Language Autobiography

Daniel Varnis


Introduction:
For my Language Autobiography, I focused on the main idea of minorities. I talk about how people talk their own unique individual language. Of course there are going to be many different people with the same language due to the limited amount. Anyway, Language is the way of people expressing their selves and communicating with one another. From my point of view I lived in an area were people mainly spoken English. It would be very rare for people to speak a language other than English in my community. Until my life progressed and minorities began to come in, the languages spoken around me became more and more diverse. It was something that was not easy adjusting to, and it was something that I didn't see as a norm.


Language Autobiography:
In life and society in the past, present, and possibly the future racism, inequality and, segregation have been some of the main standing grounds of life. In my life I was born in a typical South Philadelphia neighborhood where 99% of my neighbors and everyone else spoke American English. But as time went on a culture diffusion has progressed, my life as it is have been filled with minorities. And this took much time getting accustomed to. I knew that there was no negating this movement, and it is something that cannot be undone.

Therefore, not only in my life have I felt that a part of my past has been replaced with something new. In my English class I read a passage called, “Hunger for Memory” from a book called, “Aria” by Richard Rodriguez. In this story, there a man who moves from his homeland into a completely different society. From his homeland everyone spoke Spanish, but to where he moved to, everyone spoke English. In the story he was called a “gringo” on page 13. That word is a slang word used in Spanish to show a foreigner that speaks English and comes into a Spanish speaking community. Also on page 13 someone says to him, “You are home now; come closer; inside with us.” Basically they were telling him that he was in an English speaking community and now he lives in a Spanish speaking community; there is no turning back and you have to stay accustomed to what you are coming into. Richard was starting to get hungry for his memory of his old living situation.

Now that the person and I in this story seem to be floating on the same boat, our problems are similar but no exactly the same. In his story, he has the problem of moving to a new area and not being accustomed to the people speaking English all around him. With my situation I accustomed to everyone speaking English around me until people started coming in speaking a completely different language.

Next, it seems like my situation and the person in the books situation seem to tie in together in a very unique way. My problem is too many outsiders coming in and changing my society. Well those people coming seem like one of the many people that are in the same situation as the person in “Hunger for Memory.” So as the people that are like the person that was in the story start to move into a English speaking society, people like me who are already here are not used to these adjustments.

Here is an example of how my family and I used to talk before we felt like society has changed,

“It all began in summer of 2006, my family and I decided to take a vacation to Wildwood, NJ for a week. In the past I was remembered as the jumpy, nonstop, overexcited child. No matter what I couldn’t sit still, and with the information that we are going to the beach, I was running around like a headless chicken. As we arrive in front of our shore house I open the door, run up the steps and wait at the door. Unfortunately I had to help my parents unload the trunk. So as we are done unloading the trunk I run around the house to call dibs on what room my mother and I are staying in. After about 30 seconds of running around we chose the room with the futon and the deck. When my mother and I are done unpacking my family and us two took a walk to the beach. When we get there I rip off the shirt like the hulk and sprint to the water. It felt so good I was running around in circles jumping in the water. From the distance I hear my family yelling at me to back up and not go to deep.

My grandfather yells, ‘Yo wippersnapper, get your ass back here before I beat it!’

When he said that I knew he meant business. I turn around without any other thoughts. When I come up to them he tells me, “Daniel you need to calm down and don’t go too deep. You forgot to put on sun block and you were too far away too fast. The rest of the day I tried to stay my calmest and not give my parents any difficulties. Being a child was a very exhilarating time of my life.” In this example from my childhood, my grandfather said, “Whippersnapper.” That word is something that was said commonly by my grandfather when I was little to emphasize my rowdiness. But as time progressed and society began to change, slowly stopped saying that word. He could have stopped saying it because I was growing up, and I would have found it to be a joke, but I feel like that if said that word today then people would look at him like he was insane.

To close I feel like a piece of my past has been taken away due to the large population of different ethnic groups coming into my life, but it something that cannot be changed and there is no going back. It is something that has to be lived with and something that will take some adjusting too. Maybe I am just under some sort of cultural shock and eventually while I have them around me long enough, I can see my life as, “back to normal.”

Language Autobiography

Jalisa Smith

 

Introduction/Reflection:

The project that I did was based on how I viewed the language dynamics in America. I thought about how we use it to communicate and how we have to take time, which is if we do not speak English, to learn Standard English. Foreigners, as they are called, have to be understood by Americans, and vice versa. In writing this piece I was grappling with the idea of saying the right things the wrong way. I struggled with telling the right stories at the right time. I knew there was a lot to say, but I didn’t want to offend anyone. Neither did I want to offend America. So in the end, I concluded with something lighter than what I intended on saying. Although, I still do believe I got my point across.

 

Story:

Jalisa Smith

Language Autobiography

Language is what differentiates one culture from another. A language can evolve, it can morph, it can even grow, but it will always exist. When you think about it, your language is what makes you unique. Sometimes, I wonder what America would be without the variety of languages. It is distinguishable because it consists of so many different dialects, but in the end, we all eventually sound “American”. But what is the American language? It consists of slang, cussing, standard English, and other ethnicity’s entire accent just trying to fit in. Yet as a society, we struggle with the barriers that language builds.

My mother and father are from Barbados. In Barbados, they speak broken English, more British English, if anything. When my mother and father first met my teachers, doctors and friends, they would have to repeat themselves to be understood. I began to realize how it was either good or bad because some people would say, “I love your accent! Say this in Bajan!” or, “What’d you say?” Normally I thought it was ignorant, other times I brush it off because I do the same thing when a foreigner tries talking to me. At the same time, what type of person does that make me? This is where it becomes confusing because I know what it feels like in their position, but now I know what it feels like in an Americans’ position also. So what I can I conclude of this?

I begin to wonder where my place is in this long strand of language. I fit into both roles, (American and Foreigner) perfectly. That is, if I wanted to. So am I wrong for being an interested outsider of another language? I don’t think I am. Because the way I look at it, a language is so influential upon a society. Therefore if a person joins a society that speaks a different language than they do, everyone wants to understand them. When a person decides to open up to you in their language, they assume you are comfortable with the language too. I guess that’s why there are so many people that find it easy to converse with people who speak the same way, because they understand each other. It’s an easy way out of conflict.

 I see it happening everywhere. For example, I was at the African Hair Braiding Shop watching the women doing hair. There was a lot of conversing and laughing. But there were two conversations happening. One conversation was with the hair braiders and the other was with the clients. The division between the two was very obvious but they could have been talking about the same thing, yet everyone stuck to their own group because it’s a comfort zone. Another time I was walking downtown with a group of diverse friends, and we all speak Standard English and all of my Asian friends drifted into a completely different conversation.

It’s the moments like these, which make me wonder if the variety of languages in the United States is good. I know it’s good to be unique, but we all have to come to some sort of understanding. The conflict occurs when there is a frown upon those that don’t speak Standard English. It occurs when Americans train foreign children to create a new language or when a foreigner is speaking to some person who doesn’t understand anything they area saying. But problems such as these are only very hard to solve because in the end we all have to understand what we’re saying because to be successful in America, you should know Standard English.

 In the story, “this is the oppressors language / yet I need to talk to you: Language, a place of struggle” the author, Bell Hooks was discussing the United States and language. She said, “In the United States it [Standard English] is the mask which hides the loss of so many tongues. (LPS, Bell Hooks)” When I was reading this, I thought of how every day, Americans are millions of foreigners who are gathering together to form a country. To be a sufficiently working society, we have to have an understanding. That’s when there is a “mask, which hides the loss of so many tongues”. It can be looked at in a bad way, but in my opinion, it’s the only way we can survive. I do love the word choice for that quotes the author used. She called Standard English a mask; a mask is something that can be taken off. It’s interesting to see the wordplay because she gives the reader a choice. What I got out of it is that there can be a time where we all put on a mask, to hide what others won’t understand, accept and appreciate.

America’s diversity is what makes it so hard to take into consideration every language that it contains. Because our leaders speak Standard English, we have to speak Standard English. It makes it easier for all of us. Like Bell Hooks said, Standard English is a mask in the United States. The barriers that languages build aren’t for a bad purpose. It’s because as a society we have to come to an understanding, therefore, barriers are ways of avoiding conflict. No one wants to lose apart of what makes them the person they are, so we cover it up. I believe the largest problem that can come out of the language in America is when we forget our roots, when we forget to take our masks off.

 

Digital Story:

 

Script:

 

Language is what keeps us united.

As a Country, what would we be without a main language? (English)

As a Country, what would we be without a main language? (Spanish)

As a Country, what would we be without a main language? (French)

As a Country, what would we be without a main language? (Italian)

 

You see, if I didn’t have translator I wouldn’t be able to have said the things I just said.

The phrase, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”, can be very universal.

So when in America, do as the Americans do.

Sit back, and relax from your fast paced daily life.

Take a sip of black coffee and make sure to have only one wife.

Traditions shouldn’t be modified but language can tweaked a bit.

Make sure you make the best of it.

Because there is no way to make a living without understanding what your boss is saying because your time is not only being wasted but it is conflicting with what he/she is making so therefore accept ESOL classes and build a home with crystal glasses.

 

My mother used to say,

That’s when we have something to offer, make the people listen.

How do you expect to be understood?

If there is no understanding,

How do we expect to be sustainable?

Community, when one can’t understand the other.

Therefore, we all come together.

A language.

Standard English, is what we all use in America

It’s the way we communicate.

Somehow, it’s the only way we navigate,

There only becomes a problem,

When we put down our personal history,

When we forget our roots.

And never look back.

When the youth of the next generation,

Is completely the same.

Lets not make it that way

Let’s enjoy

 

I will never forget when,

My grandmother told me how hard it was to talk to others.

So she made it easier for everyone,

She began to learn the lingo.

She spoke the slang, but never let her accent go.

 

 

Language Autobiography

Intro

            This project was to make a language autobiography. Our paper had to explain how our language relates to our life and include scenes using words that either we made up, or words that mean something special to us or are they’re just slang. We had to explain how language shaped our life and made us who we are today.

            The parts that I feel that are strong in my paper would be the scenes. I included more than one and I made sure they were really descriptive and included my words. Another part that I think is really strong is my analysis. A place that I struggled in was my final paragraph, because I had to close up the scene I was just talking about and try to include the first scene with it to tie it all together. I learned a lot, one thing that I learned that stood out to me was a thing called "code switching."  "Code switching" means that when you're speaking to someone you have a certain way to speak to them. I knew that I always did that but I just didn’t know that it had a name.

 

 

Language might be one thing that travels the fastest around the world. It’s something that everyone knows about and uses everyday.  It is also part of who I am. My language is so different from everyone else that I talk to. Yes, I speak English but I used different words and different dialect than you. Everyone that I ever held a conversation with from school has noticed the way I talk. Everyone else that wasn’t from my school never had anything to say about it.  I believe it’s my “South Philly” accent or some of the slang words that I say all the time. I talk the same way that everyone around my neighborhood talks. I don’t really use a lot of slang but the word that I use most often is “yous.” This word is an Italian slang for “you guys” really simply. If you go into South Philly you would find that out pretty quickly. I must use this word about seventy times a day and not even notice.

I remember the first time that I said it in school. I was sitting at lunch on the second floor near the pool, surrounded by people that I knew, but not well. I had one really close friend that was in my stream her name was Goldie. We were all laughing and everything was great. I was sitting against the wall and Goldie got her trash and all her things together and began standing up.

  “Me and Ellen are leaving do you want to come?” She asked me as Ellen walked over to her.

  “Well, where are yous going?” I asked looking up to her and Ellen. Suddenly everyone around me snapped their heads in my direction. All I heard was a bunch of voices talking about what I had just said. Everyone was just as puzzled as I was but for different reasons.
                    “What did she just say?” A girl asked in between laughter.
                    “What does “yous” mean?” A boy shouted out but he got no answers. Then Goldie asked the same question. I thought maybe of all people she would know because I used this around her before and she never questioned it.
                    “Yeah what does that mean?” She said as she was laughing along with everyone else. I didn’t know that no one knew what that word meant. My face got redder than a tomato and I was suddenly scared that everyone was going to make fun of me. I just wanted to run and hide until it all passed.
                    “You guys. Yous never heard that before?” I asked looking around and I realized that I just said it again but hoped that no one heard me. Laughter was the only thing I heard after that.
                    “No!” She shouted as if I should have known that.
                    “Oh. Well where I’m from that’s what everyone says. It’s weird that no one here knew. But anyway where are yous going?” I said it in a joking manner because everyone made a big deal about it. I felt embarrassed, like I was an alien and no one ever heard the word before. But no one minded, they all thought it was funny and I know now that they would never make fun of me for real. But now everyone is used to it, and a lot more people say it. I guess I just worry too much. It has become a joke between some friends and me all from that one-day. Another thing that I believe makes me who I am today is the fact that I talk with my hands. A lot if not all the people from south Philly do this. Growing up seeing my parents do it, or neighbors or just strangers when I walk in the street. I don’t even realize that I do it but all of my friends do. They sometimes tease me about this also. Either if I am really angry or excited, I wave my hands or clap them. But nevertheless I believe that it has made me part of who I am today. Also, that I impacted some peoples lives because they started to do it also.
                    Which brings me back to my thought that language might be one thing that travels the fastest around the world. If someone says one thing to me and I like it then I will say it, text it, or chat it to my friends and if they like it they do the same and it spreads like wildfire, it’s crazy! Of course there are some words that you don’t want to say around certain people, which is called Code Switching. The way I talk in school is way different from the way I talk when I’m home or around my friends. Just as some teachers talk different when they talk to their class and then when they are around their friends they speak differently also. We can’t help that we do this but it’s just what were used to.  For example, when I went to Drexel to present my water filtration project I spoke perfect English. I had to make sure for a fact that I dropped all of my slang words because I wanted to impress the professors at the school. I had to make sure I didn’t use my hands I didn’t want to clap in the audience faces just to get my point across.
                    “I’m extremely nervous! What if I mess up?” I said looking at Jessica as we were impatiently waiting for our names to get called up to go present. I couldn’t eat the nice food they supplied for us, I could barley drink what they supplied for us. I keep reading over my slide and practicing what I was going to say and how I was going to say it and stand.

            “You’ll be fine! Relax. Breathe. You did this in school a millions times and did it prefect!” She reassured me with a smile. I still couldn’t shake the nervous feeling that I was having. I remember when I first heard that we won this project challenge and I was nervous from then on.
                    “You know me I’m socially awkward I don’t like to talk to people especially professors!” I said laughing and she joined in with me. Then they called us and once I got up there and saw my slide I was fine. I didn’t mess up and I managed to keep my English perfect. I was so proud of myself for not messing up and not clapping in their faces.

Even though I always say “yous” I will never change the way that I speak or stop saying the words that I do because someone has a problem with it. Of course I will if I ever go back to Drexel or present but other then that, I will not. Everything I say and the way I say it makes me who I am. I love it.


Link for my digital short. 

file:///Users/dboccuti/Downloads/English%20Language..3gp

Mis Seres Queridos

Hola! Este es mi proyecto; disfrutar.

 

Soy Alaina. Tengo catorce años, pero voy a cumplir los quince en el vientinueve de abril. Siempre soy bastante extraña.  Me encanta comida; café solo es súper. Me gusta leer  y  axolotls.

 

Se llama Lee. El es mi papá. Es muy cómico y trabajador. Mi papá es muy sociable. Tiene el pelo corto. Además, él tiene los ojos azules. Cuando tiene tiempo libre, mi papá le gusta mucho dormir. Lo quiero porque es espectacular.

 

Sus nombres son Ariel y Nate. Ellos son mi hermana mejor y su hijo. Ellos tienen el pelo café y son increiblemente largo. Les gusta hablar, y los dos son guapos.  Además, que son similares. Me caen bien porque son genials.

 

Se llaman Chungyi y Ayala; ellas son mi mamá y mi hermana mayor. Son artísticas y depende del dia ellas son bobas. Les gusta bailar. Mi mamá y hermana son morenas, tambien tienen los ojos cafes. Me encantan porque son los mejores.

 

Nuestros nombres son Alaina y Nina. Nina es mi abuela. Nosotras tenemos el pelo morena. Nos gusta cocinar, pero no nos gusta nada ayudar en casa. ¡Es un amor de gente; mi abuela es súper!

 

Si, mi familia es muy importante para mi.

 

¡Gracias por su atención!

 

Lobbying Blog Post #4

It is time we start focusing on contacting and connecting with our representative to start making progress, because during this season is the perfect time to advance in getting more bike paths. People are only focused on certain types of transportation such as cars or buses. However, there are many people who are still biking in the cold and need their own space. By working with the bicycle coalition and staying updated with their progress, we would definitely see where they are taking this issue.



Bike%20Philly%20Front%20Page%20PictureD
Bike%20Philly%20Front%20Page%20PictureD
I want to make sure that people are not losing interest in this issues. It is extremely important because it deals with the safety of Philadelphia citizens. They need to realize that if they want more bike paths and more of a change in the transportation system for them, they have to continuously fight to receive more attention. Without bike paths, bikers are forced to bike in the street with other cars. Sure, they have the "share the road" signs but many drivers ignore that. Biking to school, work, etc is much more efficient, does not involve gas and is a great source of exercise. Like on highways, you have the slow lane and the fast lane. How about in the city we have the vehicle lane and bike lane?

It would be much easier to speak directly with Mayor Nutter about this issue.
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Screen Shot 2012-01-06 at 1.35.23 AM
​I decided to use twitter because social networking sites is the most efficient way to get the word spread. I search for Mayor Nutter directly, and depending on how many mentions he receives on a daily basis, he could find time to answer my tweets. I also posted on his facebook page, in which he may check as well.
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Screen Shot 2012-01-06 at 1.44.51 AM
Many people use social networking sites as a way to communicate their ideas. By using these, hopefully more people would come across this issue and look towards finding ways to support and solve it. Uyen and I plan on writing letters to the councilman William Greenlee petitioning the idea of having more bike paths. By the springtime, we hoped to have had some progress in issuing more bike paths in the city for that is a time when people are out and about getting to their necessary destination.
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Language Autobiography Isabela Aznar

Language Autobiography Introduction:

This Language Autobiography is about my life growing up and how the things i've experienced have made me more aware of culture and language. Growing up in a bilingual family, and loving writing from a young age always brought me to notice how people spoke, and it what languages they spoke. I also talk about finding my path as a girl growing up in the world with the struggles of being extremely consious of my culture and the way I spoke, and how I over came them with a new perspective.



Language Autobiography Reflection:

When I started this paper I really didn't have many expiriences to write about, but what I learned as I wrote more and built my paper was that language is all around me. I have had about 10 encounters with people from all over about the way they speak and the way I speak since I started this paper. I took a lot from this project and really enjoyed it, I just wish I had known what I know now when I started!

Isabela Aznar
Copper Stream
December-16-2011
Q2.

I was born bilingual, and I was born a writer. Words spill out of my brain, they drip on my lips, and leak dow my heart. All I’d ever known was that I had the urge to write them down. I guess it’s like the real entrance into my heart, when my parents divorced my only way of coping was writing word after word, page after page, diary after diary, and although I kept my mouth shut, I was constantly speaking. My words were powerful, spiteful, raging, hurt, vulnerable, and the emotions I had were sealed up on the pages of my over emotional, over flowing heart. Poetry poured out and anything overwhelming I ever felt I let float out onto the paper. I wrote songs, diaries, stories, and poems. The words just never stopped coming, that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

The day  I was born into the world, different languages were already bieng poured into my newborn delicate ears. My mother is Mexican, and speaks Spanish as her first language and English and French as her second and third. My father is American, but speaks Spanish too. Growing up in a household with multiple languages made me  very conscious of the way I spoke and the way others spoke as well. I used to resent my background because I thought it was bad to be different from everyone else. I started hating the fact that I was half Mexican when my parents began to separate. I guess the heat of a divorce, the drop in my stomach that told me that I wasn’t like all of my friends with two happy parents, that tragedy had struck me? made me completely resent being “different”. I told everyone I was American, and completely denied that fact that I was Latina at all.  I was  more aware of the connection between culture, judgement and language than the other kids my age. By this I mean that I had a strong sense of knowing what I spoke and how I spoke, and I knew it would define me in the world. In my mind, It already

The first time I really felt proud of myself for speaking two languages, I was at the movies with a bunch of friends for a birthday party. we were watching harry potter, I remember it clearly. Two of my friends whispered across the isle to me that they had to go to the bathroom, and so I decided to tag along. When we got out of the bathroom, we began looking for the theatre in which our movie was, but they all looked the same. We ran in and out of maybe five theatres frantically searching for ours, and being only about twelve years old it was scary. 

Finally we saw people who worked at the theatre, and my friends were on the verge of crying. Emma walked up to the woman and said “excuse me do you know which theatre Harry Potter is playing in??” The woman shrugged and looked confused, but I noticed she looked Latina so I walked up to her and asked her in Spanish. “Compermiso, estamos perdidas. usted sabe cual es el teatro en donde estan enseñando Harry Potter?” I let her know we were lost and that we didn’t know which theatre was the one we had come from, and immediately she understood and smiled, lit up her flashlight and signaled us to follow. She walked us back to our seats in the correct theatre and we were extremely relieved. “Oh my god Isabela, if you hadn’t spoke Spanish...” I remembered my friends praising me for getting us back safely, and that was the first time I truly felt proud of my heritage and language speaking abilities. It’s silly how people try to forget who they are, to become just like everyone else. On that day I promised I'd never resent who I am again.

What makes people embarrassed or afraid of speaking in other languages is being thought of as different, which society advertises as bad. In the cities, it is said that southern accents are bad, because it’s slow and unsophisticated. But in the south, people think that people in the city talk like their angry or in a rush constantly. It’s almost like society tells different cultures all around the United States, and even in other countries that they have to speak a certain way to be seen a certain way, and anything else is bad or a nuisance.
When I finally realized that the way people speak is really something to embrace was on my cruise over winter break. I made a group of lovely friends who will forever be close to me, from all over the world. One night we all went out to dinner together at a restaurant on the boat named “the blue lagoon” and we all talked about the way we spoke. We were a group made up of boys and girls from all over New York, Conneticut, Pennsylvania, Florida, Mexico, Canada, and Massachussets. don’t remember how the conversation came about but we started talking about the slang in where we each lived. In New York they say “You’re buggin’” to say “you’re crazy” or “what are you thinking?” In Pennsylvania we all say “You’re drawlin’” to express the same thing, and in boston they say “You’re wacked”. We all exchanged slang and taught each other different pronunciation of words.
I can honestly say that sitting around a table in the middle of the ocean with people from all around the world made me really appreciate all the different languages we consisted of. We opened up to new cultures, and talked about our languages.
Culture is tied into everything, it’s become linked to religion, belief, location, and language. With language, it’s almost as if people think in their heads “since these people speak this certain language or with this certain accent they must have grown up in a very conservative culture, or a very provacative one, etc.” which will define the way someone might look at someone else. Unfortunately, I think this has become true, but I also think it’s something to embrace, and that people shouldn’t be so afraid of learning and experiencing new things, maybe then they wouldn’t have to differentiate themselves through the way they speak.
I once was laying in bed, dreaming of beautiful things, my head rested on a blue pillow that was being smothered under my hand. I saw colors, and laughter, and then I was in Mexico. I was next to my friend Valeria and we were walking back up from her house to meet Fernando who was picking us up in his car. The sky was a vivid blue as we walked around the asphalt roads of Queretaro, chattering about the heat that pressed into our bodies and foreheads. There were bright palm trees and flowers all around as we walked down past all the big houses of our small town. We passed my grandmothers house and sat down on a curb near by waiting in the heat. The hot rays were coming down thick, but comfortable and not sticky. Fernando rolled up in his jeep and we got in “como estan?” he said, giving each of us a kiss on the cheek “Bien” we both responded smilling. All of the sudden the colors faded out again but I was still driving with Valeria and Fernando.
“Isabela?” I heard a familiar voice and felt my eyes open “Si?” I responded “Are you awake?” I turned and saw Emmi who had slept over at my house, sitting next to me “tuve un sueño tan lindo” I said, letting her know I had had a lovely dream as I came back to reality “what was it?” she asked and I thought back to what words we had just exchanged, confusion washed over me. “Was I just talking to you in Spanish?” I asked my best friend, who had picked up a little bit of Spanish from being around me and my family so much “Yeah hahaha, but I understood you so it’s cool” I put my hand on my forehead and laughed “that is so weird…I just woke up speaking Spanish” I said, and we both laughed again incredulous at our moment that had just occurred.
Emmi is an example of someone who embraces language as well, her parents are both white, but her mother was raised in Italy. She embraces culture, and does her best to adapt to it without resenting the cultures she grew up with. When she comes over and my mom is playing Latin music, or cooking us some sort of Mexican dish, Emmi is always the first of my friends to understand the transition and not feel uncomfortable. I think that this is the point that everyone should reach, when they can be invited into a different language environment, and not be intimidated by it but instead try and grasp a better understanding of it and take things from it.

E3_Shuman_Spanish

Reflexión


What grade would you assign yourself for each category?
Exceeds Expectations
20-19
Meets Expectations
18-16
Approaches Expectations
15-13
Does not meet expectations
12-1
Design18
Knowledge17

Application18
Presentation19

Process19


Strengths of your process or product

Weaknesses of your process or product

Creativity. Choose of words nicely.I had family problem so I couldn't focus on  the project. I wish I could have expanded my vocabulary.



If you could do your project all over again, what would you do differently/the same?


More creativity, and I would have added several pictures


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12821413/Conjunto%20-%20Large.

Language Autobiography

Introduction and Reflection:
The purpose of this project was to write a “language autobiography” about how language is a part of ourselves, and connect it to a larger idea. At first when writing this, I wasn’t sure what larger idea I was going to connect to, but as I wrote my scenes and about how my language is a part of me, I started to realize how language is a huge part of people’s identity; how it makes them different from everyone else. As I started to write about this, ideas flowed easily, and the essay seemed to write itself at that point. The part I had the most difficulty with was writing my descriptive scene, and about my experiences with language, but the rest after that was much easier for me.

Essay:
Languages are unique; they change and differ in many ways. When most people hear the word “Language,” they think English, Spanish, French, or other languages. Languages are a lot more than just that, whether it’s a dialect from Texas, or the Xhosa click language. Different languages can be have different words, or sounds, or grammatical syntax’s, but the one thing all languages have in common is that it tries to express something; an idea, or desire. If you ask someone from Alabama what language they spoke, they would probably answer with “Regular English”, and if you asked them what language someone from New York spoke, they would most likely answer with “English with a New York accent.” Everyone thinks that their own version of English is correct, and that everyone else is speaking differently.

Everybody speaks his or her own version of English, even people who live in the same neighborhood. If you look at the world, only some countries speak English. If you look at the English speaking countries, only The United States speaks “American English.” If you look at the US, only New York speaks with a “New York accent.” If you look at New York, only Brooklyn speaks with a “Brooklyn” accent. If you look at the families in Brooklyn, each individual family speaks differently, and everyone in the family speaks differently. This narrowing process can be done for any one person in the World. If you were to listen to everyone in a family speak, you would assume everybody spoke the same way, but the differences are very subtle, such as word used frequently in between pauses, or the speed they talk. All of these differences can separate that person’s individual way of speaking from everybody else’s.

When I think about how I speak, and how my family speaks, I always think that I speak “normally”, and that my words and sentences are “correct”. But what do “normal” and “correct” mean? When it comes to language, there is no such thing as “normal”. If everyone speaks differently, how could you single out one language to be the “normal” language? This also means that everyone is “correct” in the way they speak; you can’t decide that one person’s way of talking is “incorrect”. I then tried to think of how I speak differently from others, and various words and phrases came to mind; things that me and my family said that I doubt any other people used. For example, we sometimes call my brother Colin “Scooterby”, a nickname he got when my family went skiing. It was our first time as skiing, and my 6 year old brother was standing there completely bundled up in coats, snow pants, goggles and a helmet. He was practically unrecognizable in all those clothes. Around the end of the day we had gotten all the way down a hill, and were waiting for my brother. We didn’t see him, and we were worried he might be hurt. “Where is Colin?” my dad asked me, as I had gotten down after him. “I don’t know I replied, I didn’t see him fall though.” My dad was concerned, and said “I hope he’s alright.” We waited a few more minutes, and my dad said “I’m going back up to see if I can find him, wait here.” I said “Wait! I think I see him!”, and sure enough, my brother, came slowly sliding around the bend in the hill, covered in jackets. “Scooterby’s fine!” my dad said, and even though he had never said that word before, I knew exactly what it meant, and we still call my brother “Scooterby” to this day. My dad will also sometimes call me and my brother “Skraelings”, and while this is an actual word that Vikings used to describe the indigenous people of North America, my dad gave it a new meaning that only we know.

There’s a reason everyone’s language is more similar to those they are around a lot. When you are a baby, you learn a language by listening, and repeating what you hear. In a sense, you are copying someone else’s language; but because you are copying from more than one person, your language will be a combination of more than one person’s language. It will be similar to all of them, but different, and therefore unique. It’s not just from your parents that you learn language though, you learn it from friends, teachers, television; you learn it from anything that you can hear the language from. The more time you spend with one specific thing, the more it influences you. Your language is constantly developing and changing, and it will never stop unless you separate all contact with the outside world.

Language is just another thing that makes individuals unique. If you look at the way you speak, the words you use, the way you say them, your language stops feeling “normal”, but it doesn’t seem wrong. You can trace the words you use, and your speech quirks to different groups. I generally speak “calmly” with my words evenly spaced, which is something that my dad does. I sometimes say the word “like” a lot to fill blank spaces in my speech, which is something my friends would do in elementary school. My mom and dad have had the biggest impact on my language, I use similar words to them, have similar speech patterns, and combine the differences in their speech to make my own language.

Lobbying Blog Post #4

Lobbying Blog Post #4


Steps:

Dominate Something: talk to district leader via email or phone or even in person

Do a few things well: give a few good reasons why he should support this issue and help to lower drinking ages. Provide sources and information that can help to persuade him.

Make the strategy personal: talk about why the issue would be personal and useful to yourself/your community. 

Force multiply: find more people my age and older to support this issue and 



Still need to add to this

Isabela's Language Auto


Language Autobiography Introduction:

This Language Autobiography is about my life growing up and how the things i've experienced have made me more aware of culture and language. Growing up in a bilingual family, and loving writing from a young age always brought me to notice how people spoke, and it what languages they spoke. I also talk about finding my path as a girl growing up in the world with the struggles of being extremely consious of my culture and the way I spoke, and how I over came them with a new perspective.



Language Autobiography Reflection:

When I started this paper

Isabela Aznar
Copper Stream
December-16-2011
Q2.

I was born bilingual, and I was born a writer. Words spill out of my brain, they drip on my lips, and leak dow my heart. All I’d ever known was that I had the urge to write them down. I guess it’s like the real entrance into my heart, when my parents divorced my only way of coping was writing word after word, page after page, diary after diary, and although I kept my mouth shut, I was constantly speaking. My words were powerful, spiteful, raging, hurt, vulnerable, and the emotions I had were sealed up on the pages of my over emotional, over flowing heart. Poetry poured out and anything overwhelming I ever felt I let float out onto the paper. I wrote songs, diaries, stories, and poems. The words just never stopped coming, that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

The day  I was born into the world, different languages were already bieng poured into my newborn delicate ears. My mother is Mexican, and speaks Spanish as her first language and English and French as her second and third. My father is American, but speaks Spanish too. Growing up in a household with multiple languages made me  very conscious of the way I spoke and the way others spoke as well. I used to resent my background because I thought it was bad to be different from everyone else. I started hating the fact that I was half Mexican when my parents began to separate. I guess the heat of a divorce, the drop in my stomach that told me that I wasn’t like all of my friends with two happy parents, that tragedy had struck me? made me completely resent being “different”. I told everyone I was American, and completely denied that fact that I was Latina at all.  I was  more aware of the connection between culture, judgement and language than the other kids my age. By this I mean that I had a strong sense of knowing what I spoke and how I spoke, and I knew it would define me in the world. In my mind, It already

The first time I really felt proud of myself for speaking two languages, I was at the movies with a bunch of friends for a birthday party. we were watching harry potter, I remember it clearly. Two of my friends whispered across the isle to me that they had to go to the bathroom, and so I decided to tag along. When we got out of the bathroom, we began looking for the theatre in which our movie was, but they all looked the same. We ran in and out of maybe five theatres frantically searching for ours, and being only about twelve years old it was scary. Finally we saw people who worked at the theatre, and my friends were on the verge of crying. Emma walked up to the woman and said “excuse me do you know which theatre Harry Potter is playing in??” The woman shrugged and looked confused, but I noticed she looked Latina so I walked up to her and asked her in Spanish. “Compermiso, estamos perdidas. usted sabe cual es el teatro en donde estan enseñando Harry Potter?” I let her know we were lost and that we didn’t know which theatre was the one we had come from, and immediately she understood and smiled, lit up her flashlight and signaled us to follow. She walked us back to our seats in the correct theatre and we were extremely relieved. “Oh my god Isabela, if you hadn’t spoke Spanish...” I remembered my friends praising me for getting us back safely, and that was the first time I truly felt proud of my heritage and language speaking abilities. It’s silly how people try to forget who they are, to become just like everyone else. On that day I promised I'd never resent who I am again.

What makes people embarrassed or afraid of speaking in other languages is being thought of as different, which society advertises as bad. In the cities, it is said that southern accents are bad, because it’s slow and unsophisticated. But in the south, people think that people in the city talk like their angry or in a rush constantly. It’s almost like society tells different cultures all around the United States, and even in other countries that they have to speak a certain way to be seen a certain way, and anything else is bad or a nuisance.
When I finally realized that the way people speak is really something to embrace was on my cruise over winter break. I made a group of lovely friends who will forever be close to me, from all over the world. One night we all went out to dinner together at a restaurant on the boat named “the blue lagoon” and we all talked about the way we spoke. We were a group made up of boys and girls from all over New York, Conneticut, Pennsylvania, Florida, Mexico, Canada, and Massachussets. don’t remember how the conversation came about but we started talking about the slang in where we each lived. In New York they say “You’re buggin’” to say “you’re crazy” or “what are you thinking?” In Pennsylvania we all say “You’re drawlin’” to express the same thing, and in boston they say “You’re wacked”. We all exchanged slang and taught each other different pronunciation of words. I can honestly say that sitting around a table in the middle of the ocean with people from all around the world made me really appreciate all the different languages we consisted of. We opened up to new cultures, and talked about our languages.
Culture is tied into everything, it’s become linked to religion, belief, location, and language. With language, it’s almost as if people think in their heads “since these people speak this certain language or with this certain accent they must have grown up in a very conservative culture, or a very provacative one, etc.” which will define the way someone might look at someone else. Unfortunately, I think this has become true, but I also think it’s something to embrace, and that people shouldn’t be so afraid of learning and experiencing new things, maybe then they wouldn’t have to differentiate themselves through the way they speak.
I once was laying in bed, dreaming of beautiful things, my head rested on a blue pillow that was being smothered under my hand. I saw colors, and laughter, and then I was in Mexico. I was next to my friend Valeria and we were walking back up from her house to meet Fernando who was picking us up in his car. The sky was a vivid blue as we walked around the asphalt roads of Queretaro, chattering about the heat that pressed into our bodies and foreheads. There were bright palm trees and flowers all around as we walked down past all the big houses of our small town. We passed my grandmothers house and sat down on a curb near by waiting in the heat. The hot rays were coming down thick, but comfortable and not sticky. Fernando rolled up in his jeep and we got in “como estan?” he said, giving each of us a kiss on the cheek “Bien” we both responded smilling. All of the sudden the colors faded out again but I was still driving with Valeria and Fernando. “Isabela?” I heard a familiar voice and felt my eyes open “Si?” I responded “Are you awake?” I turned and saw Emmi who had slept over at my house, sitting next to me “tuve un sueño tan lindo” I said, letting her know I had had a lovely dream as I came back to reality “what was it?” she asked and I thought back to what words we had just exchanged, confusion washed over me. “Was I just talking to you in Spanish?” I asked my best friend, who had picked up a little bit of Spanish from being around me and my family so much “Yeah hahaha, but I understood you so it’s cool” I put my hand on my forehead and laughed “that is so weird…I just woke up speaking Spanish” I said, and we both laughed again incredulous at our moment that had just occurred.
Emmi is an example of someone who embraces language as well, her parents are both white, but her mother was raised in Italy. She embraces culture, and does her best to adapt to it without resenting the cultures she grew up with. When she comes over and my mom is playing Latin music, or cooking us some sort of Mexican dish, Emmi is always the first of my friends to understand the transition and not feel uncomfortable. I think that this is the point that everyone should reach, when they can be invited into a different language environment, and not be intimidated by it but instead try and grasp a better understanding of it and take things from it.