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My friends and I came into our fourth grade class and we couldn’t help but notice a new kid. I asked my friend if she knew who the new kid was but she was just as clueless as I was.

“I dare you to go up to her and say hi,” said one of my friends while laughing.

So I walk up to the girl,  said hi and introduced myself, but she sat at her desk with a blank look and finally responded in Arabic saying, “Ante ba tihikee arabi?” (Do you speak Arabic?)  

At that moment I responded saying, “Ayi, salam.” (Yeah, Hi.)

She asked me what my name was and where I was from, then told me her name was Abeer and she moved here from Iraq. I then went back to my friend, after this little exchange.

“So what did she say?” she asked all excitedly.

I translated the conversation to my friend that was exchanged between me and Abeer. I felt so eager and proud of myself for being able to talk to someone who only spoke Arabic, then being able to translate to my friend.

Eventually, my 4th grade teacher ended up sitting me next to Abeer to help her with her English but I started to notice that her Arabic wasn’t the same as mine. I mean I understood her but the way she worded her sentences and the words she used were different. It felt as though I wasn’t making sense to her. Sometimes I would find myself asking her to repeat things over and over, trying my best to grasp the familiar words I understood. Then one day we got into an argument and she told me that she doesn’t even understand me half the time and that I spoke some other type of Arabic. This was not the first time I came to the realization that not all Arabic I knew, was the same as everybody else’s Arabic.

I felt really bad and it had me thinking in frustration, it took me some time to realize that the type of Arabic she was speaking wasn’t the type of Arabic as I was familiar to. The way she combined words when she spoke and how the words were pronounced with a strong thick accent. After a couple of weeks I went home and asked my mom what kind of arabic we spoke. She told me that all Arabic was the same, but I still didn’t get it. Was the type of Arabic i’ve been speaking all my life fake? My dad came home from work and I paid close attention to how he spoke Arabic. It was no different than how I was speaking to Abeer. I remember asking him why my Arabic sounded so weird. He would tell me that it was no different from his but the dialect. Every Arab country has a different dialect. Yemeni people talk different than people from Iraq or Sudan would.

I remember going to Arabic school since I was three years old. I’ve been to eight different Arabic schools over my lifetime. One day I came to school and I had a bit of a cold and one of my teachers noticed and asked,

“Ya bintee ante ayana?” (Sweetheart are you sick?)

I was a bit startled by what she asked because I thought the teacher said, “iryan,” which means naked because I’ve never heard of the word “ayan” so I quickly responded saying

“La.” (No.)

Then shaking my head in disbelief and shock.

At the end of the day my teacher was talking to my mom telling her how I was doing in class, then mentioned that I might have a little cold. When we got in the car to go home I told my mom, “Hakee moo alima sal atnee lo ana iryana.” (My teacher asked me if I was naked.) I was a bit confused so she explained that my teacher thought I was coming down with a little cold  and that she didn’t ask if I was “iryna” but if I was “ayana” which meant sick in the Sudanese Arabic dialect. Ever since, I started to notice the different types of words that people around me would use compared to the ones I used. Little things like pronunciation and words that have different meanings in different cultures.

As the oldest child my mom relied on me a lot when it came to translating because my dad would be at work for most of the day. Everywhere she went, I went. I would be that little girl who would stand by my mom translating and explaining every word that was said to her. I was her mini personal translator. I remember once when I was around the age of ten, I went to the hospital and had badly injured my arm after being pushed in a soccer game. My mom’s english was slowly improving over time but her accent was a bit of a problem because it was pretty thick and broken. Then when it came time to give your information and answer questions, it took awhile for the nurses to gather the information needed, but they later on found a translator. Me. It’s these little scenarios that got me thinking about how much language was important in society. Without it, going about daily tasks in our everyday lives would become a bit more challenging.

There are different scenarios and situations where dialects are found and can cause some confusions like in “All American Tongues,” the people in the movie all spoke english but each and every person had some sort of different dialect and pronunciation. Some of the accents were so deep that it was a bit of a struggle to understand what the person was saying. Our brains play a role in this by catching different speech patterns we're familiar to at a young age. For me that meant learning different dialects over time because as a child I was accustomed to one type of Arabic. Slowly over time I began to recognize them more and more.  In the Arabic language there are many many different types of dialects, just like the English language, and every other language out there. Today I can fluently speak and understand almost every type of dialect the arabic language has to offer.

Have you ever had something you couldn’t do? Something you couldn’t say? That’s me, that’s who I..... or at least who I was. Ever since I got my braces, the things I used to say, I say no more. One time during Freshman year, I said a word that I hadn’t used in a while. This word was so simple, and the fact that I couldn’t say it made me livid. It was so embarrassing. I tried, tried, and I tried again, but I couldn’t pronounce it correctly. It got to the point where my entire class made fun of me. God, I hated these braces. Eventually it got better, but until that happened, I was the butt of the joke.

One day, a couple of my friends and I were having a conversation. I don’t remember what it was about, but I went to say this word and all I got in response was a room full of laughter.

“WHAT? Can you say that again?”

“What are you talking about?” I uttered with a face of confusion. I was so lost as to what they were talking about. Thinking to myself, What are they talking about?

“Repeat your sentence,” another said.

“When you get married you should be......,” and then I knew what they were talking about. I knew my braces had changed the way I spoke, but not to the point where it was noticeable. So I said it.

“Purr.”

I said it again just to be sure that this is what they were laughing at. As soon as the word left my lips, the room erupted again. At first it was a little funny, but then it got annoying. Every time I said something, someone else would end up asking me to say the word again.

“Can you say ‘purr’ again?”

It really got to the point where I just eliminated it from my vocabulary. Clearly that wasn’t the word I was trying to say, but everyone wouldn’t listen to that part. Not having someone to listen to me, and to have everyone laugh at me, caused me to cry. I wasn’t crying because they were laughing; it was because I felt defeated.

When I went home,  I told my mom about the situation. After hearing what I had to say, she just told me that sometimes there are certain challenges people have to overcome. Everyone can’t be perfect at everything. I knew that my mom knew the struggle I was going through because she has had similar situations occur in her life.

Although I got to talk to my mom about it, I still felt some type of way because she wasn’t in my predicament. I felt lonely because I thought I did not have anyone my age to relate to. I understand that she could understand, but I wanted to not feel the way I did. I felt upset and defeated. I hate not knowing how to do something. Knowing that I couldn’t say, the word, not only affected my speech, but the way I was thinking.

After realizing that I couldn’t say the word, I got upset. “Upset” is really an understatement. Sometimes I cried, but that was in the comfort of my home. Then I started to think, I’m just like a baby, so why not learn to say it and adjust to my braces. So when I was alone I would concentrate on saying that one word.

“Purr. No! Peerrr. No.”

Sometimes I even got mad with myself and would go days without trying to practice. But I knew that if I wanted to say that word again, I would have to continue to try. After a while I got better and I felt confident about it. So I had a conversation with a friend and she decided to bring oiiup that topic.

She said,“......hahaha that’s why you can’t say.....”

Knowing that I could actually say the word without much effort, I laughed and said, “Why can’t I? Pure.”

When I said that, it shut her up and she was surprised. I was a little surprised, too. Not only that, but I was proud that I could actually do it. Knowing that I could say the word, “pure,” I felt some confidence coming back. I was strengthening my resilience to bounce back from that situation, and obstacles like that.

Now that I am a sophomore, I can relate this situation to a clip that I recently watched. The clip is titled, “American Tongues,” by James Baldwin. The clip talks about the different ways that Americans speak. James Baldwin traveled across the country and got different individuals to say certain things. When my peers heard me say the word, “pure” wrong, they didn’t realize that my braces caused an accent. The way I spoke was because of the complications that I have had. That is how the different Americans in the clip portrayed one another. They said each other was wrong, but didn't realize they were all correct, but had different ways expressing it.

Looking back on freshmen year, I feel as though the incident was a barrier that I broke through. Now that I know that it’s okay to fail, just as long as you can come back from it, makes me a better person. This has helped me for situations to come and has helped me have a better outlook on obstacles. Adjusting to my braces was not easy, but I am glad to have them. At first they got me upset because I could not say what I wanted, but later on it showed that even with the circumstances that I have, I could make the best out of it.

When I’m with my friends at School of Rock, I use an extra set of vocabulary to talk with them about music.  While we all are totally comfortable with casually using the words “key”, “chord progression”, “pinch harmonics”, and “bars” when discussing the songs we’re on, or the songs we are helping each other learn, our musical language may be incomprehensible to people who do not play music.  A few months ago, I was sitting at the dinner table with my parents, and somehow my dad (also a musician) and I started talking about harmonics, and their placement on the neck of the guitar/bass.  Although to us we seemed to be having a common conversation, at one point we turned to my mom, and her only words were, “What in the world are you talking about?”  I think experiences like this have helped me realize how many different “linguistic identities” I have, all based on my environment and who I am with.  If I had been having that same conversation with someone at School of Rock, nobody would have thought twice about it, much less paid any attention to it.  However, as soon as I was removed from the environment of School of Rock and being with my friends there, the nature of the conversation in relation to my surroundings was completely changed.  I have my own identity that goes with my friends at School of Rock, but also connects me with other musicians in general through the language I have the knowledge to use.    

Another “linguistic identity” of mine comes out when I am with my friends in and from school.  While some of our casual vocabulary would be easily understandable by most kids our age, it still would be cryptic to many adults.  I had never even thought of the language I used with my friends as being different from what I used in the rest of my daily life, until I started writing this piece.  This kind of late realization shows how different someone can seem to people in a larger community, when in a small community they are seen as normal, and see themselves as normal.  Two good examples of the kinds of phrases that are used frequently by high school students that may seem to make no sense to adults are “on point” (means something is good) and “out of pocket” (means something/someone is behaving too crazily, and should stop).  When I asked my mom what she thought “on point” and “out of pocket” meant, her responses were, “hit the nail on the head,” and “out of money.”  Although both phrases do mean something to adults like my mom, both mean completely different things to my peers and I.  The identity I use with my peers versus my superiors might be undetectable, if it weren’t for the linguistic differences between the two identities.  

My third “linguistic identity” is a good demonstration of a mixture between one I use with peers and one I use with adults––the one I use with my parents.  Parents, if you think about it, hold a very unique place in most teenagers’ lives.  Of course, they are my elders, and they have authority over me.  But I have also lived with them for 15 years, and therefore am more comfortable speaking casually around them than any other authority figure in my life.  Being this comfortable would usually mean using all of the same jargon I use with my peers, but there is also the age gap, bringing with it a vast cultural difference.  While I feel just as comfortable cursing around them as I do around my peers, I wouldn’t use the phrase “out of pocket” in a conversation with my parents, because–as is shown above–it wouldn’t make any sense to them in the context I would use it in.  I think this identity is very important to me, because it has drastically evolved and changed throughout my life along with the level of the language I use, even though I’ve been living with my parents the whole time.  

The last main “linguistic identity” in my life is the one I use when I’m speaking to adults that I’m less comfortable with–teachers, family friends, and people I’ve just recently met.  With them, I never use any of the jargon I do with my friends, and I certainly wouldn’t even consider cursing around them.  Around these adults, I am almost a completely different person, unfortunately one with less character.  Within my friend group, my schtick is being jokingly irritable, which is often really fun.  However, around adults I have just met I will usually have a big smile on my face, and try to politely agree with most of what they say.  When I text my friends, it’s often very informally structured, and most of the time I’m talking about something funny.  However, when I email one of my teachers it is often about something somewhat serious, and I can make myself sound like a graduate student emailing her professor about something.  I always use a more sophisticated vocabulary when communicating with my teachers through emails, though I use a pretty average vocabulary in person.

Thinking about one’s separate “linguistic identities” can really help you realize how well humans are at adapting to different types of situations.  Usually when people think about our abilities to adapt they think of physical evolution and survival instincts, but there is a much faster and everyday type of human adaptation, which you can see through paying attention to those different identities.  Language and identity is an extremely interesting issue, and one that authors and people in general have struggled with for a long time.  Thinking about language as something that directly connects to identity really helped me see another side of the life I live every day.

“Babciu boje sie troche.”, I said to my grandma.

“Nie boj sie. Wszystko bedzie dobrze. Mama bedzie z wami caly czas. Bede za wami tesknic ale wiedz ze zawsze bede tutaj dla was jak bedziecie mnie potrzebowac. Niezapomnij polskiego, bo twoj jezyk jest twoja osobowoscia.”

These were the last words I heard my grandma saying before we left. She told me my language is my identity and I should not forget it. My language is my identity. If I did not know it, then I would not be the same person as I am now.

I am unique because I am from a different country. I have an accent and I know about a different environment in a different country. I will always speak my language with my family, or friends because if I did not do that, I feel like I would lose something inside me. I would be empty inside. Everything that has to do with my language, which is Polish, reminds me with my memories when I was little. These were my best memories because I spent them with my close family that I really love.

I was thirteen years old when I moved to the U.S. I lived with my grandparents, and my mom was already in the U.S. working. She took us here so that we have a better future. In 7th grade I went to the Catholic school “Our Lady of Port Richmond”. A lot of people said it was a good school. My mom and I thought it would be a great school for me, and they also had an ESOL class, but I did not expect some other things to happen.

“Haha look at her. She does not know any English. She is so dumb.”

“I know hahaha. She is so stupid and ugly.”

That was my first day of school. These are the only words I remember coming out from some guys’ mouths. I was really shy and did not know what is going on around me. I did not know their language. I only knew a few words. Everyone used to laugh at me just because I did not know words in their language, or just because I could not pronounce words correctly yet. It was really hard for me to pronounce words at the beginning. I had to learn how to pronounce “r” because in Polish you roll “r”, just like in Spanish. After I talked with teachers, they apologized. They knew they made a mistake because I could see it on their faces.

“We are really sorry. I know we made a mistake by calling you names when we saw you or even after school. We will not do that anymore. I guess.”

It was still confusing that they said “I guess”. This made me think a lot, but I did not care if they talked about me after school. I only cared if they talked about me at school. After school I always went home to do my homework, and learn English. It was hard for me, but I tried my best.

After this experience with students laughing at me I got really shy. I was really closed and I did not want to talk to anyone from school because I thought the same thing would happen. Almost all students laughed at me because I did not understand, or could not pronounce words. I could not understand why they did that. If they were in my place they would feel like me. Looking back now I was a really scared/shy person. You could say I was even avoiding people just not to talk to them. Right now I feel actually confident with my language and my accent. Before if someone would ask me about my accent I stopped talking because I knew they are paying attention to it. Now, I feel good with talking in English and having my accent. It actually makes people to know more about me. In 8th grade I went to McCall school where I started talking more. I did not feel confident exactly, but I opened up more. When I got to SLA I started talking a lot. When I am with my friends now, I could talk and talk. Even right now, I am mixing Polish and English together when I talk to my mom in Polish. I keep getting confused which words are which ones.

A lot of people changed around me. My old friends left and I got to know new people. I kind of changed too. I am not as shy as I was three years ago. Now, I am confident about myself because of what I went through. I do not care what people think about me. If I worried, then I would just be depressed. People should be themselves and not care about what others think. We are different from each other, and that’s what matters because if we would be the same, our world would be boring.

My first day at SLA was different for me. I was really nervous because I did not know anyone besides one friend from my old school. I knew people will realize that I am not from here. I did not want to go through the same thing again. When I met my friends they realized it.

“ You have an accent? Wow, that’s so cool!”

I did not expect people to think and say they like my accent. I would think they will say I sound weird. They accepted me unlike others at my old school. My friends were surprised that I am from a different country, and thought that was really awesome. They wanted to know everything about me and how Poland looks like. I felt really good because someone accepted me the way I am. They did not make me change myself because I would not belong, or be the same as them. They wanted me to share with them my stories when I was in Poland. I also got to know them better too. I realized there are a lot more people from different countries at SLA. I did not feel left out. This school made me a better person, and I opened up to be a more confident person.

This quote is from a book called “How to Tame a Wid Tongue.” by Glona Anzaldin. “So if you want to hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity- I am my language.” This quotes refers to my life too. I really do not like when people talk about my language, or my country in a bad way. It hurts me inside. A person that wrote this essay I could say wrote a little bit about my life. My story is really similar to this quote. Also there is this book called “Girl in Translation”. It is about a girl that is from Hong Kong. She also came to the U.S. without knowing a language. It kind of reminds me of me.

If I could compare school now and three years ago it could be completely different. Three years ago I felt really scared about it. Almost no language, and no friends here. If I had my friends with me it could be different, but I did not have them. All of them stayed and lived in Poland. I only had my sister and my mom. They were my closest friends here. Right now I feel like I am a new person. I know English and I can communicate with people. I have a lot of new friends that I can trust. My family is really helpful and they help me whenever they can. My feeling changed about it because I do not really care what people think about me. I know that even though they think I might be stupid, I am not. I worked really hard to have everything that I have now. New friends, new language, and a new environment. These were really hard three years, but right now I am really happy I live with my closest family.

Sources:

- Anzaldin, Glona “How to Tame a Wid Tongue.”

- interview with my mom and dad

- Kwok, Jean “Girl in Translation.”

All I want to do was fit in. Not so much with the school community, but with my race. I feel like an outcast around them.

The name’s Chase. I’m mixed. My mom is African American but my dad is white. They have been together for 14 years. I didn’t come around until later in their marriage. My mom is a doctor for Ferguson Wyatt Hospital, while my dad is a lawyer for Mc Robinson law firm. They both are good at their jobs. Good enough to get bonuses and own a big mansion in the suburbs.

We live in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I like living here. It is nice and quiet. kids playing in the street, and friendly neighbors. I can’t complain.

I always went to schools out in the suburbs. My parents wanted me to have a really good education, so they sent me to the top schools. Schools where there were no fights, kids get A’s and B’s, and no one gets detentions.  When I went to middle school, I went to one of the best schools in the suburbs. Guess who sent me. My parents. Why? Because they want me to get a damn good education.

I never feel right in those schools. It feel like the teachers and student are robots. I always have to do what they tell us to do. No back talking, no retaliation. That wasn’t me. So when high school came around, I wanted to switch things up.

One Thursday night, during dinner, I asked my parents to send me to a high school in the city.

“Chase, why would you want to do that when there are high schools nearby that are extremely outstanding” my mother asked me.

“Yeah son, I think it would be best for you to keep going to school out here,” my dad chimed into the conversation.

I didn’t want to do the same thing again. “I want to try something new this time. I can’t always do the same thing in life,” I told my parents.

I wanted to go to high school in the city because I could learn so much compared to what a suburban school could teach me. There were more ethnicities, and new teaching styles. I wanted a new me. I wanted a new environment.

Days later, my parents decided to let me go into the city for high school. I was ready to try new things. After an anxious and nervous weekend, thinking about what the school would be like. The first day school started.. I had to get up at 5:00 to get ready and leave the house before 6:00 because it is a thirty minute drive to get to the city.

When we arrived to school, my mom told me, "son be careful and pay attention to your surroundings". Then she told me have a good day and drove off to work. I didn't know why she told me this. Was she warning me to watch my surroundings because I was going to a new school or because I was in the city where with so many people. But, I wasn't worried about her, I was worried about how my first day would be.

I walk in the front door only to see that it was a normal school. Kids were talking. It was peaceful. I liked it. I can tell that I was going to get along with the people there. My first class was world history. The teacher’s name was Mr. Timothy. He seemed nice. As I looked around the class to find a place to sit , there was only one seat left in the back with a group of black kids. I had no problem sitting in the back of the class. My problem was the kids. They were loud. They were all over the place. That was the first time that I was scared of the school and the kids in it. This was not like my old school. At my old school, kids were calm and knew how to act.

After Mr.Timothy’s class,I thought maybe I should take a look at how the kids acted. Maybe  fit in better in the school.

During lunch, I closely payed attention to some kids conversations. I thought talking like them, I would better fit in with them. I turned over to my right in order to hear a conversation with two girls.

One girl said, “I can’t believe he would do this to me. We have been together too long for him to do something like this”. I guess her boyfriend was cheating on her or he just broke up with her. I was surprised that she wasn’t crying much. Usually, if something like this happened to a girl at my old school, they would cry some much to fill a river just over something like this.

The other girl said to her,“It’s alright Catherine. You can’t let this put you down. If he wanted to do this then that’s what he chose to do”.

“Yeah, you’re right. I guess I can get over it,” said the girl who was crying.

I stopped listening to that conversation and I moved on. I kept on listening to other student’s conversations, but they were all the same things. Sex, grades, teachers they hate, what someone did to someone else. I can say I did pick up some words and phrases that might help me for about the first week.

It started to get bored listening to the same things. Until, the kids from the back of Mr.Timothy’s class came in the cafeteria. They were so loud and obnoxious, just like in class. They sat down not too far from me. Which was good because maybe I could learn something from them.

There were five of them. Three girls and two boys. One of the girls said, “Yo, what’s up with you and Tom, yo. I heard y’all were about to fight”.

“Naw man. I was about to fuck him up cause he wanna be talking all this shit. He know I can whoop his ass, then he will get knocked the fuck out. Real shit. I can even get my niggas from around my hood. I know people here will ride for me so I don’t give a fuck what he has to say,” one of the boys responded.

I was surprised. I have never heard so much profanity in my life. I’ve heard it maybe once or twice when my parents were arguing or when I someone in my old school hurt themselves. But no one said that much profanity in a single sentence. No one.

I turned my attention back to the conversation.

The same girl asked the boy, “So what’s good with you and Courtney? Y’all still together”?

“Man, fuck that bitch! I don’t care about her no more. All she was was a hoe.”

Now that really caught me by surprise. Never have I heard someone disrespect a woman like that. My mother taught me to respect everyone. She said to treat women the way I want to be treated. But I thought to myself, maybe he didn’t mean it. Maybe she was acting like a hoe. I don’t even know what that is. A hoe? Isn’t that a gardening tool? So she was acting like a gardening tool? Now I was really confused. This guy might help me fit in as bad as that sounds. But maybe him and his friends are my only chance for acceptance.

When school was over and my mom picked me up after school, she asked, “How was your new school Chase? Do you like it? Did you learn anything new today?”

Oh, I learned new things today. I didn’t want to tell her what I learned today so I just said, “I had fun today. I like the school.”

“Oh how wonderful! I’m glad you liked your school”.

Later that night, in my room, I practiced some of the words and phrases I heard from today.

“Chill nigga.”

“You fraudin.”

“Bitch, sit ya’ dumbass down.”

“Whatchu mean cus.”  

The grammar was hard to remember. “Your” turned out to be “ya”. “Whatchu mean” turned out to be “what do you mean.” And “cus,” from the looks of it, means “cousin.” I guess. The next day, I made an attempt to talk to them. I pretended to need help.

“Could you help me with this problem”?

“Sure. Whatchu need help with?”

I was surprised that he helped me. After he helped me, I asked him what was his name. He said his name was Antoine. I was cool with him. At lunch, I sat at the same table by myself just like yesterday. When Antoine saw me, he invited me to sit with his friends and him. I took this chance to learn more.

I learned more about Antoine and his friends. The three girls were Charise, Tiffany, and Taylor. The other guy was Freddy. Charise was the oldest and Taylor was the youngest in the group. They were very nice to me. I fit in with some kids. I knew now that I need to keep learning new words from them so I can be one of them.

As days and weeks went on, I became one of them. My grammar changed. I started saying what they said. Words changed. They weren’t proper anymore. I thought what I was doing was right. I never noticed it started to change at home.

I was talking to my mom one night. And everything I learned came out all at once. She said that I was changing. I thought she meant that in a mean way.

I said to her, “whatchu mean by that!”  

With a confused look on her face she replied, “what did you say”?

“Whatchu mean” I repeated.

“Did you mean ‘what do you mean by that’, Chase?”

I thought a minute about what I said. I remembered she doesn’t know what that meant.

“Oh. Sorry I meant ‘what do you mean about that”.

Later on during the conversation I made another mistake.

“You started fraudin. I never said that.”

“Chase, what does that mean? Are you ok? Is there something that I don’t know of?”

It was at that moment knew that I shouldn’t use that language in the house. I knew I could only say these words and phrases outside at school because my parents would not understand and think that I am crazy. From that day on, that’s how it was. In the house, I would speak proper. But at school, I was a different person. I would use slang.

“What’s your name?”

“Tamirwa Bell”

“Tamira Bell?”

“Yes, Tamirwa Bell”

“Oh, okay. I think it’s funny how you pronounce it!”

This happens to me way too often. Someone would ask what is my name, I’d reply, and then they’d simply laugh. They laughed because of the way that I speak.

See, it all started when I was in middle school. Those are the years when you begin to form your identity. You start to notice beauty, true friends, relationships, and etc. So while my friends were figuring out who was the cutest boy in the class or what clothes were trending, I was noticing my conflict with speech. I always knew that I had a high pitched voice, but I never knew that I had a problem with pronunciation.

In eighth grade, my school was starting a new legacy and my teachers thought that I would be the perfect candidate. So they made me the morning announcer. Every morning I would report to the office to inform the school on the day’s lunch, weather, news headlines, and etc.

“Good morning Fitler students and faculty. Today is October 3, 2011. It looks like it will be a beautiful day, with not a cloud in sight. Today’s high will be…,” I would report every morning.

I thought that I was something special because I had the opportunity to do a task that no one else in my school could do. All of the students who were in first through fourth grades, looked up to me. Everyday, they would stop me in the hallway and ask me if I was the “voice” behind the loudspeaker.

“Hey are you the one who says the announcements in the morning?!”

“Yes!”

“That’s so awesome! I hope one day I get to say the announcements on the loudspeaker,” a first grader would tell me.

I thought that everyone appreciated the job that I was doing. But little did I know how people actually felt. Although the younger students admired me, the older students dreaded the sound of my voice. Every morning when my voice was projected throughout the corridors of the school, the older students would become piqued.

“She sounds like a baby,” one student would grumble.

“It is so unnecessary for her to come on the loudspeaker every morning.”

“She doesn’t know how to talk, so why is she speaking?”

“She doesn’t pronounce her R’s correctly,” another would complain.

When those rumors spread around about me, I became discouraged. So I tried not to say words that involved the letter r. I tried not to use any words that I knew I couldn’t correctly pronounce. I also tried to speak as clearly as possible, which turned out to be embarrassing.

A famous Dutch observer of the English language by the fictitious name of Charivarius once wrote a poem about English, called The Chaos. He wrote about the difficulty of trying to speak English.

“Finally, which rhymes with enough --

Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?

Hiccough has the sound of cup.

My advice is to give up!!!”

So I took that advice. I chose to give up on talking. When I knew that I couldn’t live up to everyone’s expectations when it came to pronunciation, I decided not to speak at all. When I did the announcements, I said them as fast as possible. When I was in class, I stopped participating. When my friends called me on the phone, I avoided them.

 “Ding- Ding!   Ding- Ding!   Ding- Ding!”

“Hello,” my sister answered the house phone.

“Can I speak to Tamira?”

“Hold on…. TAMIRA!!!! SOMEONE WANTS TO YOU SPEAK TO YOU ON THE PHONE!!!,” my sister would yell.

“Tell her I can’t talk right now. Tell her that I don’t feel well or make up something,” I whispered in the background.

Besides doing the announcements, I remained silent for a month. I thought that if I didn't speak, people would stop making fun my voice. I thought that the ridiculing would stop. I thought that I the brash looks in the hallway would stop.

But the mockery didn’t stop. It kept on going on. And it still goes on to this very day. Where ever I go, people will snicker about my voice. But when I stopped talking, I saw how it affected the lives of others. I saw how it affected my life.

One day one of the first graders stopped me in the hallway to ask me why I didn’t say the announcements like I used to. I was so confused. How did I “used” to say the announcements? He said that I used to say it with so much glee. When I came on the loudspeaker, his teacher would smile because of my joyful voice. But for the past month, she hasn’t smiled because I didn’t sound cheerful.

When that little boy told me that, I felt so guilty. How could I be allow the opinions of disparaging children, who did even matter to me, affect the way that I lived my life? I didn’t even take it into account how I could put a smile on people’s faces every morning.

So I decided to open my mouth and speak with boldness. No longer would I allow someone to take something from me that didn’t belong to them. My voice was mine and I would use no matter what others thought.

The next morning, I walked into the office with a smile on my face and boldness in my heart. Then I picked up the phone to say the announcements.

“Good morning Fitler students and faculty. Today is November 7, 2011. It looks like today will be a delightful day. Today’s high will be 50˚F. Today for lunch, we will be having…,” I contentedly said.

I was elated to be able to overcome my fear of speech. I learned that my voice is my instrument to express my thoughts, to make a difference, and to put a smile on someone’s face.

That day, the first grader who always stopped me in the hallway, yelled at me.

“Hey you announcer girl!”

“Yes. What’s wrong?!”

“Nothing. I just wanted to tell you something amazing!”

“What is it,” I bafflingly inquired.

“My teacher smiled today!”

Works Cited Section:

Trenite, G. Nolst "Charivarius". The Chaos. New River Project, 1922. Print. <http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html>.

Once in a small town lived these wonderful and cheerful people. They had a great life with their leader, Dan. Dan had become their leader because everyone in the town agreed that he had fit the requirements to lead. He would always make smart choices that would benefit everyone. There was not a lot of violence in the town. Everyone got along with everyone else. If there were problems in the town, Dan would always sort it out and make everything better. Dan loved to play with the kids and he had a brother named Luke who looked up to Dan.

For three days a ruler and his army were walking around in the desert in search for settlement. While looking they came across a small town.

“This will be a great place to settle down and take over,” said Matthew, the dictator, to his men.

They walked up to the small peaceful town, and Matthew asked a stranger, “Where is your leader? I need to have a word with him.”

“I will go get him,” said the blacksmith. The blacksmith had gone to summon Dan, and he said to him, “Dan, someone wants to talk to you.”

“Who is it?”

“I do not know. Some strangers came into our town and asked to see the leader.”

“Alright, take me to them.”

“Okay, let’s go,” said the blacksmith. The blacksmith led Dan to the strangers. As they walked to the strangers, Dan was suspicious of the request to see him.  

“Who are you and why have you come here?”

“I am Matthew, and these are my men. We are on a journey to a large town up north to trade. We are in need of shelter, food, and water. Would it be okay if we stayed the night? We will leave the first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Alright, you and your men may stay here but under one condition.You have to set up your own tents and buy your own food, but we will provide you with water, that’s all.”

“Thank you,” said Matthew.

Matthew lied to Dan so that it would not seem suspicious. Dan did not know that Matthew and his men were planning to take over the town and kill him. So Matthew and his men planned a way to take out Dan early in the morning; they wanted to do it in front of everyone so that the whole town would be scared. Later that night, Dan rang the bell, which meant the whole town would meet in a secret location that no one knew except for them. When Dan felt like something was wrong, he held these meetings to protect his people and town from outsiders.

“Everyone, I have called you here tonight to tell you to be aware of the strangers who have come into our town. They have a lot of equipment with them and their leader said it was for ‘trading purposes.’ Do not let your guard down. We do not know if they are dangerous, but we will not take any chances. They are suppose to be leaving tomorrow morning, but something might come up. I am not sure. That’s all I have to say. Thank you for your time.”

They all agreed with Dan because they knew that he was usually right. They all left and went back to their homes after that speech.

“They fell for our trick. Now it’s time to plan out our movement! We have to take out their leader first; he is our main objective. Tomorrow morning, I’ll find him and start a conversation. After a few minutes, I want Mark, William, and Lewis to come up and grab him, then bring him to the bell. Everyone else surround the bell. Once we are there, I will ring the bell. Then we will kill him in front of everybody.”

Everyone witnessed the assassination and it was horrible what happen to Dan. Luke was furious and devastated about how Dan died.

“Everyone, I am your new leader. You will obey me from now on and if you choose not to, you will suffer the consequences,” commanded Matthew.

“We will not listen to you!” yelled a food sales woman.

“Lewis, grab that lady! She will suffer for disrespecting me!” Lewis brought her over to Matthew. They stoned her then cut off her head, arms, and legs. Then they tied her remaining body to the pole and left her there.

“Here is a sign to everyone not to disobey or disrespect us. Since I am now your leader, you will learn to speak my language. You may not speak English anymore; if we hear you speaking it then you will be tortured. Your new language that you will be learning is French. There will be signs to assist you in speaking the language but everyone will be taught it.”

After he was done talking, everyone went back to what they were doing before and talked about the situation. He commanded his army to put the posters and signs around the entire town. After one week, everyone was broken and torn apart. They were so scared of speaking English for the fear of getting caught. They did not know what to do now that they did not have a leader or someone to strengthen them. In that week, someone was caught speaking English and was tortured. It was not like how Matthew killed the lady. This time he burned the man to death.

“Si vous ne voulez pas suivre mes règles, vous serez punis,” said Matthew. Everyone was terrified now. Luke spread the word around to everyone to meet in the secret place that night to discuss the problem because he was afraid to ring the bell.

“We have a crisis on our hands. Matthew has changed our language and lifestyle. We need to do something about this. We will not survive if this keeps going on,” said Luke.

“What do you suggest we do?” said the blacksmith.

“We fight back for Dan, our town, and our language! Everyone will have to fight because we are doing this for ourselves and for everyone in the town! We have a better chance of defeating Matthew and his army if everyone helps.”

“YEAHH!” everyone screamed.   

“Blacksmith, go and prepare weapons for us to use.”

“When will we strike, Luke?” asked the Blacksmith.

“Tomorrow night, we will go in and kill the guards first, then make our way to their leader. Now go back to your homes before he knows something is up.”

The blacksmith worked long and hard to prepare the weapons for battle. Luke was there to help him to help speed up the process.

“Looks like we have enough weapons for everyone,” said the blacksmith.

“Yeah, this should be enough,” said Luke. Matthew’s men were walking by for their morning stroll and they walked past the blacksmith’s shop.

“Comment allez-vous?” said one of the soldiers.

“Je suis bon vous remercie.” responded Luke. The soldier carried on.  

“That was a close one,” said Luke

“Yeah, it was,” said the blacksmith.

Later that night, everybody gathered around the blacksmith’s place and received their weapons.

“Tonight is the night we take back power in our language, our town, and our lives!” said Luke.

Everyone then ran to Matthew and his men’s huts. They started killing all of his men. Cutting their heads off, arms, and stabbing them until they died. They fought for a while. When Luke and the blacksmith went to look for Matthew, they found him trying to escape so they grabbed him.

“You killed my brother. You came into our town and changed everything for us. Now you must suffer.” They started to fight. Luke was wounded, cut in his arm and leg; Matthew was wounded, cut in his arm and chest. During the fight, Luke had been knocked down to the ground.

“Say hi to your brother for me.” As Matthew was about to kill Luke, Luke took his sword and quickly pierced Matthew right through his chest. Then Luke also cut off his tongue because Matthew had done that to his brother, and it is a symbol of their ability to have power of what language they want to speak.

After the battle was finished, ten people died in the town and fifteen were injured. They tossed all of the bodies of Matthew and his men outside the town walls. They buried all of the bodies of their people next to Dan’s body. The townspeople later told Luke to be their leader because he was brave and stepped up when they were in need of help.

“I am honored to be your leader. I will follow in my brother’s footsteps. I know he is proud of what we did and he is looking over each and every one of us.”

You wouldn’t think that moving from Chicago to Philadelphia is a big move. But it really is. Especially if you lived there your whole life before you moved to Philly, so you have that Chicago accent. My first day at my new high school all the other juniors thought I got kicked out of my last school all the kids did all day was talk about me...and they were NOT quite about it.

‘Cause like- have you heard Damien talk? He sounds like a drug dealer or something. He probably got expelled and he always slurs his words together. He might even come to school high. Do you think he would get expelled for that?’

When in reality I’ve never been suspended. Another great thing about my school? Their speech department. Or at least thats what the vice principal was telling me in her office. She thought that because I was the talk (no pun intended) of the school that it might be in ‘my best interest’ to take two speech classes. One to assess if I had any other ‘setbacks’ and the other is specifically for kids with accents and slurs. So of course I agreed so that she would dismiss me. Biggest mistake of my Junior year. No my high school career.

So all my speech classes started the second week of school. My first two classes of the day on Monday and Friday. Let me just tell you- when I walked into that class I felt like an asshole. There were kids in wheelchairs and girls without hair and here I am just standing in the doorway. The least impaired looking one in the whole room. I mean, I don’t think you need to be impaired to need or be sent to speech therapy, but it was really obvious that I didn’t really belong in the room.

“So...Damien, what brings you here?”

“I was referred here by the vice principal. She said my accent was a ‘setback’ so here I am. “

“Well, I noticed you’re from Chicago. But you don't have any issues with your sentence or word structure. I’m going to send you down the hall to your next class, this one isn’t really for you, this class is for the mentally and physically disabled.  So I am not really sure why you were sent here.”

I didn’t even bother going to my next ‘therapy’ class. I left and went straight to the office. I walked past the nurses station and past the waiting chairs, then walked straight up to the secretary's desk.

“I would like to talk to vice principal Rasheed. I can wait.”

Twenty minutes later I’m admitted to her office. I just walk right around her and sit in the most comfortable chair I can find, I’m going to be here awhile. She takes note of my obviously pissy disposition and just gives me a snarky once over.

“I hope you know I am counting this as you skipping your speech classes- if you need to talk to me, I want you to do it on your lunch or between classes, plus you are just counteracting what is in your-”

“Don’t you dare say ‘my best interest’.  There is nothing wrong with the way I talk, I am not from the same city as you, therefore I have a different way of talking to people. Its how I grew up. That does not make me anymore or less than you, and I would love to know why one of the classes you sent me to was for the mentally and physically disabled.”

I didn't even have to wait for her to answer me. The head of the school walked in and escorted me out onto the school’s lawn. He told me to go home, that my parents had been called and that I was going to get into serious trouble the next time I skipped classes- for a ‘good reason’ or otherwise. So I walked my angry ass home, a thirteen mile walk. Took me two hours, but I was pretty mellow once I got home...my mother on the other hand was completely livid. They told her that I was cutting and causing a scene in the office.

“Those self righteous bastards.” That was all she could manage after hearing what actually happened to me. So then she went into full out terminator mode. She wanted the school to be publically humiliated. So she pulled me out of that school and she started researching everything she could think of to make what they did seem as incriminating as possible.  

It took about two weeks for the whole state to find out about the issue I was having. Apparently there is a small recording device in the V.P’s office, that had caught the whole thing on tape. One of the secretary's had found it very sad...so of course what did she do? Upload the video to YouTube spilling all my information in the info bar. After that people started paticians, walk outs and strikes, all under my name. So naturally I have been getting all the heat and love for this movement. Thats were I am going now, Im in a cab in New York on my way to central park to give a speech about the issues people go through, because of course a hormonal seventeen year old would know best.

So here I go, walking up the steps to the podium, about to spill my guts on the altar of sacrifice. Just because I lived in Chicago until I was sixteen.

“Hay there. This is a huge crowd...wow, well Im flattered. I just wanted to say- That no matter the language, accent, or even dialect- we are all entitled to our voices. They are a part of what makes us special and should never be ridiculed; or under appreciated. To quote my favorite movie “Pump Up The Volume”, ‘TALK HARD. THE TRUTH IS A VIRUS.’ Goodnight”

Serge Mass

Dave Chappelle

The “Chappelle Show” written by the comedy legend Dave Chappelle, presents its characters in ways that make fun of their stereotypical speech and it influences the audience to think differently about certain groups of people.

With the show “The Chappelle show” Chappelle likes to bring out the best and worst of characters in the show through the selection of their language. With Dave being such a powerful man in the comedy strip today, he really influences people on how they view and group people. In Dave’s show, he uses a lot of stereotypes to bring out the language and tone of different races and religions to get a hook on the audience. It is as if, that is his secret weapon.  In his show, he likes to make fun of certain races speech to draw attention to his point which is to make people have a good time, but sometimes people take it too far...

For example in his most controversial skit, with the title “The Race Draft” Dave plays multiple roles. In the race draft, he plays an announcer, a black candidate, and a white candidate. With Dave being the white candidate, he spoke with a clear deep voice that is a “generic white american male voice”. When he speaks like that, the audience can hear his natural voice come out. When he is the black candidate, he just speaks with his usual voice, but with a southern tone. When he plays the announcer he is a black male, but he has a tone of voice that is very clear and contains no ebonics. When the black candidate is up to pick, his physical language is very clear that he is rooting for them. So when Chappelle uses the white voice, you can hear the black voice under it. The Audience can hear the black voice which makes Dave sound very funny. The way Dave describes the other candidates in the skit is no way that makes the audience assume that David being racist towards other races other than his own race which is black. During the skit when Dave is playing a white man he is very insensitive the other races on how he talks. For example in the skit Dave talks about trading Eminem for Tiger Woods because Eminem acts a lot more black Tiger Woods is. Dave’s definition of black is someone that wears baggy clothes and someone that listens to Hip-Hop.Then later in the skit the switches back to the African American representative and he starts talking about how Eminem is a lot blacker than the Tiger Woods, also how Tiger does not deserve to be black. Being white like me this picked up as being very racist and I'm assuming as an audience member that this could be seen as racist. In the skit when Chappelle is playing the African American candidate, towards the end of the skit when he is having his closing speech he talks with a white tone. For someone that may not understand Chappelles message, they could see it as “Black People just use ebonics and they can code switch at any point”. That is not right because the accent and the way you speak is how it will be in your roots. It may change, but it will always be what it first was.

Another example is the Clayton Bigsby skit which is also a very controversial skit in Chappelles career.  Dave Chappelle plays a blind KKK member which turns out to be black. For the skit, Chappelle has a very deep southern’ accent. For the bulk of the episode, Chappelle is in a KKK suit when he was at meetings until the end. People did not know that he was black other than the man that was visiting him from Fox’ DATELINE and his mother that fostered him. Clayton is a writer of KKK books and he goes to a book signing. No one has not seen him without his mask. The KKK members start chanting him on to take it off then he does. Peoples heads actually explode. With Chappelle acting out such a very sensitive subject, a lot of the viewers could be potentially be turned off of the show by the way he talks and some of the viewers could pick up the speech and think it is okay.

About eight years ago when the show is first broadcasted, NBC had a whole news article about the Dave Chapelle's given the wrong message that is not racist at all. Now from them saying that they obviously have not seen the show because almost every episode and most of every sketch touches on different types of racist insults and stereotypes. Then years later NBC says that Dave Chappelle is a very racist man on the way he speaks. The fact that NBC one the biggest news channels in America contradicted themselves with this outrageous claim is crazy. This is a very touchy subject in the US today about how people speak and how they're influenced by each other. Today the TV shows people want to be funny. Well sometimes they do indeed go overboard with the way stereotypes in speech are played out. There should be an equilibrium with this. There should be a board of people that can rate these television programs other than the FCC because they obviously did not catch this. If someone were to break down the way people were speaking and where they pick it up from in the United States, then about half of us would admit to picking up certain slangs from TV shows or Movies today.

Recently A show with the name of Key and Peele started getting a lot of attention. So I decided to check it out; It was an alright show, but there is one skit which made me want to do this piece. It was when this African American guy standing on the corner waiting for the light to turn green. Then another guy is walking down the street, and he is talking on the phone and he says “Yo whats up homie” and all of this stuff to make him sound like he is a gangster. Then as soon as he crosses the street he says “ oh my god, I just like almost jumped”. From this whole sketch, the audience can tell that Key and Peele are trying to make fun of the way stereotypical Gay and also Black people talk.

In conclusion, the “Chappelle Show” written by the comedy legend Dave Chappelle, presents its characters in ways that make fun of their stereotypical speech and it influences the audience to think differently about certain groups of people.

WORK CITED:

The Race Draft: http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/b224ei/chappelle-s-show-the-racial-draft

Chappelle, Dave .. "The Racial Draft." Comedy Central. Comedy Central, 10 Feb. 2008. Web. 03 Nov. 2013.

Clayton Bigsby:

http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/7nnosh/chappelle-s-show-frontline---clayton-bigsby

Ameer forte

“¿Como está?”

“What?”

“¿Como está?”

I looked at my great grandmother my eyes fixed on her strange words.

“What?”

She shook her head in disapproval but I was used to this. My great grandma and I have never been close, I mean she did live in new york but when she was here I felt more distant to her than ever. She was the only person in my family who only spoke spanish and I dreaded the days I would have to speak to her. She would only use simple spanish of course but I still felt intimidated at the age of twelve. I would wish my mom or dad or somebody would’ve taught me spanish. Why wouldn't they, it is my culture and I had as much right as any one of my brothers and sisters to learn. I’m the oldest of my two brothers and one sister and they are all being taught spanish with every passing breath whether it be at home or school but I was taught nothing not even the simplest verb, the easiest noun. I never understood why, perhaps I still don’t. Maybe it is because I was the first child, maybe I was the test subject the kid no one really knew what to do with.

“Mom, why didn’t you let dad teach me spanish.”

I’d ask that question over and over again and she would just say, “Ameer we just weren't prepared to put you or us through that besides it worked out fine right?”

But she was wrong it wasn’t fine I couldn’t have a reasonable conversation with my great grandmother because of them. I repeatedly found myself blaming my parents for everything that had to do with spanish and when I had no reason I found a reason. In the sixth grade, I had my first spanish course and I purposely came home with a D to prove that it would be different if they would have taught me themselves. This must have went on for a couple years and then when I was in 8th grade my mom picked me up from school early which was a rare notion so when this happened I figured something had to be wrong. She told me my great grandmother was in the hospital and may not have very much time left. My heart stopped. I was pretty sure she was going to have to put me in the hospital right there with my great grandmother but somehow I pulled it together and tried to stay as strong as possible.

“It’s going to be ok Ameer, hey, she is in a happier place now right?” My mom tried to comfort me as best as she could but I remember being pretty silent the whole ride. My mom wasn’t very close to my great grandma because she was my dads mother not my moms and my mom faced the same language barrier I did at the time she also didn’t know spanish very well, but she did understand how much she meant to everyone. My mom ended up picking up on some spanish after living with my dad but she didn’t need to speak the language to see how great a person my great grandma was. I interviewed my mom and dad now and asked them the same question I used to ask them when I was younger, “So why was I never taught spanish?” This was my dad’s response,

“Well it would be easy to say we didn’t know what we were doing yet, I mean it had all happened so fast. But that wouldn’t explain why we didn’t teach you while you were growing up. So honestly I don’t know why we decided not to teach you how to speak both maybe we thought it was too much work at the time, I don’t know, but looking back now I really wish we did.” This was my mom’s answer,

“Ameer I think it was really because we just didn’t really know how to work that in, now that were older we are able to teach your siblings because we learned and we didn’t want to make the mistake if not teaching them like we did with you.” I had an understanding response to both answers. I started to realize that I was the rough draft for my parents which was why they didn’t teach spanish. This thought made me feel very uncomfortable, I couldn’t understand why I was being treated so unfairly. None of it made sense.

Soon after that I started changing the way I viewed hispanic people, I started to feel like I couldn’t talk to them, something like the Key and Peele skit we watched in class. Both men acted different around eachother, thats how I acted around hispanics, I would change completely when in their presence.The language barrier I felt with my own family had widely expanded and hispanic people became like an unknown species in my life. I ignored them every time possible, made no effort to learn spanish in school, I completely abandoned spanish. I was tired of spanish. I hated spanish and the people that bore its fruit.

After what seems like such a long time I slowly started to change. There still isn’t a moment where I don’t feel uncomfortable when in the presence of a spanish speaking person. But now I just don’t really think too much of it. As the years passed by I like to believe there was a bigger reason as to why they never taught me spanish. I think it’s because my mom and dad didn’t see the importance of me having to learn at the time. They figured I would either grow into it or wouldn’t need it at all but they admit that that was wrong. I also changed my view because of being reminded of my great grandmothers death. The day she passed I was upset and confused, now years later I look at it as an opportunity to make her proud and learn the language she always wanted me too. Thats what keeps me from giving up on spanish.  

Works Cited

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzprLDmdRlc

Making Us Different

by Dillon Hershey

Imagine living on an island that is 1.236 square miles with the population being only about 730 people. The only way to get around on the island is by golf cart or by bikes. There are only three cars on the island; the mail truck, the police car and the garbage truck. There is only one fire truck and one ambulance that barely fit down the streets. There are two churches on the island. The average grade size is four kids. The main occupations are on water, like crabbing and conching. Believe it or not, an island like this exists off the coast of Virginia, called Tangier Island. It lies in the Chesapeake Bay close to Smith Island.

Tangier Island has been in my life since I was young. My grandmother’s brother flew to Tangier Island one day to get a good seafood meal and ended up bringing back some information about a bed and breakfast there. My grandmother and grandfather went on a short vacation there and really liked it, so they brought the rest of the family along the next time they went to the island. My family started to travel there in the summers, when I was about a year and a half old. Usually we would stay on the island for about four to five days and we would act like tourists. Coming in on the tour boat, renting a golf cart, staying at a bed and breakfast, catching crabs, watching the sunset, going swimming in the frigid water and getting ice cream at Spanky’s. When I was five years old, my grandparents bought a house there and we didn’t go as tourists anymore. We came in on the mailboat, we got our own golf cart, people knew who we were and we had our own house. We were almost like real Islanders*. One thing that separated us from the others though, was their accent. We never picked up on that.

The Watermen* dialect is very different from any other dialect that you will hear. It is often classified as Elizabethian, with a mixture of British and Southern accents. The very first time my family went to island, my dad remembers a boy sitting on the edge of the dock with a bucket of crabs. The boy was about five or six. He saw my dad standing there and he said “Not a very good day for crabbing.”, but it sounded like “Not a verry goood day fer craabin.” My dad had no idea what just came out of his mouth. My grandmother, who spends more time than the rest of us on the island, still can’t understand some of the watermen* when they are talking very fast to each other. Their dialect is hard to explain because it is so odd sounding. For example, when they say the word saturday, it sounds like this: “Sourer-day” while people in Philadelphia say it more like this: “Sat-er-day”. They often stretch out one syllable words containing a long ‘a’ or ‘i’ vowel sound to make the word two syllables. Crab is a word you will hear many times at Tangier because crabbing is one of the main occupations on the island. They make crab into 2 syllables like this, “craa-ab”, enunciating the first syllable. Five and bad are other examples, they would say it: “fy-ave” and “bay-aad”

American Tongues, a documentary about languages in the United States, has a two minute clip about the Tangier dialect. The dialect in the documentary is a very heavy dialect that you don’t hear very much anymore. They have started to modernize their dialect for the tourists. Islanders grew up with having to repeat themselves so that the tourists can understand them. They depend on the tourists because the other occupations besides crabbing, are all tourist based. As the tourists keep coming though, the Islanders start to accommodate their dialect so that the tourists can understand them. I can understand why the Islanders would do this but I think that tourists are having too much effect on the Islanders’ dialect. I’ve noticed that watermen, who work on boats with just people from Tangier Island, have a heavier Watermen accent than people who work on the island and interact with tourists. The dialect is still strong but not as hard to understand.

I went to the island over the summer to help my grandmother with her art classes that she teaches there. I was working with kids from ages five to thirteen. All of their dialects were different probably depending on what their parents’ jobs were. By Wednesday, I found myself thinking in their dialect. I couldn’t say any words out loud in fear of messing up and offending them but in my mind I had a sentence that was formed just listening to the kids talk. During my stay there, I understood most of the sentences that the Islanders said but sometimes it took a little bit longer for me to reply back to them if we were having a conversation.

I think, if I were to stay at Tangier for a longer time, I might pick up on their dialect. I find myself doing that already when I visit my family in Lancaster County. They also have a small dialect that I pick up on and use when I am with them. I think that it would be interesting to see if I stay at Tangier for a month, if I start to talk like one of them too. I don’t think that code-switching is bad because I do all of the time. I just think that all sorts of dialects and accents can be so different and interesting that people should try to preserve their dialects, so we don’t become a system of identical sounding humans.

*Note: There is no specific term for the people living on Tangier, so I used two different terms, Watermen and Islanders. I used Watermen while referring to the dialect and Islanders while talking about the general population of the island. I also used watermen while referring to their occupation. I used a lowercase ‘w’ because it is an occupation.

Works Cited:

American Tongues. Dir. Louis Alvarez. 1988.

In the world there are many different types of corporations and these corporations have a number of different occupations that need to be filled with specialized workers. The CEOs of these companies are very different from the interns of of these companies. Furthermore the language is very different between the CEO and intern. In corporations there are things that you should not say and do in the office. In corporations there is a definite qualified language that is used and a definite way to act in a corporation. Overall, each corporation has it’s own qualified  language and each corporation chooses to add or subtract from that qualified language.   

In a corporation there is a CEO and there is an intern and other occupations within the organization. The CEO is the leader of the corporation and the boss. An intern is at the bottom of the corporation and learns from the company workers. The intern can learn more about that corporation from the people who work there because they know the business the best and they have the time to teach the intern about the company. Furthermore an intern has a different language than the CEO. Kevin Plank who is the CEO of Under Armour said “There’s an entrepreneur right now, scared to death, making excuses, saying, ‘It’s not the right time just yet.’ There’s no such thing as a good time. I started an apparel-manufacturing business in the tech-boom years. I mean, come on. Get out of your garage and go take a chance, and start your business”. Frederick W. Smith who is the CEO of Fedex said “Leaders get out in front and stay there by raising the standards by which they judge themselves – and by which they are willing to be judged”. Steve Ballmer who is the CEO of Microsoft said “Great companies with the way they work, first start with great leaders”. Overall, the language between a CEO and an intern is very different because an intern has not learned how to communicate with others, unless the intern knew before they came to the business.

One way to be successful in a corporation is being able to speak professionally and to be able to talk to all kinds of people. This will help you be successful in a corporation because you will be able to interact with other businessmen and businesswomen. One corporation that has a set language is Exxon Mobil. One reason is if you do not know anything about the gasoline business you will not be able to sell your product to other gasoline corporations. Exxon Mobil has many terms that they use in their corporation such as proved reserves, prime product sales, proved reserves replacement ratio and total shareholder return. Proved reserves are the amount of resources that can be recovered from the deposit with a reasonable. Prime product reserves are business’s expenses from the materials and labor it uses in production. Proved reserves replacement ratio is a metric used by investors to judge the operating performance of an oil and gas exploration and production company. The total shareholder return is the total return of a stock to an investor. Overall, the way knowing the terms of the company you work for is very important.

The most important part of a presentation is the speaker and how they present their idea to their audience. According newyork speechcoaching.com, “the coach would use methods from drama and would use a wide variety of methods to helps you become a better speaker”. The language and the tone that the speaker uses is very important also and will make the presentation better. According to silvermanspeechcoach.com, “there are four steps to a successful presentation which are the goal, the challenge, the solution and the result”. Overall, the key to presenting your idea is to have the knowledge of the idea and the skills to let your audience understand what you are talking about.

The reason why language is so important is because it is the way other businessmen and businesswomen respond to you and the way you get noticed by other corporations. Furthermore language is important because if you do not speak the same way as your coworkers or your boss you will not be able to work on many group projects and you will not be able to get your work done. Also you would not be hired if you were not able to speak the language of the corporation and you would probably not be able to volunteer for that corporation. The way that this all would be learned would be to go to business school and then to become an intern at a corporation and to learn from the workers there. This job would not be paid but would be worth the time because it would pay off in the future. The way to become the CEO of a corporation would be to work your way up the system and to learn from your superiors about the corporation. Overall, there are not many people who start off as the CEO of a company they usually have to work their way up the system for many years.

All CEOs start off somewhere and most have to work their way to the top of the corporation. To become the CEO of a corporation you must have the drive to get yourself to that position because everyone wants to become the CEO but not everyone wants to do the work to become the CEO of a corporation. The CEO position is also gained by being able to speak professionally in the office. This position must be earned it is not given. Overall, you must have a drive to become a CEO and you must be ready to do the work to become the CEO of a corporation.      

Works Cited:

"Silvermac.com." - Silvermac. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

"New York Speech Coaching." New York Speech Coaching. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

"25 Inspirational Quotes By The Highest Performing CEO’s." 25 Inspirational Quotes By The Highest Performing CEO's. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.

"What We Do." ExxonMobil: Taking on the World's Toughest Energy Challenges. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

"Prime Cost." Investopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

"Proved Reserves." Investopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

"Reserve-Replacement Ratio." Investopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

"Total Shareholder Return - TSR." Investopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

While attending Charles Drew Elementary School for three full years, I don’t believe I made any good friends. After my time at Drew I had to leave to attend a better public school called Penn Alexander. It was a considerable upgrade from my old school, but at the same time it was even more daunting. I was notorious for having a stuttering problem taking what seemed like days to pronounce the easiest of words, not only to add to that but I had seemed to adopt a sort of “ghetto” accent as black people from west Philly are known for having. This made changing from Drew school to PAS very difficult because it was a mix of several races meaning that my speech didn’t fit in anywhere in particular.

Interracial mingling was something that I had never seen before. I’d only ever known black people and had only seen white people on rare occasions with my mother. The idea of a white kid being able to talk to a black one was like cats and dogs hugging it out. People could have spoken anything from the “ghetto” english I had heard to the standard white one that I had only just recently heard of. Transitioning into this new mixed environment was a hard experience even then I didn’t feel adjusted until 9th grade. Transitioning from PAS to SLA was very smooth because the atmosphere between the two was very similar so I felt right at home after years of adjusting to PAS.

My dad always was a forgetful person, so it wasn’t surprised when he told me to walk down to the local grocery store to pick up some food supplies.

“Get up and go! I don’t have time for this I need to finish cooking!” said my dad angrily.

“Ugh, alright fine I’ll go just stop bothering me,” I retorted.

I slapped on whatever clothes I just took out of the wash and went outside. Now stepping outside I noticed a few things. The first one was that it dark outside and it seemed like it was about to rain soon. Secondly I had seen some people standing down the street in the direction I was going of whom I had never seen before. Being oblivious to how things looked I just kept walking staring at my feet.

“Hey young bull slow down let me talk to you,” said the second biggest one of the group.

I didn’t respond and simply kept walking. The guy looked at least 17-18 and I didn’t want to deal with him so I ignored him. The guy got distracted by one of his friends and didn’t realize I had walked off.

“Hey young bull! Hey young bull!” He kept calling as if he expected me to walk back.

I reached the grocery store which was about a block away from me house. One of the cashiers who worked at the grocery store said that the groups of guys were calling me.

“I’ve never seen those guys in my life,” I said.

“Ignore them; they are trying to mess with you,” he said.

I bought my stuff at the store and continued on my way and then went to go talk to the security officer about the people. He casually shrugged off what I had said and told me that they are just a bunch of punks messing with me. Feeling I could do nothing else I walked back to my house.

At first I hadn’t seen anyone but as I neared closer my house I saw the group of guys walk about of a driveway right near my house. They immediately circled around me; two of them frisked my pockets and took the money I had left over and the groceries. Another one punched me in the jaw and then they all counted up the money they had taken and checked the groceries I had. I quickly sprinted to my house and rung the bell as fast as possible. They saw what I was doing, dropped the groceries, and immediately ran.

The whole event changed how I view black people and made me want to disassociate myself with them while at the same time allowing myself to be able to act freely around them. I tried to act more like other black people to try and fit in and give myself some peace. It got to the point where some of my friends wanted to disassociate themselves from because they didn’t like how I was acting.

“Hey Rafi did you catch the fight between Velasquez and Lesnar” my friend said.

“Naw man shit I don’t keep up with crap like that these days, I’m busy with my other bro” I said back.

I tried so hard to emulate an accent and dialect that wasn’t really mine my friends saw right through it and didn’t want anything to do with me after that. I ended up making things worse for myself. I made an environment I felt was hostile because of who I was even more hostile towards myself as I lost friends.

Similarly, in the Comedy Central show Key and Peele, there is a skit where the two black males purposely tried to seem tougher as to assert a feel of dominance and masculinity. However when they walk away from each other the tone completely changes and one of the Men says to their friend over the phone “Oh my gosh Christian I just totally almost got mugged just now!” The two men were completely harmless to one another but because they didn’t know that about one another they automatically try to toughen up to seem more dominant as to avoid any unwanted confrontation.

I effectively judged an entire race of people because of the handiwork of a few individuals. It made me into a very judgmental person who was very paranoid. It was only after many months that I realized that my impressions were all wrong. I learned that code switching was not solving any of my problems as it only further distorted what I actually wanted to be which was a person who could speak in whatever way, shape, or form that they wanted.

The key to feeling safe and comfortable in society was for me to find middle ground where I could act the same around everybody. Only after letting go of my fear and trying to cope with my fear of getting mugged was I able to stop trying to act so intimidating when it really was not my suit. I stopped trying to talk like other stereotypical black people after being mugged because I realized it was only escalating the situation as shown in the Key and Peele skit and that I should only speak they way I wanted to.

No matter what you went through in life or what your social status is you will connect with this book. We will all go to high school or have gone to high school and had dreams for ourselves that we may or may not have fulfilled due to influences and personal decisions much like what Junior had to experience and go through to complete what he did at the end of the book. We've all been the new kid at school or I know we've all had that weird feeling of wanting to be accepted by everyone on the first day of school.

Alexie, Sherman, and Ellen Forney. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. New York: Little, Brown, 2007. Print.

I chose to create a basketball for the creative part because I thought that when Junior blocked Rowdys shot in the final game of the season, it showed in my opinion that he had grown through out the book and he now had more self confidence and was not afraid to stand up for himself anymore.

Nineteen minutes is a riveting drama written by the well known Jodi Piccoult. She is utmost known for the book My Sister’s Keeper which was turned into a movie in 2009. Jodi is acknowledged for writing books that are not only able to capture and take the readers into the lives of the characters, but also someone who writes about real world problems. She knows how to truly draw the reader in until the last page.

Jodi Lynn Piccoult is a 47 year old woman who was born May 19,1966 in Nesconset, Ny. She has written 21 books with many more to come, her first book was published in 1992 “ Songs of the Humpback Whale”. Her latest book is “ The storyteller” which was published in early 2013. She was recently named NYT bestselling author. Jodi has a very different way of writing which detaches her from the others. When she writes a book she writes in each character's point of view, you are able to understand each person's thinking. She has changed so many people's lives through her writing. She will continue to impact people with her books for many years to come.

Nineteen minutes is  a heart stopping novel about a school shooting ( that lasted nineteen minutes).“Everyone would remember Peter for 19 minutes of his life, but what about the other nine million?” asks Peter’s mother. In the first pages of the book you meet Alex the towns judge and Josie her daughter. You are introduced into the relationship that they have and how they communicate, you then learn about Peter ( the shooter). Jodi takes you in his world from his point of view. Jodi takes you into Peter’s past and lets you know why he is the way he is and what motivated him to do the shooting. From the beginning Jodi lets you know that there is more to the shooting then you think. It wasn’t just a random rampage that one boy decided to do it was a well thought out tragedy. From the beginning pages are able to see the dynamic of the relationships in this book.  

The way that Jodi decided to write this book was beautiful. Since it was a book written about a shooting if it was written from Josie point of view (Victim of shooting) it would become very bias. When you write from each character’s view you are able to understand how the shooting affected each person. Jodi also writes from the past to the present. One chapter of the book may be 5 years before the shooting and then another chapter may be 1 month before the shooting. This is how she gives you background of each character and you are able to learn where they come from and why they behave the way that they do. By her doing this you don’t form judgements of the character, even though Peter Houghton shot his fellow class members you learn that the situation was much larger than life. Not that killing people was justified but you are able to understand him as a person. When Jodi wrote about the shooting in the book it wasn’t too much. I was scared when reading this book that the shooting part would be so sad. But the way she wrote was capturing. It wasn’t too graphic she drew you in so that you wanted to know what happen step by step.

There are many questions that are brought up in Nineteen minutes. Such as can someone be pushed too far? Another question that was brought up was could something have been done differently. Could his parents had listened to him when he constantly told them he was bullied. Another question that was brought up was did the students deserve to die? Should they have been punished for their wrongdoings? In addition why was peter bullied? Why him? Why was being different a death sentence? Why couldn’t he have just been Peter? In the book Jodi brings up a lot of issues when it comes to peer pressure and how it can really push someone past their breaking point.  

This book for the most part exceeds my expectations. Overall it was a absolutely a well written book. But at times it moved very slowly, but that was because without the background you weren’t able to understand each character. I never lost interest in what I was reading. Every Time I picked up the book I was hooked. I wanted to read all the way through to that last page. This book really opened my eyes to how much bullying can affect someone. I thought that reading this book around the time where America is being affected by school shooting would be hard but , this book only opened my eyes to the real  world problems. It also opened my eyes to the reality that some of these people are being bullied so much that they don’t know what else to do.  Anyone who likes fiction books that deal with realistic problems should read this book. Also it is just a good read the way she develops the characters and the life portrayed in this book is amazing.

Culture is the main system that defines what category an individual fits in. A culture can consist of education, media, music, art, morals/religion, and most importantly, language. One part of language that culture has a large impact on his profanity. Profanity/curse words are a subset of language that is considered strong, obscene, and overall dirty. However, these words can still be apart of ones common diction, and are “okay to use” under certain circumstances. Permission to use profanity comes from culture because culture defines what profanity is. Since every culture has diverse definitions of what is social norm and what isn’t, certain behaviors and language that are natural for one culture are deemed blasphemous and obscene for another.

The way in which profanity is depicted in the media depends on an innumerous amount of variables and complications. For essentially every circumstance, however, culture has the main influence on the laws that dictate what language is “too obscene,” or what is perfectly fine to say publicly. When such boundaries are crossed, censorship is used. Censorship in the United States has liberalized over the years, and censorship in the United Kingdom is also rather lax with its linguistic risks.  Take into account two different versions of the same television show that is common amongst the teenage population of both the United States and the United Kingdom; Skins. Both Skins UK and Skins US are known for their impulsive and radical usage of obscenity and foul language. In Skins UK, Effy uses terms like “shagging” and “surf and turf” (SE3E01: “Everyone”)  to describe sex, and when Freddie confesses to Effy that he’s in love with her, he blatantly says “I really fucking love you.” (SE4E05: “Freddie”)  In Skins US, when Tony was making phone calls to people about Stanley, he says that he “Has to get laid by the time he’s 17, or he can’t be my friend anymore.” (SE1E01: “Tony”)  Even with the slight lenience of censorship, it caused far more controversy and lead to the show going off air after the first season. Reasons why Skins US got far more negative attention was because it publicly presented things too obscene for American media. American culture contrasts from the United Kingdom’s culture because the UK is open to accepting what’s considered improprietous language as a social norm, as well as a natural human behavior. Because the UK’s definition of profanity is less stringent, it gives permission to freely use what’s defined as profane in the US.

With a majority of religions, there is a wide range of mandatory edicts strictly against vulgar language.  In Catholicism, there are a specific amount of rules that must be followed by every Roman Catholic entitled The Ten Commandments. In the Ten Commandments according to the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, there are two particular commandments that specify  the wrongdoings of using foul language and other swear words. Two of them would be the second commandment, “Thou shalt not use misuse the name of the Lord your God in vain,” (New American Bible, Exodus 20:7) and the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” (New American Bible, Exodus 20:14)  Using God’s name in vain is considered a form of swearing as well as blasphemy. With the sixth commandment, committing adultery can be defined/interpreted as any sort of act that is sexual or impure towards your body. Cursing/swearing fits into this criteria, because it is thought of to be degrading and harmful towards one’s self. What is fascinating about these two commandments especially, though, are that they state two natural human behaviors as being vulgar and degrading, and a majority of curse words are essentially just language that describes these natural human behaviors. Though because the culture of Catholicism does not give permission to use such words, they have become profane, because culture defines the line between vulgarity and normality.

In just about any and every educational environment, the concept of obscenity is either completely avoided, or deemed as subject too inappropriate to approach with any depth. This is because of ethics that are established in the culture of learning. Though recently, the comfort level with profanity has been increasing especially in educational environments. In a New York Times article about educated people using foul language in America, it states that “In our society, the main taboo is no longer sex, but race.” (“Room for Debate”) And also talks about how our offense evolves throughout the time. It also states that, after a certain amount of time, “people clutching at their pearls at things like that will look as quaint as people considering it a big deal that Clark Gable said ‘damn’ in ‘Gone With the Wind.’” (“Room for Debate”) Because of the fact that Americans are no longer offended by impropriety, they have now moved on to hyperbolizing the insult of using a racial slurs. The definition of profanity is constantly revising and evolving based on what a culture is offended by, and because of the recent epidemic of sexual exploitation, there is no more controversy or shock towards it, and it has become so natural that such words can be comfortably used by educated people. Now, ethnophaulisms are the new definition of profanity, and any permission to use that profanity will come from the culture that has defined it.

Permission to use profanity comes from culture because culture defines what profanity is.  Since every culture has diverse definitions of what is social norm and what isn’t, certain behaviors and language that are natural for one culture are deemed blasphemous and obscene for another. Culture is what dictates ethical and unethical behavior, regardless of its normality or naturality elsewhere. The boundary between ethical and obscene accentuates the line between right and wrong, and carries out the importance of doing and saying the right things.

Works Cited:

"Everyone." Skins UK. E4: 22 Jan 2009. Television.

“Freddie.” Skins UK. E4: 24 Feb 2010. Television.

“Tony” Skins US. MTV 17 Jan 2010. Television.

The New American Bible.

"Why Do Educated People Use Bad Words?" Room for Debate Why Do Educated People Use Bad Words Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2013. <http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/why-do-educated-people-use-bad-words/?_r=0>.

All across America there are African-American people who speak an english that is similar to our but not exactly the same. It started in the darkest times of this country. The times of slavery. When White Americans enslaved thousands of African-Americans and forcefully brought them to America. With no knowledge of english African-Americans adapted and tried their best to communicate. White Americans forced African-Americans to create their own version of english during the times of slavery.

In James Baldwin’s essay, “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me. What Is?”, in the sixth paragraph he begins to explain the origins of Black English and how it may have came to be, “..the slaves began the formation of the black church, and it is within this unprecedented tabernacle that is Black English began to be formed...the adaption of a foreign tongue.” I personally believe that Baldwin’s correct. As an American I have pride in the country and the people in it, but we did something horrid. We brought Africans to the states as slaves. Then when they began to try and communicate with their own version of our language we discriminated against them harshly, and told them they had to speak our English. It’s a hard topic to fathom but it’s all true.

Also in Baldwin’s paper in the second paragraph where he starts to compare and contrast other systems that are involved through languages he argues, “A frenchman living in Paris speaks a subtly and crucially different language from that of the man living in Marseilles, neither sounds much like the man living in Quebec, Guadeloupe, Martinique, or Senegal although the “common” language of all these areas is French.” Now Baldwin raises a great point here. He’s comparing the French language system to the English one. He says a man in Paris sounds different than a person in Marseilles. That would be like saying a man from Brooklyn sounds different than a person in Mississippi. Which is undoubtedly true. He then also goes on about other French speaking countries in which most french natives couldn’t even understand the language they’re speaking there. It all winds back to colonization. When the french took over these countries they had forced the people living there to learn french. So the natives made it their own. Just like how African-Americans made english their own, and frankly I don’t blame them one bit.

Since the times of slavery are over and white people and black people are integrated we have learned to live alongside each other in peace. The only difference between us now besides our skin color is the variation of english that we speak. African American Vernacular English is the proper name for it, but it actually is a separate language from english created by african-americans. A great example is pulled from a Kanye West song called “Otis”, “They ain't see me cause I pull up in my other Benz. Last week I was in my other other Benz, throw your diamonds up cause we in this bitch another 'gain.” The reason I’m using a Kanye West lyric is to show how this “dialect” spreads around to the younger generation. If the younger generation speaks in this dialect then it will only become more popular. In fact even white people have begun to take on a form of this speech from being around African Americans so much. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just that we as a country need to recognize that we actually are creating a new English.  In all honesty I don’t like this type of music at all, but if slavery is the reason that most African Americans speak in this dialect then I hope they continue to.

Mostly all African-Americans have spoken or will be speaking African American Vernacular English in the future, this is because of the recent migrations of African Americans from the southern states toward the northern states. Therefore, the African American men and women who had slaves as their ancestors and those who were handed down the dialect from them are spreading out. With spreading out comes passing on and what’s happening is, the farther they spread the more popular this dialect becomes. More and more people will continue to be exposed to African American Vernacular English. All of this had started when we sailed to Africa and brought back slaves from West, Central, and even Southern Africa. So all of these Africans shoved on a boat together each of them speaking different languages had no clue on how to communicate. After a while when they got to the states they began to be exposed to English and they tried to learn it the best they could, all while slave working. And thus African American Vernacular English was born.

Works Cited

Ender Wiggin is the average American six year old. Well, not really, but he’s an American, fictional six year old. Ender Wiggin in the main protagonist in Orson Scott Card’s 1983 science fiction novel Ender’s Game (and all of all the other books, Speaker For The Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, First Meetings, Shadow Of The Giant, A War of Gifts, Ender in Exile, Shadows in Flight, Earth Unaware, Earth Afire, and Shadow Alive).  He’s the third, he has an older brother Peter and an older sister Valentine. They live in a world where English in the “international standard” and every kid in the world is learning it. Except French kids, France kept tradition and gives kids 4 years to learn French before starting with the international standard. Earth is faced with a Bugger (or Formic, dependent on whether or not you intend to see the movie or read the wiki page) crisis, where they are being invaded with an alien species. Young Ender is sent to an international military school, where he is with kids from all over the world being trained to lead the International Fleet, better know as the I.F. While all of the boys speak English, they speak variants of English. The dialect and accent that the kids speak affects their hierarchy and education levels.

There is this boy in Ender’s launch group, named Bernard, from France. The story is narrated from a third person perspective, but from Ender’s thoughts, we see that he thinks that Bernard has a very exoctic, rare sounding accent.  Ender’s original perception of Bernard is that he is snobby and arrogant. He doesn’t have this idea about the other boys in his crew, but because Bernard is French, then Ender thinks that he’s arrogant. They use language and other things to turn the students against each other. The officers clearly establish who is from France and they single out Ender on the ride to Battle School. Colonel Graff thinks that isolation maintains creativity, and he clearly doesn’t believe in the core value of collaboration.

Then in the game room, Ender meets kids who are older than he is, but have this sort of uneducated, slow sounding English. Some of them sound slightly southern. but mostly the spoke with an improper sense of grammar. None of them were commanders or platoon leaders, all of them were just soldiers. All of the boys who lead in the top armies, such as Dragon or Rabbit, were all American, British, Australian, or French. They all spoke some sort of almost unaccented English.

Not only are all of the student commanders and platoon leaders from wealthier, well educated countries, the same also applies to all the leaders and officers from the I.F. that we see in the book. Colonel Graff, who is in charge of Ender’s training whilst he’s at Battle School is American, and always conducts himself with this great sense of propriety in his English. When Ender is at Command School, he has a teacher by the name of Mazer Rackham. He defeated the Buggers in the first invasion and is a great commander. Mazer’s English is average, he makes typical mistakes while speaking, but all in all, speaks standard, unaccented English. This is fairly typical of people who are high up in the I.F.

While Ender is at battle school, his two siblings at home decide they want to take over the web and start writing political commentary. Because Peter is only 12, and Valentine is only 10 at the time that they do this, the decide to take up the pseudonyms of  Demonthes and Locke. Peter plays Locke, who is a person who encourages communication between nations regarding the Warsaw Pact. This is strange because Peter is not at all like that in real life; Peter would skin squirrels alive and watch them suffer and die. Valentine is quiet and sensitive in real life, she baked cakes on Ender’s birthday even though he was at Battle School and no one baked anymore. She always stuck up for Ender when Peter would bully him. Valentine’s online persona, however, stirs up tension between governments and doesn’t encourage any communication between anyone. The online personas of the kids causes great political tension and they are both employed to be working full time writing columns for websites on the net. However, in order for them to have done so well, they had to present the front of a well-educated, wealthy men who are very politically inclined. Peter couldn’t present himself as a ruthless 12 year old boy who was jealous of a third who got to go to Battle School. Valentine couldn’t present herself as a 10 year old girl who was sensitive and fearful for her brother’s psychological and physical well being. Valentine had to present herself as a man, first and foremost, for anyone to take her seriously. Secondly, she had to not be kind-hearted or sensitive at all. She had to use such harsh language to not show herself and to make her opinion known and popular. Whereas, Peter on the other hand, had to phrase his thoughts in such as way that made him look very deep and thoughtful, while encouraging communications and world peace. Peter’s character had to be careful to not use strong or harsh language in order to get his thoughts and opinions well known.

As children running this column, it became so well known that they had to compare and contrast the views of Demonthes and Locke for school. Valentine almost got herself in trouble, writing such an eloquent analysis on comparing the views of the two, that the school wanted to publish it on the school website. The problem with that though, was that the writing style between Demonthes and Valentine was almost identical. After that, she quickly learned that she not only had to code switch while talking, but she almost had to have two separate writing styles and vocabularies. Peter was better at not revealing his character, because he had always code switched between talking to Ender and Valentine and talking to adults. Peter had created this facade that caused adults to see him as a sweet, intelligent, sensitive boy instead of the ruthless killer he was in his younger days.

Back at Battle School, Ender is in Salamander Army under the command of Bonzo Madrid, from Spain. Ender’s first mistake in the army was to pronounce the commander’s name wrong and to not speak to the commander properly. Despite Ender eventually being the most valuable soldier in the army, Bonzo has a bad impression of him because he has a Spanish name and Ender isn’t familiar with Spanish names. Although English is the international standard, most countries kept ethnic names with influences of past languages.

All in all, language is very powerful. As we see from Ender’s Game, language affects the boys’ ranks and how they were seen by other boys. Language also gave them a sense of individuality, and we always knew who was talking even when it was clearly spelled out. We see language, while key to communication, affects the hierarchy of society.

Works Cited

Card, Orson Scott. “Ender’s Game”

Have you ever had something you couldn’t do? Something you couldn’t say? That’s me, that’s who I..... or at least who I was. Ever since I got my braces, the things I used to say, I say no more. One time during Freshman year, I said a word that I hadn’t used in a while. This word was so simple, and the fact that I couldn’t say it made me livid. It was so embarrassing. I tried, tried, and I tried again, but I couldn’t pronounce it correctly. It got to the point where my entire class made fun of me. God, I hated these braces. Eventually it got better, but until that happened, I was the butt of the joke.

One day, a couple of my friends and I were having a conversation. I don’t remember what it was about, but I went to say this word and all I got in response was a room full of laughter.

“WHAT? Can you say that again?”

“What are you talking about?” I uttered with a face of confusion. I was so lost as to what they were talking about. Thinking to myself, What are they talking about?

“Repeat your sentence,” another said.

“When you get married you should be......,” and then I knew what they were talking about. I knew my braces had changed the way I spoke, but not to the point where it was noticeable. So I said it.

“Purr.”

I said it again just to be sure that this is what they were laughing at. As soon as the word left my lips, the room erupted again. At first it was a little funny, but then it got annoying. Every time I said something, someone else would end up asking me to say the word again.

“Can you say ‘purr’ again?”

It really got to the point where I just eliminated it from my vocabulary. Clearly that wasn’t the word I was trying to say, but everyone wouldn’t listen to that part. Not having someone to listen to me, and to have everyone laugh at me, caused me to cry. I wasn’t crying because they were laughing; it was because I felt defeated.

When I went home,  I told my mom about the situation. After hearing what I had to say, she just told me that sometimes there are certain challenges people have to overcome. Everyone can’t be perfect at everything. I knew that my mom knew the struggle I was going through because she has had similar situations occur in her life.

Although I got to talk to my mom about it, I still felt some type of way because she wasn’t in my predicament. I felt lonely because I thought I did not have anyone my age to relate to. I understand that she could understand, but I wanted to not feel the way I did. I felt upset and defeated. I hate not knowing how to do something. Knowing that I couldn’t say, the word, not only affected my speech, but the way I was thinking.

After realizing that I couldn’t say the word, I got upset. “Upset” is really an understatement. Sometimes I cried, but that was in the comfort of my home. Then I started to think, I’m just like a baby, so why not learn to say it and adjust to my braces. So when I was alone I would concentrate on saying that one word.

“Purr. No! Peerrr. No.”

Sometimes I even got mad with myself and would go days without trying to practice. But I knew that if I wanted to say that word again, I would have to continue to try. After a while I got better and I felt confident about it. So I had a conversation with a friend and she decided to bring oiiup that topic.

She said,“......hahaha that’s why you can’t say.....”

Knowing that I could actually say the word without much effort, I laughed and said, “Why can’t I? Pure.”

When I said that, it shut her up and she was surprised. I was a little surprised, too. Not only that, but I was proud that I could actually do it. Knowing that I could say the word, “pure,” I felt some confidence coming back. I was strengthening my resilience to bounce back from that situation, and obstacles like that.

Now that I am a sophomore, I can relate this situation to a clip that I recently watched. The clip is titled, “American Tongues,” by James Baldwin. The clip talks about the different ways that Americans speak. James Baldwin traveled across the country and got different individuals to say certain things. When my peers heard me say the word, “pure” wrong, they didn’t realize that my braces caused an accent. The way I spoke was because of the complications that I have had. That is how the different Americans in the clip portrayed one another. They said each other was wrong, but didn't realize they were all correct, but had different ways expressing it.

Looking back on freshmen year, I feel as though the incident was a barrier that I broke through. Now that I know that it’s okay to fail, just as long as you can come back from it, makes me a better person. This has helped me for situations to come and has helped me have a better outlook on obstacles. Adjusting to my braces was not easy, but I am glad to have them. At first they got me upset because I could not say what I wanted, but later on it showed that even with the circumstances that I have, I could make the best out of it.