It is easy to take language for granted. From when we are born, we breathe language in like air. Words surround us and penetrate us, and as we grow, we internalize them. Language becomes a tool so natural to us, that we fail to even notice it. It becomes indistinguishable from our thoughts, simply a part of us. This may be why our species fails to question the languages we work with. While language does create a means of communication between an individual and others, the way in which language has evolved has built artificial walls, which divide the global community along racial, ethnic, social and cultural lines. These unnatural divisions help to enforce xenophobia and bigotry. Perhaps more importantly, though, they make communication between individuals of different backgrounds more difficult than it could be. In effect, this inability to share ideas and collaborate has slowed the evolution of human thought.

Ilker Erkut

Creative Story

It started with a man, who spoke like everyone else.  Just kidding, he was the only person to live at the time.  His name was Monkemon.  He was not all human but had some animal in him.  What is the animal!?  It was a monkey.  He was what the people from my time called a caveman.  Before he was born, he lived in his egg which was under a banana tree.  It has not grown any bananas in centuries.  But one day a banana grew bigger and bigger, until it fell off the tree into a banana shaped cup.  The banana fit perfectly, just like when a basketball goes into the net without hitting the rim.  His egg slowly started cracking and... BOOM.  Monkemon jumped out of the egg and the sun rose and everything sparkled.  Next thing, the banana tree grew tons of banana’s and everything around him became full of life.  He searched long and hard for any other life form.  Later on he found a monkey; a girl monkey laying under a banana tree on the other side of the land.  Never in his life has he ever seen one, till now.  He could understand her and he felt comfortable with her.  They went on countless adventures till, one night they had been through a lot, and they were really tired.  The next morning they woke up together and did not say much but, they were not sure what happened that night .  

Later on in their adventures the monkey made offspring.  There were two babies,  that both spoke differently.  

“Uh Uh-Ah Ah” said the more monkey looking baby.

“Googoo Gaagaa” said the more human looking baby.

And thats when their imagination went wild and they started experimenting.  They guessed that since Monkemon is a “caveman” he gave one baby more human features and traits, while the girl monkey gave the other baby monkey features .  

They were intrigued by the idea of differences in their babies.  They settled on the fact that there were no more life forms, so they started making more and more babies.  After about a year of producing, they stopped.  They had about 400 children.  They had some older than others and some could understand better than others.  After a certain point they let them go on and adventure so that their kids could have a similar life as they did and produce to make new kinds of life.  One of our children are fortunate enough to find what we call now a “fish”  He was the only child out of them all 400 that found a new species and produced.  After years of producing and experiencing they finally had a full community of many different looking and speaking creatures.  It almost was a burden.  No one could really understand anyone.  You had some people talking like…

“Helluhuh-Ahah” said the monkey/humans.

“Hello” said the humans.

“Hello” the fish humans said very low.

Fish do not really talk, they communicate with each other differently, so when you have a fish and a human, then it is what we call a shy human.  

Everyone became friends with the people that they could understand.  They started living in different parts of the world with the people that they could communicate with and thats when the world started developing.  Hundreds of years later I was born.  My name is Moose.  I am just revealing my ancestors life story; as you can see I have a pretty big family.  But I had to tell you all of this so that I could reveal the big secret.  I AM THE MONK OF MY FAMILY.  I was given the power to understand every language, accent and noise coming out of a living thing.   Wherever I go I can understand everyone and can change the way I speak to match theirs.  I am not sure how this came to be.  I feel as though my people that each had different accents in their past, which made it diverse because they both understood completely different languages, which give me this power.  I walk around and see people being made fun of or reprimanded for not speaking right.  But honestly I think that people who hear a new language or different accent, are making fun of them so that they can add more people to their way of speaking.  Its like negative motivation.  They do not care for them but they are adding more to their “army” and have more people to carry on the language and extinguish the other languages.  But that will not happen with me around or anyone like me in the world.  I cannot travel like my ancestors used to, because we need money to travel rather than just walk and explore.  I have not been able to explore and carry on my parents legacy.  I have decided to stop what I am doing because  being a 26 year old man, I have a long life ahead of me.

Next thing I know I am on a flight to Asia.  I started from right and I am making my way left on the global map.  I can figure out people like me because they will speak to me similarly but with an aspect of an animal.  I finally get to Russia and start my search with nothing else in mind.  I go from country to country and have not found anything NEW or UNIQUE.  Then that gave me a thought, maybe I was the last of my kind and the exploring ended with me.  I had all the accents and languages so that it would cut out all the traveling.  As much I want to believe that is not true, that is the only logical explanation.  As soon as I catch the plain to go back to Greenland I meet someone that is very shy and has weird movements when not talking.  I instantly knew that, that was one of family descendents.  He had very fish-like speaking.  After meeting him on the plain and discussing each others opinions on our parents expectations I reflected on the day.  I had the craziest idea that people that speak differently might have animal features in them.  When I say that the man I met today was like a fish, I meant it as what my parents called them hundred and thousands of years ago.  He is not actually like a fish, but it made sense.  Some animals interact differently.  Some are more high temperament just like people with high temperament.  It was pretty adventurous thought that I did not want to get into.  I have found yet another member of my family and can travel the world with him, to continue our future .  We went back to Greenland...

Language plays a powerful role in Markus Zusak's The Book Thief. Although the book has many strong themes, one of the strongest is how words and language give a lot of power. This is demonstrated not only in the way that the characters interact with language, but also because of Zusak's talent in manipulating words to tell a beautiful and complex story. Zusak portrait a time language is used by a tyrant but individuals find a way to use words to bring hope and healing. Luckily for readers he uses this talent for good, but his book shows how this gift can also be used for evil.

Before we dive too deep into the good and evil that lies within the pages on this book, and within our own world, we should know how this book plays out. The Book Thief is set in Nazi Germany throughout World War II. One of the most notable things is that this book is narrated by Death. The actual book thief turns out to be a young girl by the name of Liesel Meminger. She lives in a small town outside of Munich with her foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann. Eventually a Jewish man comes and lives in their basement in order to escape the world of war going on around him.

Liesel first finds the power of words when she herself learns to read. Her foster father, Hans, teaches her. This not only brings the two of them closer together, but gives the girl a power she never knew existed before: knowledge.  Her foster father teaches her to feel the joys of learning. He introduces her to the powerful system of words.This first helps her to succeed in school. She was being unfairly punished because she had not had any education before coming to live with her foster parents.

Secondly, she was given the power to steal. Even though thievery is wrong and illegal, for Liesel Meminger it was empowering. She was addicted to the the words that she had learned to read, and she needed more. Stealing books also gave her a feeling of control over her life. She had something that she was good at, something that helped her and something that no one else did. When a Jewish man by the name of Max Vandenberg came to lived in their basement to escape the Nazis, Liesel became very close with him. They first connected over books, more specifically books that had been stolen.

Because the characters are struggling through a war, the threat of violence and bombs are alway looming over them. Whenever the bomb warning is in effect Rosa, Hans, and Liesel have to go to their neighbors cellar which doubles as a bomb shelter. Being in the shelter is tense and scary. Liesels decides to help everyone feel more relaxed by reading to them. Here Zusak describes her first time reading in the cellar. “By page three, everyone was silent but Liesel. She didn’t dare to look up, but she could feel their frightened eyes hanging on to her as she hauled the words in and breathed them out.” (Zusak 381) Liesel took power in that basement full of weak people fearing their lives, and she used her power to give them strength and hope. The system of words Liesel used was the same system that any other individual had, but she knew how to use them in order to give some good. Liesel was proactive about using the system of words and power that came along with those words, to not only to help herself, but to help all the other frightened individuals cluttered in a cellar. This however is not the last time Liesel shared the power she finds in language with others.  

One of the places that Liesel steals books from is the the library of the mayor's wife, Ilsa Hermann. When Frau Hermann eventually catches Liesel, instead of punishing her, she encourages Liesel to read and they soon became friends. The mayor’s wife also introduces Liesel to writing. The thought of being able to use your words as well as the words, as well as the words of others, for power is a new idea to her, but Liesel Meminger realizes its value quickly. She then starts to write her own story, which is so compelling that Death picks it up one day, and has never let it go. There must be some true power in the words in those pages if it is that appealing and meaningful to Death.

It is impossible to write of language and power in that era without addressing Adolf Hitler. Max talks a lot about Hitler, which is understandable because of how much Hitler has affected Max’s life. Throughout the book Max writes two books for Liesel, the second one is called The Word Shaker. Even though the book MAx wrote is largely about the friendship Liesel and Max have, it also talks a lot about Hitler and how he took power using words.The third paragraph in Max’s story starts, “The Führer decides to rule the world with words.” (Zusak 445) Hitler is a perfect example of someone who knows just how much power words have hidden within them. He used words to rally people against each other and create war. The words had spoke moved people to do unthinkable things. The words of the Führer brought the whole world to war, for the second time.The simplest way of putting it is that Hitler used the power of words for evil. It is sometimes hard to grasp how influence he with only words as his primary weapon.

We need to take a step back sometimes and review how we use language, It can be  easy to forget all the power that we own from the words that we use every day. In the end it all boils down to this, use your words to help and give hope to those around you. Do all the good you can and try to extinguish the evil.

Works Cited:

Soledad Alfaro

When in conversation one tends to select a dialect, a rhythm, even a tone of talking depending on the relationship with whom you are conversing. The words that are selected from the back of the mind and pushed out through the mouth carry an empathetic consciousness based on the prior knowledge and experiences of both people. Therefore, it forms the outcomes of our discussions with one another. For example a conversation between two lawyers who handle criminal justice cases would include terms such as “abate” or “abstention doctrine”, when speaking of conflicts within the courtroom or their law offices. They are comfortable with the language in the scenario because they both are aware of the terms, and come from  similar backgrounds which merge together through their profession. This may be unlike the conversation between an E.R. doctor, and a police officer on patrol. If the doctor chooses to use advanced terms to describe the diagnosis of a patient to our officer, it is more than likely that he will ask for clarification for the unfamiliar terms. This is because these words will sound foreign to him based on the inferences we can make of his prior knowledge. The officer and the E.R. doctor would not have an advanced medical conversation, or one about the systems or vows of a police officer, because they have been educated in different ways and do not understand all of the details inside the languages of these different professions and environments. The name for these terms is called Jargon. Jargon is displayed in every situation that we are in, in terms of conversation. There can be many different variables that affect the type of language we use and all are sub situations of jargon. Such as the slang we use based on the cities that we are from, or the distinguishing of different classes and the concept of code switching. Jargon is the foundation of familiarity in language. It is how we find comfort in our conversations with others, and establish common ground in one’s culture.

Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, is one not only known for its historical landmarks such as the Liberty Bell and Benjamin Franklin’s burial site, but also its borderline foreign use of slang applied in informal conversations between locals. In different parts of the city one can open their ears and listen to colorful conversations that are  sources of coded language which can only be translated by a Philadelphian. For a New Yorker or someone from Kansas this is an unclear vernacular, that is only understood by those who have familiarized themselves with it. It is a jargon among the people of its city. The word “Jawn” is a prime example of the Philadelphian tongue. “ Jawn can mean anything. Person place or thing. Sometimes if we are telling a story, and we don’t want people to know what we are talking about we’ll plug in jawn for everything. The other day I was at the jawn...not knowing I had that jawn on me.” (MK Asante, Buck pg. 4)  When the writer uses “I was at the jawn” to describe a place, and then follows with “not knowing I had that jawn on me” to describe a thing. The only way one could distinguish the two would be for them to already have a preconceived understanding of the Philadelphia jargon and the word “jawn”

When the subject of slang comes up as a form of terminology it is often deemed one of uneducated people. However there is a sense of comfort in broken language that rolls off of slurred tongues and sounds like home to many. We hear it in the music of different cultures. How country delivers these sort of simple abbreviations of “yall” or “fixin” and then in music like rap we hear words of a similar cadence. One could also say that it is a clear observation that the music people listen to, also corresponds with the language of its audience, in order for it to be received as relatable to its listeners. Many times the particular dialect can have a major affect on the different classes that we have in America and how we infer who is of which class. Native Son by Richard Wright, shows us a clear dynamic of racism in relation to classism in the 50’s. It talks about a boy who is trying to accept his class and his current position in life.  “Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't. It's just like livin' in jail.” (Native son by Richard Wright) In this quote you don’t only see the clear frustration of the character but you also notice his dialect. It is one that rules him to be inferior to those above him, which specifically in this era would be white people, but he is also comfortable speaking the way he does in this quote. You can hear the sense of familiarity that comes along with the person of whom he is speaking to. One would guess that it would be a friend or a family member someone who already knew him well enough to understand his anger and the way he talks.

Language is the backbone of communication between humans. It is how we receive all types of messages whether they are met to be formal, informal or personal. When we are addressing these different social situation there is a manipulation that we take on with our tongues. We insert these codes in language in order to get across certain points and drive these ideas into the minds of others solely using words. This is why we have uses in language  such as slang, which simplify words to make them more understandable. Some of the most valued people in our society were manipulators of language. People who were poets and writers, who could take words and give them a whole new meaning through this manipulation was translated into these roots we call “slang”. In African American communities it can be considered a call to home. The slurred words that were caught between confused lips when slaves were first brought to America had to be relaxed somehow in such a hard language. In that there were abbreviations of sounds that weren’t there before in order to hold a sturdy tongue in front of the masters. Saul Williams, is one of those masters of manipulating language. He is a poet who is famous for his depth in the routes of our history and how we communicate through tools such as jargon. “Whereas the Quanti drum has allowed the whirling mathematicians to calculate the the everchanging distance between rock and stardom”. (Saul williams, Coded language) This quote is from a poem performed at Def Poetry Jam. Williams  is talking about how we use language to analyze and to better understand the systems of the world. Hence the comparison of the Quanti drum which is a drum that originates in Africa to the logic of the mathematician. It is a series of questions and answers that are spoken in different tongues but all in the same language.

We hold onto what we know like crutches. Pushing words through the spaces of our teeth trying to find balance between what is familiar and what is foreign. Coming to grips with the fact that we all speak in unfamiliar tones based on the home in our voices. Every sentence has a rhythm every word one thousand meanings to it based on the type of pronunciation. Jargon, is how we remember where we are and where we came from, because it sticks in our minds our jobs and our lives. It is how we communicate and it is how we will always understand one another.

Works Cited:

Wright, Richard. Native Son,. New York: Harper & Bros., 1940. Print.

It is important for stereotypes to exist because they provide a common ground for different groups of people. However, we have a tendency to use these stereotypes as entertainment or as a means to dominate a person or group (for example, Hitler and the Nazis). Now, what do you do when a young teenage girl is the subject of such stereotypical judgements? The answer is nothing. You do nothing. Stereotypical humor is often the favorite kind of humor among teenagers (after sexual jokes, of course).  Take for example, one of the countless reactions when people find out I speak Russian.

“Wow, you know another language? You must be so smart!” they say.

“Thank you…?” I respond. I don’t mean for it to be disrespectful, but it often seems that way. Once they’ve mentioned commented on my intelligence, I anticipate the stereotypes that are bound to come my way.

Everybody is familiar with the traditional Russian stereotypes, right? The most popular one believes all Russians have unlimited supplies of vodka in their homes and can drink bottle after bottle effortlessly.

“You must love vodka, right? Can you hook me up with some?”

I know they are joking, so I laugh. For a moment it’s funny. Yet, after hearing the same vodka jokes again, and again, and again, somehow they just cease to be funny. It’s hard to believe, right?! Other stereotypes state that Russian parents are perpetually angry and strict, as opposed to the rational and loving American parents. If they’ve expended all of their brilliant vodka jokes, they’ll usually go for parental stereotypes.

“Huh, your parents must be so hard on you!!” they assume.

Cautiously I respond, “You could say that.”

Other stereotypes state that Russian parents are perpetually angry and strict, as opposed to the rational and loving American parents.

It is absolutely bewildering to me that people can make such wild assumptions just because of the language someone speaks. From my own experiences, I see that strangers and friends equally stereotype me and my family just because we speak a certain language. In this case, that language is Russian.

Languages, dialects, accents, and slang all indicate unique characteristics about a person. Often, we assume that if someone speaks in one of the aforementioned ways, they are foreign to us. Therefore, it is assumed that that “someone” has different beliefs and behaves differently.

In the documentary “American Tongues” several people from the northeastern states were asked for their opinions on people from the southern ones (American Tongues). They blatantly stated that southern dialects and accents indicate that they are stupid and inferior. Such stereotyping  about a person’s intelligence or behavior based on their accent is a well known and common phenomenon in American culture. Northeasterners claim that the “Southern Drawl” and their strange slang is what leads them to believe that Southerners are dumb. Though they were not mentioned in the documentary, some stereotypes about Southerners say the men all drive pickup trucks, or that they have sex with their cousins. These ideas rarely applicable to any individual (as most stereotypes often are), but still they fuel hatred and judgement from other people. In such ways, people use the differences in others’ dialects to form judgements and stereotypes.

Linguistic stereotypes are not limited to southerners On the other hand, many people from the south perceive northeastern English speakers to be pretentious and hostile.  Northeastern English seems curt and rough to southern Americans in comparison to their style of speaking. A prime examples of the type of person they assume we are would live in a big city (New York, for example) and would work in a big corporate office with little to no emotion. Obviously, we are not all like that, and yet when someone hears a New Yorker speak, they create that character that fits into all the stereotypes, and they apply that character to the speaker.

This has happened to me far too many times. I have encountered racist stereotypes because of the languages I speak or because of the accent I have. Many of the judgements people make about individuals are based off little more than what they hear them say in a couple of seconds, and this simple baffles me. In conclusion, such quick cultural stereotypes that are based off of nothing but linguistic differences are just one way stereotypes damage our society.  

Systems, such as governments or civic institutions, are not shaped by a single, uniform culture like they used to be. Cultures used to dominate a certain area or country. If there were any other cultures in that country, they were usually restricted to a specific area or were forced to assimilate. Places like the United States have brought different people from different cultures together. A prime example of this is school. Schools are places where children from all different cultural backgrounds meet. People from different cultures have different ways of speaking. We often change the way we speak to accommodate others. This phenomenon is called code switching. Code-switching has gained a bad reputation because it has been identified as the reason for people losing their identities or accommodating prejudices towards their social class, ethnicity, or religion.

Code-switching is not all bad, though. In many situations, it becomes a way for individuals in a system to be more productive with one another. At home, I speak English. However, for some, it would be hard to understand as there are Yiddish and Hebrew words interspersed. Consider the James Baldwin essay If Black English Isn’t A Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? in which he could tell the white man had no idea what his family was saying to him. When talking to one’s family, it may be good others cannot understand them. However, when people from different cultures are trying to communicate with one another, code-switching has value. The role of individuals in a system, generally, is to contribute to the system while maintaining personal interests, morals and identity. Code-switching is a way to communicate more productively with people who may not share your cultural background.

I have personal experience with code-switching. At home, my family speaks English. However, there are certain things we express to each other in either Hebrew or Yiddish, not full sentences, but short words or phrases. For example, if we are talking about dinner we might say it is either milchik or fleischik. Milchik means dairy and fleishik means meat. If we were describing a religious person, we might say they were frum. While there would be a lot of language that would be understandable to others, there would be words that were lost on them. At school I never use Hebrew or Yiddish. I do not see that as a bad thing. If I were to use Hebrew or Yiddish, there would often be times when I would have to explain myself to people.  I have a strong cultural identity and am still religious. It is important to maintain personal identity even when you are code-switching.

James Baldwin, in his essay If Black English Isn’t A Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? makes the point that a culture’s way of speaking maintains the identity of individuals. Baldwin writes “It reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or communal identity.” When language differences separate one from the larger community, it makes collaboration more difficult. While languages of a specific culture have their merits, when speaking among a more diverse group, language differences between cultures become a roadblock. In these instances, code-switching allows one to participate in the larger, more diverse community.

Cultural differences in speaking is not the only thing that may create a need for code-switching. People across the U.S. have many different accents. In the documentary American Tongues, a variety of accents from the United States are introduced and some of them are easier to understand than others. In the film, many accents are introduced that would be hard for people to understand. In this case, code-switching becomes helpful. People can change the way they speak in order for others to understand them better. In American Tongues there is a part where they show people speaking Creole. These people did code-switch in the film. They spoke to each other in Creole but changed the way they spoke to the camera. In that case, code-switching was a helpful tool.

While code-switching can be a good thing, it is important to be aware of the dangers of code-switching. For some, code-switching is a tool to hide their identity, religion, or social class in order to assimilate. One should not use code-switching to deny his or her identity as an important part of being an individual in a system is to maintain identity and cultural background.

The systems that ran along cultural lines have largely been done away with. Instead of cultures being localized to a certain area like they used to, people from different cultures are spread out all over the United States and all over the world. Since language is often such a big part of culture it creates differences in language between cultures, even those that share the same language. This can make it hard for individuals of the systems of today to communicate with one another. The solution though, is code-switching. Often seen as a negative, code-switching is ignored as the helpful communication tool that it can be and is deemed the culprit of the loss of an individual’s identity. While it is true that loss of identity can be a danger of code-switching, those that do it for the right reasons are able to maintain their cultural identity and communicate with others.

Works Cited

Baldwin, James. “If Black English Isn’t A Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?”. The New York Times. New York City: The New York Times, 1979.

Thats Wicked Cool

Language is a big part of communication. Over time, people have changed and created their own words. I remember a couple years ago on my annual visit to Massachusetts, I was talking to my cousins who live up there.

“Look at this shirt I got today.”

“Woah, that is Wicked cool!”

“Wicked?” I questioned. I had never heard anyone use the word wicked before.

“You don’t know what that means?”

“No, nobody ever says that, did you make it up?”

We talked about it for a while and I explained to her that nobody in Philadelphia uses that word so I hadn’t known what it meant. After talking about that, we had a whole conversation on the different slang that we had in philly compared to what they had in Boston. I told her that we had commonly used words like “jawn” and  “drawl”. We also talked about how a lot of people in philly use the term “yous” and she thought that was hilarious! After she stopped making fun, we started talking about how she thought I had a really strange accent, but I thought it was totally normal.

“Say water.”

“wooder”

She loved that, I had to keep repeating the word to satisfy her. I realized that depending on where you are from, you say and pronounce things different things. I thought it was so funny at first, but then I found it so annoying that they would continue to laugh at the way I would say things, yet I didn’t say anything about they way they talked. I knew they weren’t doing it to be mean, but it still hurt my feelings. Since we go up there about twice a year, the next time I went up there I tried code switching to talk more like them. After a while I realized that I shouldn’t change who I am or how I talk to fit in with other people. There was nothing wrong with the way I talked, and there was nothing wrong with the way they talked either. We are just from different places.

On my way home from boston, I put in my headphones like always and turned on some music. The first song I happened to turn on was rap music. I to listen to a lot of rap, but all the rappers are from different places. I was thinking, what different slang do the rappers use? The language just from teenagers that are from different places are so weird, so would the rappers and other performers’ language be different too? I think that teenagers get a lot of their language from the music they listen to. They take the slang, and it becomes really popular. I listened to the song “Dope Dealer” by Meek Mill, who is from Philadelphia. I saw that he used some of the same slang as the kids that I hang out with. He used the word “Swerve” which is basically to dismiss or say no to something that somebody says to you. I realized when I was reading the lyrics that he didn’t use the word jawn which I thought he would use, or any other big philly terms that  I thought he would.

Since I was listening to a rapper from the East Coast, I decided I would listen somebody from the West coast as well. I listened to a Kendrick Lamar who is rapper from California. This was a little harder for me, because I am not from there and I haven’t even been there before. I asked my friend, TJay, don’t forget the “Ay” some of the slang as he spends his whole summer in California. I listened to the song called “Swimming Pools” with my friend and he told me about words like “blood” “scrub” “bang” “cuz”. He also told me about the pronunciation of some of their words. I thought this was really interesting as I had never heard anybody say those words in a sentence. I didn’t think that the words that people used would be so different depending on where you were from. When I was listening to the song, Kendrick actually said some of the slang Tjay taught me a couple times in his song.

Although there are so many differences in the slang from Philly, and the slang from California, there are also some similarities. When I listened to all the songs  and talked to different people, I realized that both of the rappers used words like “cuz”, “swag”, “bread” or “bout’ that life”. Cuz is basically what you would just call a person, swag has to do with the clothes you wear, and how you act, how you walk, things like that. When people say bread they are talking about money, and when people say bout’ that life it means that you agree, or you’re into something. For example if somebody is doing something inappropriate and you don’t agree with it you would say “I’m not bout’ that life.” Another thing that I found was kind of interesting that a lot of people will say “like” at the end of sentences. It doesn’t actually mean anything, but in a sentence you would say “Oh my god, I love your hair, like.” I find it very strange, and I don’t know why people use it in a sentence. Depending on where you are than your opinions change.

All the places that I have been always tell me they think Philadelphia is so weird. When I ask them why, they tell me that it is because we say “hoagie” instead of “sub” and “water ice” or “wooder ice” instead of “slush”. I never really thought that philadelphia was so much different than other places. Now I know that we have a lot of differences. I’m sure other people say that too, about the place they are from.

In class, we were reading an essay by James Baldwin. He was saying that Black English should be a language. Baldwin states, “If Black English isn’t a language, then tell me what is?” Even if it is not considered “proper” to speak that way, it is what's happening all around us. Everybody is talking like this. It has become such a big part of the “standard” English language. I decided to talk to my friend and asked her a few questions about the slang we use in philly.

“Do you know what jawn means?”

“I mean I know what it means, but I don’t really use it with my friends, I don’t want to sound rude, but I think that like a lot of black people use those kinds of words.”

“Well what words do you mean by ‘those kind’?” I asked her

“I mean like ratchet, irkin, drawlin. Those just aren’t words that everybody uses.”

I think that if everybody, even people that aren’t black, know what black slang is then it should be its own language. So many people know what it is and not everybody would have to talk like this, only people that wanted to. I think it is important that people should be able to talk however they want. Just like if I wanted to become fluent in spanish and make that my primary language. Not everyone has to do it, but I still have the ability to talk in whatever language I want.

Works Cited

“If Black English isn’t a language than tell me what is” by James Baldwin

Tjay