“ ‘I am’ is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that I do is the longest sentence,” says author George Carlin.

This somewhat philosophical quote on first glance seems to pose a great meaning that only the greatest professors or distinguished learners would be able to understand. If I were to have seen it just a couple of weeks ago it would have made me really have to think hard, or probably just continue on as it would not have made sense. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve made a clarification on something that never was a problem or even a thought before. The voice. My voice. The simple yet powerful substance that I have lived with for fifteen years after one day in English class proved to develop into something so incredibly new.

Succeeding the reading of the James Baldwin text on African American language, we watched a short documentary on the differentiating accents in specific regions throughout the United States. The film did not surprise me much as the stereotypical country southern accent, the rough and tough new york accent, and that of that of the “normal” person who chronicled. All of which I’m familiar with. It was the question Ms.Pahomav asked after the ending of the film that sparked that my interest in the voice. “ Do you have an accent?” This once seemed straightforward question lead into an energetic debate between myself and friend Tk.

“ I don’t have an accent, but you do,” I said.

“What! I don’t have an accent!” Tk hastily replied.

“Yes you do Tk.”

“Well if I have a accent then you do to.”

“ No Tk you definitely have an accent, I sound like me.”

The defiance Tk had in telling me that I did have an accent just did not make sense as I did not have anything too special or unique coming through. For me an accent was something that was distinct in giving a listener your history as of where you come from. The typical british, australian, or even south african accent. Those that give the severe sense of personality, and are without a doubt what the average person would call an accent. Me on the other hand felt that my “accent” was nonexistent. I heard people from Philadelphia have a certain type of speech so if anything I believed that is what Tk was referring to, but was there more. That night I went home thinking of whether I sounded of something that I had yet to hear. Even going as far as recording myself a few times saying different things trying to detect an oddity. Even then it was still similar to what I have been hearing my entire life. I couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting to know if I my voice was more than I knew it was. A few days later me and friends Ajanae and Tk were discussing Tk’s valley girl voice, and how she sounds like a girl from Seattle. Being that Tk told me that I had an accent I decided to get a second opinion by asking Ajanae what she thought of my voice.

“ You have a philly accent I guess.”

“ That’s what I thought but Tk said I had an big accent.” I replied.

With this I understood that there was a Philly sense in my voice. One that I had never picked up on since most people I encounter on a regular basis sound pretty similar. Although I had an answer I still felt that there was still something more to be discovered. The question had grown from the simple do I have an accent to what about my voice makes me...me. What about my voice set me apart from the millions of other people in Philadelphia, how different is it from those all across the country, across the world. The question of what about my voice made made me the individual I am. For most of my life I had not cared to much because as people we usually think of something like our voice as just something. Not much. That thing that we always had and will always have. The thing that if you’re lucky can lead to a successful music career or even make you the state’s most watched news anchor, but nothing ever to serious. It was now that I became so interested in discovering the answer to this simple yet extremely complex question. First thing I did after spending hours pondering this question was ask other people not specifically about them, but what they actually felt about their own voices, and how it made them who they are. Starting with my mother who gave me the simple “I don’t know, it’s just my voice,” to my friend Fatimah who believes “ I sound like I sound because that’s way I sound.” These answers not offering me as much help as I originally sought out. Finally I went to my close friend Danielle who I have known for a long time in hopes that she could give me what I was looking for. It was her answer that finally did it for me. All she said was “ your voice is just you I guess. You’re the only one who has it.” It was at that moment that I finally realized that my accent and my voice is me. Jevon. I kept trying to compare myself to everyone else, when everyone else is not me. The problem I faced was attempting to group myself into a category of people instead of seeing that everyone is their own group and they are all their own person. My accent might not be the most common one but it is not meant or supposed to be. The accent I have is mine and it’s one that only I’m supposed to have, and that I’m supposed to make as me. Throughout this I have learned that everyone has their accent, their voice, their ways, and their personalities that set them apart, and it is when you look at yourself that you realize you are you and nobody can be that.

What is the Language of Communication

We shook hands.  

“Yo, what’s up?”  I said.  I leaned back against a locker and looked down at my shoes before returning eye contact.  When we talked we always seemed to be feeling each other out at the same time.  He gave my shoes a glance as well, which I wanted him to.

“Nothing much.” he replied.  “We’re probably about to dip. You could come or just chill later.”

“Depends what’s going on, I’ll text you.” I told him, as I turned, and continued to walk down the hall and towards the exit of my high school.  

This is how I feel the way people at school usually talk. It does a good job portraying an outline of the typically dull and boring conversations we have, with the people we claim to be close friends with.  This isn’t true about everyone, but there are some people we see almost everyday, and yet we still are not completely comfortable speaking the way we want around them.  We build a character in ourselves, for each person we communicate with, each with a unique set of physical and verbal qualities.  It could be the gestures we use, the different words we use, or especially the tone of our voices,  depending upon who we are with.  It is the filters we put on our own speech, depending on our circumstances, as well as our attitude and what we desire to get from the conversation, that determine the characteristics of our relationships.  So, there are many details that drive the way we communicate, including comfort, our persona, and attitude.

Comfort is a very important part of speech.  It provides confidence and clarity.  If in a given situation, you naturally have the courage to speak a lot, then you are probably very comfortable letting your voice be heard.  Comfort is very powerful in speech as well.  It allows the speaker to think clearly, so they can word their message in the most clear and persuasive way.  For example, if someone is giving a presentation, if they stay level headed and do as they practice, they are far more likely to succeed.  This applies to any time someone is speaking.  Although they may be nervous still, the more comfortable they are, the better.  

The way we speak is very important to ourselves.  Whether it be an accent, dialect, or another part of our speech that is specific to us, we take any comments about it very personally and are very insecure.  Gloria Anzaldúa, a cultural scholar, says “ [...]so, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language.” Insult someone’s speech, and they will feel personally attacked.  Our voice is our identity and when the way we talk is criticized it can make us feel illegitimate and we lose our voice.  When I speak, I sound very normal to myself.  I have even recorded myself speaking to listen to my voice outside my head, and have found that my voice is somewhat naturally monotone, which I don’t mind since it will not stand out in an unusual way.  However sometimes it makes me feel bored or boring.  For instance, I always looked up to people who could keep a crowd entertained and make them feel, whether it be laughter or excitement, they were enjoyable to be around.  Because of this, whenever someone ignored me, I felt that I was being boring, and that I needed to prove myself as fun.  This sometimes could lead to anxiety, with me getting nervous and over thinking what I would say next and how I would say it next time I saw a specific person.  

However I have learned to speak with more emotion, and this problem doesn’t exist so much now.  I think something that has really helped me with presentations.  No one wants to hear a robot spew facts at them.  They want to listen to and feel the power of a story, so I used presentations as a way to practice speaking with emotion.  I mean by this, speaking in a way where I change the tone of my voice, and show in my face that I care about what I have to say, because if I do not, neither will others.

How we display our image of ourselves is another huge part of interactions.  Body language is one major theme of our persona.  If we are slouched over and facing away or smiling and nodding understandingly, it completely changes the way you come off.  The former appears cocky but not confident, while the latter makes one seem empathetic and trustworthy.  I used to find hand gestures and other body language silly because I thought that if no sound was coming out then it was fruitless.  However, I now know that an important part of all speech is physical.  Like how when I leaned against the locker with my shoes forward, I was showing that I was more interested in myself than my friend who was talking because I wanted him to notice me and I showed that I wasn’t watching him.  

One more very important towards how we use language is our attitude.  This is similar to our persona and is encompassed in some areas, but there are a few main aspects that stand apart.  First is our intentions when we start a conversation.  If we are trying to pitch an idea we will talk very positively about what we are saying, however if we are complaining we will speak in a mumbled and low tone.  Our attitude comes off sometimes by accident when we internalize ideas and then talk about them.  Sometimes, stubbornness can come from attitude.  If there is a preconceived notion in someone’s mind that something is true or more important than something else, there is a tendency in people to ignore the information given to them regardless of it’s value because they are only able to accept what they went in trying to show.  Furthermore, having pre-existing ideas about a person can change your attitude when talking to them.  

I remember this happened to me once.  Back at my old elementary school, I admit that I could be a trouble maker.  Nothing serious, but I would be called into the office, along with a few friends, more than anyone else.  This bad reputation ended up hurting.  It was lunch time, when

Ms. Debbie walked up to the table I sat at, to say “Ethan, I’m going to have to pull you to the side for a moment.” I had no idea what this could be about.  What have I done wrong?  I’m fairly certain this is a mistake.  Then she asked me what I had for lunch that day.  I said, “I had the hot lunch” which referred to whatever the main cooked meal had been that day.  She gave me a suspicious look, and gestured towards me to follow her out of the cafeteria.  We arrived in the principal's office.  The principal told me that there had been chips stolen from the cafeteria.  To this day I’m not sure why I was suspected.  Perhaps someone gave them a false.  Regardless, I believe if I had a good reputation, I would not have been judged that way, and it would had been a simple, “Did you steal” question, without all the mishegoss I had to go through, because of how I was viewed.

Also part of attitude, there is reciprocal behavior.  Depending on how past interactions have went, there could be hostile or positive attitudes shown.  I know if I feel negatively about someone, because they have done me wrong, when I see them next I will vengefully, and with a negative attitude.

To reiterate, the language of communication is very complex, and is comprised of many details. Some of the larger ones that shape our relationships the most are how relaxed we feel when speaking, which determines what information we are willing to release, as well as how others perceive, as well as our personalities, which are unique and define us socially.  Together, these things encompass a large majority or how we all communicate.

“Hello. Can I have 2 large Italian hoagies with everything on it?”

“I’m sorry, you want 2 large what with everything on it?”

“Um, 2 large hoagies please.”

“Hoagies...what in the heck are...Oh, you’re a Philly boy! You want some subs.”

“Um, yeah sure. Okay.”

While in North Carolina visiting my cousins, we left the house to go to a food shop a couple blocks away. When we got there, we all ordered what we and the rest of our families wanted to eat. The above conversation is of myself and the cook behind the counter. After this conversation, I turned to my cousins and asked why that man never heard of the term “hoagies” before. They then told me that the people in North Carolina don’t say that word. Instead, they say “sub sandwiches.” I was intrigued that other people in the United States had a different name for hoagies. However, I was even more intrigued that he knew that I was from Philadelphia just because I said that word.

About a week later, when my family came back home, I did a little research on this and found out that it was only the people in Philadelphia that said the word “hoagies.” Just about everyone else in the U.S. said subs. I was amazed! So I looked up more words associated with the city of Philadelphia and found the term “jimmies.” Personally, I hated this name and still do. They are called Sprinkles. That’s just a fact. However, apparently in Philadelphia, most people call this famous ice cream topping jimmies.

Even now, I researched more words and phrases that are common to use in Philadelphia for this essay. I found that a regular phrase I use, “water ice,” is really only used in this city. I was actually stunned to find this out. For many years, I, and the rest of the city of brotherly love, have called “Italian Ice” “Water Ice,” and have never thought twice about it, regardless of what people of other cities say. The same goes for the term “Sixers,” a nickname for Philadelphia’s Basketball team. I rarely call them by their whole name, the 76ers. I and pretty much the rest of the people in Philly just call them by the Sixers.

Researching and uncovering the different phrases used by multiple people in Philadelphia that I use as commonplace has told me a lot about myself, both after my experience years ago and now while I research and write this paper. I’m a Philadelphian, one who is more engrossed in the lifestyle and language of the city than I thought. I use these words and phrases practically on a daily basis in my everyday life. My language defines my life, my family, and everything else about me. These words could possibly reveal my origin, my background, my family, my friends,and, as stated, my lifestyle as a person living in the city of Philadelphia. When explaining what it meant to “put your business in the street” in England, James Baldwin goes further on the point of revealing one’s self through speaking his language in his paper “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” He said “You have confessed your parents, your youth, your school, your salary, your self-esteem, and, alas, your future.” I agree with with this quote. By only talking regularly, you’ve quickly revealed just about everything about you. Unfortunately, this may not always be a good thing in the long run.

I’ve heard people call the city of Philadelphia by a few derogatory names, one of which was the negative nickname of “Killadelphia.” Admittedly, there are a lot more casualties and killings done on purpose than desired or wanted in this city. People see this and begin to categorize Philly as a horrible city where the people hurt their fellow people. So hearing words or phrases known for originating from a place where relatively horrible things can take place may cause people to think negative thoughts and act with fearful actions towards people in Philadelphia. As a resident in this city, it makes me feel uncomfortable hearing these stereotypes distributed to all of the people who live in Philly. To illustrate this, I’ll explain a bit more about the example at the beginning of this essay paper.

After I said the word hoagies again the second time, the cook behind the counter had a fearful eye motion when he figured out where I was actually from. He then swiftly went to the counter behind him to work on the “sub sandwiches.” I then saw him converse with his fellow worker.

He said “Watch out for the black guy back there.”

It was then that I asked my cousins why he never heard of “hoagies” before. After they said what they said, it hit me why the cook had a fearful glint in his eye: he realized that I was from Philly and thought that I might do something bad because of this, because of the stereotypes he may have heard or possibly made about us Philadelphians. This is what caused me to be intrigued enough to research the subject of words and phrases common in Philadelphia. People become fearful when they hear certain words or phrases.

Now, using all of the research I have done for this paper, I can finally respond the question “What might the language you use say about you?” with a full answer. I, as a person living in Philadelphia, use language that has the potential to reveal my own lifestyle. Even though people may give me labels thanks to the words I use, I and the other people in Philly know that these labels hold no truth. My language may reveal different aspects of my life, like my origin and history, but I think that these aspects are some of the best parts about my life. My language came from these origins, which means my language is a part of myself today.

“So now you’ve gotta make a decision. He’ll go right… there. Yeah, that’s a mighty beautiful ol’ tree.” he would say. “Oh yeah that looks real nice.”

I had been watching “The Joy of Painting,” a show from the 1980s and 90s with Bob Ross showing everyone how to paint and how to enjoy painting. He had an accent from a place that I couldn’t tell, but it was very nice to just listen to him talk. I had no interest in the actual painting; I just wanted to listen to Bob Ross.

“Tommie, we’re gonna go out now!” my mom yelled to me up the stairs. We had been planning this adventure for a couple hours. My mom, dad, and I were going to go to the Wissahickon Creek to just explore it.

After about 20 minutes, my mom pointed to one of the trees, exclaiming “That tree is huge!” Without even thinking about what I was saying, I responded.

“Hoo, boy! That’s a mighty big tree!”

“Mighty?” responded my dad, trying and failing to hold back back a snicker.

Prior to that, I don’t think I’d ever had referred to something large as “mighty”, but that was something Bob Ross would say, and while watching him I had grown fond of his accent. He sounded very homely and kind.

I’ve done this sort of thing multiple times. For example I used to watch a lot of interviews of English bands I liked. They, as expected, would speak with an English accent. If I had spent a while watching them, for the a couple of hours I would have the faintest accent. Sometimes I wouldn’t speak to anyone else in that time so I wouldn’t notice; I’d just be talking, but sometimes I would talk to someone and they would notice and mention it to me.

After learning that I did this, I tried to pay attention to whether I was just some weirdo or if other people did it too. I found that even within my family, it happens a lot. My brother and I would watch comedians on YouTube and later that day he’d quote something they said, we’d laugh, and that would be it.

However, after really noticing what I did with people’s language, I started to notice that when he quoted the jokes, he would use language that I wouldn’t usually expect him to use. It wasn’t like he’d just start cursing, but it would be easy to tell that he would change the way he spoke. One time we would just be talking and he would burst out and say “MJ BABY, LAKERS BABY, CHICAGO BULLS BAY-BEE!” and we would both laugh. He speaks similarly to how I speak, with that same boring type of speech, so it is surprising to have him say baby like that.

I’m from a part of the world most people would consider a ghetto. That place is Philadelphia, but according to the people I talk to that don’t know that, I don’t talk with what they consider a traditional Philly accent. When I talk to people over the internet and they ask where I’m from, they seem surprised when I say Philly.

“You never say jawnt or hoagie, you can’t be from there,” they would say.

“I know, everyone says that,” I would respond truthfully.

I’d describe the way I talk as very basic. The way I speak doesn’t really give away the place I’m from. It’s how my family talks, and I’ve never liked it. If anybody were to talk in a way that isn’t fairly slow and easy to understand, I would have trouble understanding them. I’ve always wanted to speak in a different way than I do so I’d be able to understand more people.

On the plus side, it’s very easy to understand me when I talk. My words aren’t jumbled, the words I use are just English. They’re not from any specific part of the English-speaking world.

However, every time I try to change the way I talk, people laugh at me. They’re used to me saying things that they’d expect me to say, and every time it’s not something they expect they make fun of me. Even people I’ve never met before seem to notice that the way I’m speaking to them is probably not the way I’m “supposed to speak.”

Whenever this happens I quickly revert to the way I usually talk and forget about it. I’d try this many times until I realized that what I had done is prove to myself that the way I usually speak, my normal, boring way of speaking, is one of the ways people identify me. As James Baldwin once wrote, “[Language] is the most vivid and crucial key to identify. It reveals the private identity and connects one with...the larger, public, or more communal identity.” I had always wanted to talk a different way, but in wanting that I had been asking for a new identity, which I did not want. People are treated differently based on the way they speak, but if I speak in a way that is generally easy to understand, I figured I would have a better chance of having the other things about me dictate who I am to other people.

“Wuhter”, my father said. His Philadelphia accent is almost nonexistent, especially compared to the deeper accent of my mother. However, it comes out in certain words, like the usual English term for H2O.

“Water”, I correct him. I always correct people, certainly my parents with their sometimes bizarre Philadelphian pronunciation, which are seemingly dying out anyway. I’ve corrected what is probably the most annoying pronunciation of all, my mother saying “iron” as “ahrn”. (I have heard that this is an exclusively South Philly thing). I tell my father that they are “sprinkles” and not “jimmies,” and my mother that it is “sauce” and not “gravy”.

All in a day’s work for a so-called (by his own mother, no less) “grammar Nazi”.

It’s not just grammar, though. Every word I say is carefully chosen and very formal. Sometimes, in the presence of friends, I let my hair down a little and might curse or use slightly less stuffy language. But otherwise, I probably sound more like an Edwardian gentleman than a 21st century teenager.

I hardly, if ever, use slang words. Most of them sound cheap, synthetic, and disposable, the junk food of language. I balk at them because they sound unnatural and useless. Further to the point, they have no place in a sentence – they sound like they’re tacked on merely to sound cool, while the best words will last forever.

For some people, it’s easy to use slang. But I like rigid routines, and order. I like to control, and it isn’t even really my fault. It is something that you can’t detect at first glance, something you can’t really see. It is  Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild form of autism.

It’s not like I’m trying to make everything perfect. For me, it just flows naturally, just like other teenagers say “get turnt” or “on fleek”. I can’t help it that I speak and write in a patrician manner – it’s just part of my mental hardwiring. My brain is different from everyone else's – and I’m proud of that. I don’t care if you think I sound like a snob or take things literally or can’t stand mispronunciations,I crave order and stability in a world that offers very little of it.

It’s perhaps a choice of lifestyle, as well. A lot of teenage and youth slang revolves around an eventually unsustainable lifestyle-partying, concert-going, urban exploration, and living life like there’s no tomorrow. Meanwhile, I prefer quiet moments – looking at small architectural details, analyzing the lyrics of British rock bands, overthinking things, and generally just enjoying the company of either myself or a close friend.

I think my family has something of a choice as to whether they could speak in a more formal and proper dialect. There are plenty of Philadelphians and ex-Philadelphians (including some of my aunts and uncles) who you’d think had never been inside the City of Philadelphia in their entire lives. However, there are many people in my family, who, when they open their mouths, sound absolutely embarrassing, if not in reality, then at least to my ears.

In the musical adaptation of “Pygmalion”, “My Fair Lady”, the protagonist, Henry Higgins, sings, “An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him/The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him”. Change “Englishman” to “American” and you can see that there really isn’t much of a difference in lingual judgement once you cross the Atlantic. In the United States, we look down our noses at people depending where in the country they come from. A Bostonian might regard a Texan as sounding slovenly, and a Texan might find a Bostonian’s accent snobbish. As James Baldwin once wrote, “A Frenchman living in Paris speaks a subtly and crucially different language from that of the man living in Marseilles; neither sounds very much like a man living in Quebec; and they would all have great difficulty in apprehending what the man from Guadeloupe, or Martinique, is saying, to say nothing of the man from Senegal.” In this same manner, I find my relatives’, specifically my mother’s accent, to be thoroughly grating.

The fact that a lot of my friends, especially those in the middle class, have parents from other parts of the country does not help – indeed, some of them have no family at all in and around Philadelphia. While this can be typically chalked up to gentrification, it also makes me feel slightly nervous, knowing that I sound absolutely proper, and it’s not because of my breeding. Through a pre-existing mental condition, speech lessons, and an exposure to British television programming at an early age, I sound like I should be on the CBS evening news, instead of (with apologies to Mr. Springsteen) the streets of Philadelphia.

When I think about all of these other places, I think about where I want to go. On one hand, I feel a very deep kinship to Philadelphia. I am absolutely smitten with the precise terraces of rowhomes, the way the stoop meets the sidewalk, the diverse styles of architecture, the abundant (if sometimes wild) streetlife, even the relative lack of green space as compared to other cities in the nation. However, my very voice betrays my ambitions. Even though I am of nearly pure Philadelphian blood, I sound so polished and formal that I don’t really fit into a neighborhood of bizarre mispronunciations (that my mother seems to use constantly) and an inability to say “drawer”. Although I resent the gentrifiers, and the way they displace hard-working residents, I am, in a way, closer to them than the natives. I speak properly, have obscure, intellectual interests, and listen to the Who and Radiohead rather than Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. I love Italy (I still have vivid memories of my visit to Rome in 2014), but disdain the cheap mockery that Italian-Americans are unknowingly doing to their heritage.

When I walk through my neighborhood, I don’t feel like a native. Sure, I know the streets like the back of my hand. But with my quirky t-shirts, and headphones plugged into my phone, I could easily pass for a hipster or a yuppie. I walk among the rows and churches, and despite my deep roots, I feel like a “stranger in a familiar land”. I have the experience of being both at home and completely alienated.

And yet, sometimes, this feels perfectly fine. I am me, and nobody else. I don’t care if I really don’t sound like the rest of my family, or if I alienate myself from my friends occasionally. I’m me, and only I have control over that.