I say words differently than you. You say words differently than me, and her and maybe him. My mom moved to a small suburb of London when she was not even one year old and stayed there until she left for college. So naturally she developed an English accent and nobody questioned it. She went to a primary school called Little Green. In England, primary school is Kindergarten through second grade. When she was going into fourth grade her dad, my grandfather, got a job as a dean of the High School at The American School In London (ASL). This is a very prestigious private school where families that worked in the oil industries and places such as that would send their children so that their kids would get an American education. My mom and her sister transferred there within two years. The kids there had mixed accents between American and British so she didn’t feel any need to change the way she talked because there were other people that spoke like her.

When she was in her sophomore year of high school she went to live with her aunt and uncle in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Nobody had a British accent there. My mom decided to change the way she spoke to fit in with the other kids. For a year and a half, she had an almost perfect accent that nobody questioned. One day she got tired of always switching the way she spoke, so she decided to stop faking an American accent and speak with her normal accent. To her surprise, people thought she was faking that. She remembers very clearly having a friend that told her to stop pretending to have an English accent and just speak normal. She had faked her accent for so long that people thought that an American accent was just her normal tongue. My mother says she was stunned, what she was doing it to fit in actually turned out to be what people thought was her norm.  

At this point, my mom has been in the US for about 17 years, almost longer than she had been in England. She hasn’t lost all of her accent but it isn’t as strong as it used be. It isn’t very noticable to me but there are still some words that I can hear that we say differently, for example “tomato” she says it the stereotypical British way. There are other words that I, myself, have poked fun at the way she says them but she does the same to me. When people find out that my mom is from England, they automatically ask me if I can do a British accent. I can but only because I have trained myself, not because I’m actually English.

We usually take a trip to England once a year at least because my grandfather still lives there. He was born and raised in Staten Island, New York. He has lived in England since he moved there with my mom, aunt and grandmother before my aunt was born. His accent hasn’t changed even the slightest bit and people are always very surprised when they find out that he has lived there for as long as he has.

Whenever I go to England, my mom and aunt’s accents always come back full force. The funny thing is I adopt a pretty good accent when I go back as well. People that live there think it is just how I talk. I think the reason I change my accent is because I say so many things differently than them. Whenever someone hears that I am from America, they start asking me all kinds of questions. I think the funniest thing anyone has ever asked me when they found out that I was from America was from a little kid. I was at the park with a friend and her son and some of his friends. I was pushing her son and his friends on the carousel and one of his friends asked me if I was from America, I responded “Yes”. Then, he asked me if I ate a lot of bubble gum. I was confused why he asked this but then he told me it was because when his grandmother goes to America she always brings him back bubble gum. I thought it was interesting to think of the different things people think of when they hear an American accent.  

In the movie “American Tongues”, there is a segment where they talk about how in Boston there is a very stereotypical accent but not everybody uses that accent. I think this applies in many more places than just in Boston. For example, in Philly, you have the North Philly accent then in South Philly, they have a very different accent. The same thing happens in many big cities such as New York and London. In Philly, I have noticed if you live in one of the areas, especially South Philly, and don’t have the very specific accent you are looked at as an outsider. I remember very specifically trying to change the way I said certain words to fit in with the kids that lived around me.

I moved to South Philly when I was about 10 years old. I had lived in the Fairmount area before that, the two areas are very different. When I moved there, my mom put me on a soccer team hoping I would make friends. When I got to my first practice, I realized all the other kids either went to school together or have lived and grew up next to each other, I was the outsider. The thing that set me apart the most was the way I talked. Everybody had a very specific way of pronouncing certain words that is really hard to explain unless you hear it. I didn’t say the words like they did because my mom talked proper English and that had rubbed off on me. When I finally picked it up, it didn’t sound right. It was too forced and it would sound weird with the other words that didn’t have the same accent. In the beginning of eighth grade, I tried really hard to adapt the full accent. It sounded absolutely ridiculous. It took me awhile to realize how ridiculous it actually sounded and when I finally I did realize, stopped trying and left my accent alone. The thing I didn’t expect was for some of the words to stick. After trying to adopt the accent for so long, I actually had kept some. Now that I’m not with the same kids any more, I get made fun of when I say a word like “yous” or “couffeee”. I have learned to stop saying these words, but when I don’t think about if and just say them they come out with a twisted accent.

Works Cited:

American Tongues. Dir. Louis Alvarez and Andy Kolker. Perf. Polly Holliday and Trey Wilson. Center for New American Media, 1988. DVD.

The Diamond Age, a postcyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson, doesn’t quite stick to the high-tech/low-life cliche of classic cyberpunk novels. In “Notes Towards A Postcyberpunk Manifesto,” Lawrence Person says that cyberpunk characters try to topple social orders, while postcyberpunk characters try to live inside the rules of them or build better ones. In The Diamond Age, while there are many different classes (social status, and legal status as well are determined by what religion, or “phyle” you belong to), there is one distinct middle class, the Victorians, and one distinct upper class, the Equity Lords. They are able to stay on top by being the only classes that are able to read - the lower class, the inhabitants of the Leased Territories, are only able to understand “mediaglyphics,” animated picture writing. Being illiterate hurts the lower-class characters of The Diamond Age by removing their opportunities and alienating them from society.

Towards the beginning of The Diamond Age, Nell, one of the protagonists, is trying to figure out how to use a matter compiler - basically a 3D printer that will make anything. Its interface is completely in mediaglyphics. Her brother, Harv calls it the M.C, and Nell asks him why. Harv says that“[Letters are] Kinda like mediaglyphics except they're all black, and they're tiny, they don't move, they're old and boring and really hard to read.” (Stephenson, 101)

Harv is saying that he doesn’t know - letters are boring, mysterious symbols that are only useful for making long words shorter. The fact that Nell, Harv, and the rest of the lower class don’t know how to read or write puts them at a disadvantage because they are unable to question things that are told to them. If they were to be arrested for a crime, they would not be able to read the laws to defend themselves. The part where Harv mentions letters being old is interesting because letters certainly are still relevant in The Diamond Age - all the decisions being made for Nell and Harv, all the laws being made, and even the designs for all the technology that is created to display mediaglyphics - are all in letters.

At one point in the book, Dr. X, who lives in the Leased Territories and manipulates Harv and his friends into committing petty crimes to serve his ulterior motives, sends a beautifully calligraphed scroll to a judge, inviting him to dinner on his yacht. This sets a massive chain of events in progress, including the judge resigning, the inventor of The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer being coerced into redesigning it so 500,000 copies can be made for orphaned girls, and the same inventor being coerced into being a double agent for the Equity Lords with the compensation that he, too, can be knighted and become an Equity Lord. Not knowing how to read English, Nell, Harv, and the rest of the people from the Leased Territories could never be a part of something like this. Instead, they are reduced to pawns used for setting these events in motion.

Later in The Diamond Age, Harv mugs a Victorian with his buddies and finds a book. He brings it home for Nell, thinking it is probably junk. It turns out that it is the state of the art Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, designed and manufactured especially for an Equity Lord’s daughter. It is designed to raise a young girl with the right mix of practical lessons and subversive stories, so that she has the right mindset to do great things in life. Over a period of two years, the Primer teaches Nell how to read while telling her stories to help her deal with her mother’s abusive boyfriends. Eventually, she is told by the book to run away. Nell and Harv are hiding when Harv tells her that they need to talk about the Primer. “Why must we talk about it?” Nell asks. This being a sentence straight from the Primer, Harv doesn’t know how to interpret it.

“‘Huh?’ Harv said in the dopey voice he affected whenever Nell talked fancy.” (Stephenson, 464)

Even though Nell is being taught how to read and her vocabulary is expanding - which is certainly good - she is being alienated from her brother by this. Throughout the years of her mother’s boyfriends abusing her, the Primer and her brother have been her only friends, and she is becoming less close to her brother, simply because of her language.

Guided by the Primer and Nell’s wits, Nell and Harv eventually make it to Dovetail, a small middle-class town which exists to make handmade goods for the the New Atlantans, a Victorian clave. Harv does not know what to do in this environment and runs away, which is reflected in the Primer by Peter Rabbit, one of Nell’s four guardians and friends leaving. Nell is taken by Rita, a woman who lives in Dovetail, to New Atlantis to study in a Victorian school. Rita leaves Nell waiting on the sidewalk for a while, and apologizes saying that she had to socialize due to protocol. Nell flatly tells her to “explain protocol,” as if she was talking to the Primer. Rita tells her to watch her manners, so Nell responds by saying “Would it impose on your time unduly to provide me with a concise explanation of the term protocol?” (Stephenson, 560)

Rita is scared, and responds with a nervous laugh. Despite the Primer being an good influence on Nell’s development and teaching her very much about language, Nell is not just being alienated from the people in her community. They see her as too good for them. Nell doesn’t belong with the people of Dovetail or the Victorians either - they see her as a threat. In a society where everyone has the same literacy, this would not have happened. However, if different classes have different levels of literacy - or even different languages - it becomes even harder to break free of your class and social status.

Works Cited:

Person, Lawrence. "Notes Towards a Postcyberpunk Manifesto." Slashdot. N.p., 09 Oct 1999. Web. 28 Oct 2013. <http://slashdot.org/story/99/10/08/2123255/notes-toward-a-postcyberpunk-manifesto>.

Stephenson, Neal. The Diamond Age. New York: Ballantine, 1995. eBook.

A Literary Mirror

Language has weaved its way as one of the aspects we look at when defining a person’s character whether that character be real or fictional. Fictional characters have been molded into people that we have generalized today. We have made their qualities extreme in order for them to catch our eye. While these character’s may have language which is exaggerated such as in books like Catch-22. It is made clear that these characters are the reflective of how we generalize people today. Sometimes its people in higher position imposing others to speak toward them in a different way such as in 1984. These generalizations we make towards language in real life affect what we put into books like Catch-22 and 1984 and how we use those books to reveal the actions some people take with language.

An example of how language is judged in fictional literature is in the book Catch-22. The book is set in Pianosa, Italy in the year 1943. The character being mentioned in the quote is a man named John Yossarian who is a man of Assyrian descent fighting on the American’s side. In this scene the colonel is mad at Scheisskopf for something he didn’t do and the colonel is trying to get answers while Yossarian’s name pops up in the conversation. The colonel asked the lieutenant, “Yossarian? Is that his name? Yossarian? What the hell kind of a name is Yossarian?’ Lieutenant Scheisskopf had the facts at his fingertips. "It's Yossarian's name, sir," he explained.” (-Heller pg. 78) This scene shows how easily people are categorized as foreign just because of their name and how the language of which their name is derived from does not sound familiar to us. While generalizing people we subconsciously tend to treat those who are foreign as enemies though it does come through our voice and is easily seen here as the colonel repeats the name several times, as if he is trying to make sure that this strange name is the name of a soldier who is fighting on their side. Also the lieutenant responds in such a safe way as to avoid being punished for saying something to make the colonel upset. His response is short and concise and lacks any descriptive details as he does not want to provoke the colonel any more than he seems to be. What the author is trying to portray with this scene is that we tend to see foreign names and foreign languages as a way to generalize people as a bad or good person. In reality a person has no authority or possible way to change the name they were born with. He does this while also showing us the people in lower ranks in society tend to respond much more formally and without adding details that are not asked for by their peers.

Another example of how literature is reflective of our view on language is seen in the book 1984. In the book a variation of English called Newspeak is founded. The reason for the implementation of Newspeak in the fictional society is to shorten the amount of words in our vocabulary by omitting synonyms and antonyms while replacing them with prefixes. In this scene, Winston Smith, the main character, said, “Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.” (-Orwell pg. 23) This quote is highly reflective on how the government tries to limit what bad things we can say about them. In the book the worst thing one can say about the government in Newspeak is, “Government ungood.” In which case you would have to explain why you believe such but you don’t have the vocabulary to do so. This is an extreme example reflective of how our society manipulates people to follow their language which in this case is consciously done by the government. The quote shows that there is an overuse of several words and everyone sounds generic in relation to each other in the book. While this does reflect what was currently happening in the book when the book was written it was not reflecting of language in reality. It was reflective of how the government limits people in every way of slandering the government, such as in literature. In this case, language is used because, it is the way to get at the core of the problem.

Another example is from a scene with a woman in Catch-22. The scene takes place in Rome when Yossarian is off duty at a nightclub and he sees a girl named Luciana sitting at a table alone by herself after some drunken soldiers left her alone there. Speaking to Yossarian she says, “All right, I'll dance with you,' she said, before Yossarian could even speak. 'But I won't let you sleep with me.' 'Who asked you?' Yossarian asked her. 'You don't want to sleep with me?' she exclaimed with surprise. 'I don't want to dance with you.' (-Heller pg. 153) This quote shows how we reflect the way opposite genders interact in real life with language in fiction. The language she chooses when speaking to him is to make herself seem not as inferior as she is trying to make herself seem better than what the situation would make one think considering she is alone at the table. Also she thinks she can predict what he is thinking and shows that when she says she won’t sleep with him because, she feels as though men are predictable. Yossarian’s response is that of a typical man trying to keep dominance of the situation and is not trying to be strung along by Luciana. She obviously predicted wrong of what Yossarian was thinking since he says he doesn’t want to dance with her and she is shocked at his response. He does not outright say he does not want to sleep with her because, he sees an opportunity at sex and since he is in the army, he has not had any sex for a long time. The conversation is of course an exaggeration of what a usual conversation between a man and woman at a night club would look like in the 40’s but, what Heller is portraying is how genders tend to believe they can take advantage of each other and know what the other gender is thinking. They use language as a way to test if that is true or not by either being blatant like Luciana or somewhat subtle like Yossarian.

Language will always be a key aspect in reality and in fiction when defining a someone’s character. Generalized characters in fiction will always be a reflection of how we interpret individual languages and styles of language. It can be seen in books like Catch-22 where people make assumptions on other by language or show those assumptions with language such as we do in reality. It could be like in books such as 1984, where language is imposed on people and all people sound the same which is reflective of how government wants to prevent speech against them. In any case authors feel the need to put reality into fiction so that we can realize the generalizations we make and how wrong they may be.

Works Cited

Heller, Joseph, Christopher Buckley, and Jonathan R. Eller. Catch-22. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print.

Orwell, George, and Erich Fromm. 1984: A Novel. New York, NY: Signet Classic, 1984. Print.

“Wow. Look how tall that guy is!” The woman said.

“He looks like he knows what he is doing. Lets ask him for directions,” the man suggested. “Excuse me sir, can you tell us how to get to the Constitution Center?” Questioned the man.

“Yes of course. You can take the bus but it’s more faster to take the el to Fifth St. and when you get off, you see the glass building, you’re there,” David replied.

“I don’t mean to be rude but how old are you exactly?” Asked the woman.

“Fifteen,” answered David as he looked past the couple.

“Oh, we thought you were in college or something, you seem so mature.  Well, thank you for your time,” the woman responded.

“You’re welcome.”

David Lawrence Hummel. Fifteen years old, brown hair, brown eyes and six foot three. When you first see my brother, you don’t think something like, ‘he’s weird,’ or ‘abnormal’ because the average person is not so judgemental or critical. They would usually think something more along the lines of, ‘wow, he is so tall.’ At the age of fifteen, he was used to being identified as a college student rather the the high school sophomore he really was. He even spoke with the vocabulary and confidence of an adult. However, if anyone spent some time with him, like I do every day, they would come to the conclusion that there is something different about him that is unlike everybody else. This is because David has Aspergers.

Aspergers is a type of Autism and typically, people with Autism have a difficult time communicating with others, among other things. Depending on the level of Autism, their communication skills could be better or worse. In this case, David talks very quickly and with multiple grammatical errors and when people want him to repeat what he has said, he doesn’t understand why. This usually also affects the groups of people that he can communicate with easily. David for example, socializes more with adults and people that are older than him more easily than with his own peers. This is no fault of his own though, it is merely who he is.

“David, you need to make friends with the people in your class, I know you try but spitting out history facts is not the way to do it.”

“But mom, no one listens ever to me and everyone acts like crazy people and none of them like anything I like.”

“I understand, but it is a two-way street. And it would be ‘ever listens to me.’ If you try to like the things they like, they might try to like what you like too.”

“But it is no use! No one listens to me!” David storms off to his room to put his face in his pillow, where he goes into his own world.

Now that my brother is in high school, it would make his life simpler if he could socialize with people his own age but because of the Aspergers, it is very challenging for him to do that. Once he has an opinion of a person, it is difficult for him to give the person another chance. When conversations about making friends that the lead to meltdowns come up, there is little to no chance anyone can get through to him. My mom tries, I try and if he has still not come back to the real world, my father comes it to talk some sense into him but he is a little too harsh. That is why he is the last resort. Language within my family changed to accommodate his changes and language tendencies. We speak more clearly, emphasizing various grammatical ideas. We also correct him when he makes an error in his speech to help him to not make the mistake as often. In the book Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston says, “I cut it so that you would not be tongue tied.Your tongue would be able to move in any language.” Just like Maxine’s mother, we talk to David and correct him the way we do for his benefit more than our own. Between family, peers and elders, his way of language shifts from one group to another.

“I am more faster and more stronger than you,” David says.

“First of all, you are wrong about both of those things. Second of all, you can not say ‘more’ and an ‘-er’ word together! Ugh, that irks me so much.” I corrected.

“More funnier, more smarter, more shinier!” David mocked.

“Mom!” I screamed.

With adults, David is more comfortable speaking and this is generally because, in my opinion, adults still view him as a child, or lesser than they are since he has yet to officially become an adult. They view him as they would any other child, listening to every word, asking questions and being amazed at what he says no matter how intriguing or irritating. There are also some adults who are legitimately fascinated by what David has to say and knows like our Uncle Josh, for example, who is a high school history teacher. On these occasions, it may as well be two adults having a historical debate on whether the Union or Confederacy truly succeeded in the Civil War.

Adults have maturity that can not be found in most young people and David realizes people’s levels of maturity by how they speak and act, the two usually linking together in some way. Stereotypically, people that have bad grammar or that use a lot of slang are thought of as poorly educated, which links to lousy schools in inferior neighborhoods resulting in bad people. Most times, he makes these connections, making it harder for him to let go of some of these stereotypes to collaborate with peers and friends.

When socializing and talking to people of his own age, he talks about history and facts the same way he would with an adult, but that is not entertaining to the greater majority of teens. As a result, a lot of the kids at school don’t like to talk to him on a regular basis, making it very challenging for him to make new friends that understand him and how he talks. Me, his own sister, does not even like talking to him for very long because it is a challenge to get him to talk about anything other than factual information. He doesn’t realize that people feel this way.

“Did you know that President Arthur is the president who owned the most pairs of pants?”

“No.”

“How about that Taft had the biggest bathtub as any president?”

“Yes, but I don’t really care David, I am trying to do something here.”

“Oh. Sorry, Lauren.”

David is oblivious to the opinion of others. When I try to help him point this out, my mom tells me to stop because I am being mean when I am just trying to help him. The only way he understands, is if you tell him how you feel right to his face. First, when talking to adults, he thinks that they are having the most amazing time learning about history and the presidents rather whatever they were previously talking about. Only because they hadn’t said otherwise. But then with his peers, he realizes that the people with whom he is speaking are not that interested in what he is talking about but he continues to talk about it anyway until someone says something. He does not know where to draw the line between ‘people are enjoying talking about this’ and ‘they could not care less about what I am saying.’ Being oblivious makes it very difficult to get through to people.

Our language helps to define who we are and when there are flaws in it, it is implied that there are deeper flaws within ourselves. When there are flaws that are actually there, language aside, those imperfections only make it harder to get through the daily struggle of language in life.

Works Cited

Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. South Yarmouth, Ma.: J. Curley, 1978. Print.

Life of a Bilinguist

“Oh my goodness, how have you been?” said my grandmother’s friend.

“Oh good,” she says to her, “say hello, she is my friend,” she said to me.

“Hello, I’m Jiwon Choi,” I said to her in Korean.

“Oh my, you are so pretty!” she said to me.

“Thank you,” I said to her.

“What grade are you in?”

“I’m in 8th grade.”

“Did you just come from Korea?”

“No, she was born here,” said my grandmother.

“Wow, she is really fluent! I thought she just came here!” she said to my grandmother.

“Thank you,” I said to her.

    Whenever I talk with my parents’ friends or my grandmother’s friends, I get praised on my Korean. They always think I was born in Korea or I just moved to America. Korean was my first language because my family is from Korea and never spoke English too well. My experience is similar to what Richard Rodriguez said in his autobiography. In Hunger of Memory Richard Rodriguez said, “During those years when I was first conscious of hearing, my mother and father addressed me only in Spanish… I knew just enough English for my mother to trust me on errands to stores one block away.” (pg. 13) I grew up with my grandparents because my mother was busy working all the time. My grandparents insisted me speaking Korean at home because they wanted me to know my native language. As a result, I grew up watching the Korean shows that my grandparents would watch, eating the Korean food that I was given, and speaking in Korean at home to communicate with my family. Therefore, I feel more comfortable speaking Korean than speaking English. Rodriguez also wrote, “... Spanish seemed to me the language of home… It became the language of joyful return.” (pg. 16) Korean speech rolls out of my mouth without me even realizing. Sometimes, I would stutter my words or have an “American” accent to it because I don’t practice Korean a lot in the house like I used to before. However, when I speak Korean, I feel like I have power; I feel very confident and satisfied because people are always praising me; I feel as if I could earn all the respect from Korean people. In the other hand, English is still a “fuzzy” language to me.

     The first time I started to learn English was when I was four. In preschool, everyone would speak in a language that I didn’t understand. I wasn’t happy in preschool because I had no one to communicate with. I would stand and look out the window waiting for someone to pick me up. At home, I was the happiest girl you would ever meet. I think that I’m an outgoing person at home, but a timid person in public because English isn’t a language I’m totally comfortable with. Currently, I hear a lot of people tell me that I have an “Asian” accent, or that I don’t pronounce the word correctly. Over all, grammatical errors are a natural when I speak. Every time people tell me these, I would get self-conscious. Being careful when I speak English is a natural.

“Guys, why does Jiwon talk like that?” said my friend.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Every one talks so clearly, but you have this weird accent and… I don’t know what you are saying sometimes. It sounds like you are saying something in Korean.”

“Oh…”

   That was the first time I’ve ever been judged about how I speak. Last year, my friends and I were gathered in the hallway just talking. I made a comment, and my friend wondered why I talk like how I do. It really angered and annoyed me because in my mind, he had no right to say something that mean about the way I speak right in front of me. He had embarrassed me right in front of my friends; I wanted to argue that I can speak English well, that I am like everyone else. However, I know that that’s not true now. I know that I make grammatical errors, pronounce words wrong, and have a weird accent when I speak. I acknowledge all of these because I know that these characteristics exist in me. I also acknowledge this now because I always feel like I’m being ignored by people around me.

    Sometimes, when I speak, I feel like people are slowly drifting away from me. Sometimes, it seems like they don’t care what I’m talking about or how I’m saying it. As a result, I lose power and self-esteem whenever I speak. After I am done talking, many people tend to say that they didn’t understand what I just said, or they just don’t react to what I said at all. That’s why I think power and language are related to each other strongly. For example, someone who is better at articulating is going to sound much smarter than someone does a bad job at it because you are likely to listen to one who can speak well than one who struggles to. People who can speak well are respected because one will sound like one knows a lot when one can articulate well. The people that can articulate well enough will earn all the power and the audience because everyone is likely respect and agree to people who can actually make sense of what they are talking about - an effect of sounding much more scholarly like. Therefore, people who cannot articulate tend to lose power and respect from the audience because they’re not eloquent, like me.

    My language, accent, and pronunciation is my identity. The fact that I am bilingual makes me different from everyone else - having accents for both languages may be more acceptable because I don’t speak only one language. I know that I am not perfect in Korean because I stutter a lot when I do. I also know that I’m not perfect in English either. I will continually feel offended when people judge me by how I speak, but I know where I need to improve on and why I can’t be angry for people judging me on how I speak. However, I now know that how I speak makes me who I am. Also, I know that I cannot just speak Korean just because I am more comfortable with Korean. It is my role to learn to become more confident when I’m speaking in school or anywhere public because I will have to speak English as long as I am in America. People might think of me in a negative way from how I speak, but I cannot be discouraged by that because avoiding people won’t solve any problems. In order to communicate, we need to use our given language. Therefore, I will not back-up now. Another role that I have is to have a unique quality that lets me be different from everyone else; something that only my family and I know about. Rodriguez stated, “I shared with my family a language that was startlingly different from that used in the great city around us.” (pg. 16) My language tells everyone about my family history and my experiences in life; that is what makes me different. I am proud to be a bilinguist.

Work Cited:

   Rodriguez, Richard. "Chapter 1." Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez : An Autobiography. Boston, MA: D.R. Godine, 1982. 1+. Print.

Growing up and listening to how everyone around me spoke was always very interesting to me. I love to listen to different peoples tones of  voices and the way they say certain words. I like to say that “Philadelphia is a melting pot of all different types of people.” People all over this city are different and say things differently than the way I may. I do not judge the different ways in which people speak, I actually find it very appealing. I love how the “South Philly accents” sound as they talk.

When I was in middle school, I used to call it “Little Italy,” because south philly is known for its large population of Italian-American families. It seems like whenever they say certain words they add an extra “aw” in the middle. For example if an Italian-American from South Philly says the word because, they are actually saying it as  “becaawse!” Another thing I picked up on from the Italian Americans in my neighborhood was that they will make up, that they truly believe are correct! It gets passed down from the generations and they pick up the way the people around them and speaking and start using  words like yous, which everyone else would just say as you guys or yall. Listening to this has always been very appealing to me. I have no idea why, but I love to hear them talk.

Going to Girard Academic Music Program, I spent a lot of my time around a lot of Italian American dialect, specific to South Philadelphia. Starting off in 5th grade I really did not understand what was going on. Being new to a school would sometimes make me feel like I was obligated to be friends with everyone. I would quite often code switch my dialogue to mimic how all the Italian-Americans spoke. I would sometimes add an extra “aw” in between my words to make it sound like I was one of them. I remember in the 5th grade I sat next to a young Italian American girl named Melissa Pantalone. I wanted to have friends so badly I tried to speak like them.

“Hey guys what are yous tawlking about?” I would say.

But in reality I would normally great my friends with “What are y’all talking about?” Because of these experiences I understand Italian-American dialect better that most people that never grew up around it. It bothers me when people comment on how they speak because everyone is allowed to be different. Going to G.A.M.P has made me more understanding to how Italian -Americans speak.

In some ways people in Philly use some of the same language, or the same pronunciations of certain words. For example, in Philadelphia a lot of people say “wooder” unlike every other region in the US that says just “water.” It is so hard not to say “water” like “wooder” because I have been living in the heart of Philadelphia my entire life. It seems like in Philly we make everything have a long “a”. When I speak I can’t help but to pronounce certain in the “Philly way”. Living in Philadelphia we use a lot of slang. I find it very tempting  to use a lot of it in my everyday speech. I love saying the word “jawn” or phrases like “you gonna ride”. I feel like we are just talking about absolutely nothing. We say a lot of phrases and words that a lot of people would not understand like “ocky,” “poppin,” “trizzy” “old head,” and “young bull.” Surprising me, a lot of what Philadelphians say, is not known throughout the country.

Always living in Philadelphia, it is very difficult for me to understand that people do not speak as we do everywhere. Some slang that we use is spoken throughout the nation. In America we tend to say the word “like” at the end of every sentence we use. For example everyone may say. “That is cute so, like.” I hear this everywhere and not just in Philadelphia. There are some things that we collectively use as a country as slang.

When I am around certain people I code switch my dialogue. I may be talking to different people about the same thing but it may sound different. For example if I am with My friend Greta our conversation way go like this.

“Hey girl” Greta may say.

“Hey girl heyy” I may say say.

“OMG her hair is literally disgusting.”

“Yess girl she needs to not”

The same conversation may be between my friend Gabby and I may go like this.

“JOIE” Gabby may say.

“Yesss girl” I may say.

“Tell me why that girl’s hair looked a mess this morning.”

“Where was her head at this morning?, She played herself.”

I am practically having the same conversation but with different people. It is weird how I do this. I don’t mean to change how I speak to different people. It seems like I change the tone of my voice when I am around certain people. Greta is a white American and lives outside of Philadelphia. Greta’s parents grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, which has influenced her to speak “white.”Because of who her parents are and their life experiences, it causes her to  speak the way she does. Greta uses standard english, but to others this is “Philadelphian standard English.” Gabby is African American with Jamaican descent. Her father grew in Kingston, Jamaica. They use similar dialect there that they use in Philadelphia.  Her mother is Philadelphia. This results in her using a lot of slang in her day to day dialect.

Philadelphia has a very diverse population, which can result in all different types of slang. They may use different dialect in Southwest Philadelphia and North Philadelphia, but we all still essentially live in the same city. This is something that is unexplainable. People always adapted to where they lived and created language to support their surroundings. My experiences have lead me to the ability to process the endless Philadelphian dialects around me.