Language & Prejudice
Throughout this narrative I use personal experiences related to language and how different situations throughout my life. I was born in Colombia and moved to the United States when I was 15. In the text I used events and situations that people with a similar background would be able to relate to, the text has been also influenced on other class readings which helped me have a different perspectives about this events that I did not consider important before entering this course. I use evidence to appeal to the readers understanding, this assignment helped me develop strategies for reading and drafting.
I consider both all languages are being around the same concept which is getting a message deliver to another person, in many occasions the way in which this message gets delivered differs to another according to who is the person receiving the message. Even though these messages are required to be delivered to different people in different ways there is just one way that the people would consider as “proper”, and no matter what language you are speaking there is always one way that will be consider as standard or proper and people the to assume and label all the other ways that aren’t the “proper” way as wrong.
A couple years ago when I was a freshman in high school, most of my Spanish speaking classmates emphasize a lot on the fact that that I use the word “usted” which means you and its seen as a more respectful way to say “tu” which also means you, even though I really didn’t mean to be more respectful which means my message wasn’t being deliver in the way I wanted to. Even though I was talking in a way people consider more proper I wasn’t really communicating in the right way, this taught me that language has to be manipulated according to the situation and your relationship with the person you’re speaking with. Every time I speak with a non-Colombian Hispanic person I try to use a more neutral language and limit the words that are only used in my country.
The most meaningful language experience I’ve had while speaking English happened during high school when some of my Albanian friends mentioned how they could tell I was Hispanic based on the way I talked and my accent, I never really realized that I have an accent before that, which makes perfect sense actually , Indians have an accent, Jamaicans have an accent and Albanians have an accent it makes perfect sense that I have an accent; differently from the other races mentioned before Hispanic people are being discriminated and some people are not really welcoming with us, so I thought that the best I could do was practicing more my English until I get to speak in the most “standard” way possible, but is not like in the first situation where people wasn’t getting my message the way I wanted too, this time they understand my message but they prefer to hear it in the way they wanted to hear it, the only reason I’ll do it it’s because I don’t want to be affected by the way I talk.
My language is still developing and I still need a lot of practice but every day I learn how my language and the way I speak shouldn’t be impacting the way people perceives me, the way I get treated by people should be based on me and my personality not just on what they think my background is.
Throughout this narrative I use personal experiences related to language and how different situations throughout my life. I was born in Colombia and moved to the United States when I was 15. In the text I used events and situations that people with a similar background would be able to relate to, the text has been also influenced on other class readings which helped me have a different perspectives about this events that I did not consider important before entering this course. I use evidence to appeal to the readers understanding, this assignment helped me develop strategies for reading and drafting.
