and I can;t change that I also like the way they speak because in a way that shows my mom has a language that is English.

Dialect brings an important factor into this. Not all the time a person speaks with an accent. Even though they know the accent and It’s heavy, they also try to “lightin” it in front of other people just for them to hear.