Being bilingual always made my life differ as if I lived two lives, speaking Spanish at home and English everywhere outside of home. On the daily basis at my house, my family speaks Spanish. When we communicate we speak very fast, at times we can not even understand one another. After this occurs we all burst out in laughter super loud, no boundaries are enforced in our lexicon. The enforcement changes when entering a different discourse community. Many words and phrases make up our lexicon. When any of us our in a hurry or someone else is in a hurry we say a las millas, meaning super fast. When we are out and we smell something very bad we use the word abombao. The word mira means look, my family uses this word for everything, to get our …show more content…
Most of the time at school my lexicon is in English, I speak Spanish all the time at home.At times it is hard for me to switch my languages up because in Spanish we speak so quickly. My quick Spanish speaking always sticks to me and when speaking English I can slur a lot because of the speed in my voice. Adjusting the speed of my voice based on which language I am speaking is what I have been focusing on when communicating. In Mere Rhetoric's "Kairos", compares to the switching of my languages by me making them work separately. The podcast mentioned a lot about development of slaves in the 19th century (Mere Rhetoric's). It stated the movements that were taken in order to have no one "re enslaved". When switching languages a lot differs in culture, my self body language, and my tone. Many changes occur when entering different discourse communities. Overall Kairos plays a huge factor in my everyday life when I am switching up my lexicon. Spanish and English are both equally important to me, being bilingual is very helpful when communicating because I can relate to more than one cultural community. At home Spanish is my native language, but I am still able to utilize my native tongue in my academic discourse community with foreign exchange students, or when translating to someone. English relates to my Spanish discourse community by speaking spanglish, which incorporates both English and Spanish. At many times incorporating both is
It is interesting for Lisa Kanae to use three different voices in her book, Sista Tongue. The structure of Sista Tongue is different from standard books as if to make her words flow and become active. Her message still holds truth in today’s society. In many homes, younger generations face the inadequacy of being unable to understand their mother tongues while their parents struggle with learning English. Code-switching is natural for bilingual people and those that speak to other sub-cultures. Lisa Kanae’s different voices are similar to
I came from Mexico when I was 4 years, and like many of us I did not know English. Little by little I became fluent until I now can dominate English. Many people come to this country for a better life, but once in this country, we notice how essential English is for our everyday life. Being bilingual can be very beneficial for anyone in this country. I may be fluent in English, but I still prefer speaking in the Spanish language. This may be because at home that is all we speak. Both my parents do not really know English much. It’s better for me to talk to them in Spanish. I can try to talk to them in English but there may be a few words they won’t
Language is an important part of who we are. It influences the way we think and behave on a great scale. However, sometimes it is forced upon us to go in different directions just so we can physically and mentally feel as if we belong to the society in which we live in. Just as we see in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez’s “A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, both authors faced some challenges along the way by coping with two different languages, while still trying to achieve the social position which they desired.
Most people who grow up with a foreign language spoken in there house grow up with an advantage in society. This advantage can only occur once the individual learning that foreign language also learns the dominant language spoken in that country. Once both of these languages are learned and mastered, the individual has now placed them se...
In my class, I have children who speak other languages at home, my goal is to include them and their language into our daily routine and this help teaches the other children to be open to the difference. I incorporate this into our classroom by hanging both language’s around our room, and go over the basic’s words during our group time for example, numbers, colors, shapes, basic sight words. The children’s whose first language maybe different will be excited to share with their friends what they know. I also find stories that are bilingual to use during our story time.
Throughout time the flexibility of different languages within the world today are always being tossed up in the air, if there’s disadvantages or advantages to being capable of more than one language. Although all individuals have there own opinions on being able to speak fluently with different languages, there isn’t any other way to see it besides it being a huge advantage; fully appreciating the beneficial chance to be bilingual or trilingual and sometimes even more. Communicating with more than a single voice will represent who one is and where they came from. Within two articles “Speaking in Tongues” written by Zadie Smith and “How to tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzalduas’s both demonstrate the different languages they encounter. Smith looses her chance in speaking from her voice being forced upon to change without resistance while Anzalduas’s aggressively puts up a battle to be able to keep her voice. The acceptance of varies languages isn’t in everyone category, however in time we should be more accepting and realize from articles like such that’s beneficial to learn and accept the difference languages of different cultures within the world today. Although there may be struggles upon learning the knowledge to something new, its nothing but an advantage to have with one throughout a lifetime!
When I finished reading a piece of ‘How to tame a wild tongue’, I went on a journey to recall if I had a similar situation. In the reading Anzaldua implies that her language has been alienated through constant heat from both sides (English and Spanish), through this quarrel emerged a new language that was neither English nor Spanish “but both” (Anzaldua, 77). The journey – proves Anzaldua’s point - recalled past events that clearly pointed that what I speak is neither English nor Spanish but a variation of both. This occurred to me when I would talk to friends, I would include words that were officially incorrect in English or Spanish, but they were a part of my culture. For instance, when I would speak to my friends, we would use certain
I was surprised because, for the first time, I realized that Spanglish isn’t as normal as I think it is. Ortego states that Spanglish works “bi-directionally”, which means I can be speaking Spanish and mix in some English words, or vice versa (176). Behind an action I carry out every day, advantages that go unnoticed finally popped up. According to Boroditsky, the Kuuk Thaayorre are always spatially oriented because the only way for them to communicate successfully is by referring to each of the cardinal points (5). In a similar way, Spanglish speakers always need to be well aware of both languages to be able to understand the meaning of sentences when speaking. Ortego says that this “code-switching occurs logically” in the sentences, which suggests that Spanglish challenges our brains allowing us to become more dynamic and efficient when speaking (176). Spanglish causes Spanish and English to intertwine, taking the most suitable words from each language to make a conversation much more practical and flowing. We become so quick and agile at doing this, that our brains don’t have to stop and think about the right words to express ourselves. As Spanglish speakers, we can navigate from one language to another in no time and choose any word that enhances our speech and clarifies our intentions. Yet, it was with the help of Boroditsky’s research and support
As a child, I had to navigate from an English speaking classroom to a Spanish speaking home. From eight in the morning I was given instruction in English by my professors at school. After three in the afternoon at home I engaged in Spanish conversation with my mother, father, and siblings. When the summer vacation came around, it was back to speaking Spanish only, and then I regained the Mexican accent that had faded away during the school year.
Understanding more than one language has positive effects on the brain’s ability to think. In comparison to multilingual individuals, monolingual English speakers are at a considerable disadvantage when it comes to learning, cultural awareness, and effectiveness in global affairs.
According to the estimates, bilinguals make up more than half of the global population (Grosjean, 2010). Bilingualism can be described as the ability to use two with certain degree of proficiency, whereas linguistic skills of monolinguals are restricted to just one language (for further definitions of bilingualism, see Moradi, 2014). Being bilingual means that both languages are always active to some degree, even in contexts that require just one of the languages. The ability to manage attention to two languages the entire time requires higher involvement of the non-linguistic executive control system (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Bialystok, Craik, & Luk, 2012). Numerous behavioural studies have demonstrated a beneficial effect of bilingualism
Out of all the American institutions that exist today, the educational system has one of the greatest impacts on the lives of people, especially for immigrants and their children who do not know how to speak English. The English language is a whole new, different perspective for people who come to America for the first time; their whole environment changes as well. The majority of the people who come to the United States are Hispanics, who are usually at the poverty level. Like everyone who come to America, they want to pursue a better quality of life, and in order to do that, you have to know how to speak the universal language, the English language. The myth of education here is that everyone can learn the same way through the English language—but that is not the case.
In various societies, people use several different languages in conversations between their friends, family and peers. Especially in Singapore, it is not an unfamiliar phenomenon to hear two or more bilingual speakers speaking and code switching between the language English and Chinese, English and Malay, English and Tamil or even Standard English and Singaporean English to each other in a natural and effortless manner. In this line, I have mechanistically relate speech varieties with “codes” and despite having a vast variety of definitions for code switching to choose from; I have decided to use Heller’s definition. Heller (1988) defines code switching as the alternating between two or more languages in a single sentence or conversation. During this phenomenon, it is common for individuals to fluently use more than one language in a course of a single communication episode. When this happens, bilinguals are not coached in how to code switch, but instead, they rely on unconscious linguistic understanding in differentiating between what are tolerable and intolerable code switching usages. According to Auer (1989), factors such as cultural interaction, intercultural marriage, education, and colonization are some influences for code switching. Moreover, speakers may choose to alternate from one code to another, either to distinguish oneself, to show commonality with a social group, to discuss a certain topic, join in social happenstances, to impress and influence the audience or to express feelings and affections (Crystal, 1987). However, there has been a misconception in many people’s perception, that “code switching is bad”, “code switching creates confusion” and that “code switching will result in a language deficit where individ...
In my case, I speak three languages, but this time I am going to focus on the ones that I am in touch with most of the time. Spanish is my mother language and my second language is English, consequently, I am a bilingual person for all people who does not know what is being bilingual. According to Myers (2006), being bilingual is not only the ability of understanding a language, but learning how to produce it and also, deciding where you can use a certain way of language depending on the context you are. This is the real bilingual I am.
Today we live in a world where a matric certificate is no longer enough to achieve success. We live in a society where cultural and ethnic diversity are more frequent than ever before. One thing that has become increasingly relevant in today’s society is Bilingualism. In Africa we are fortunate to have many languages surrounding us, however, in the educational system we need to involve bilingualism so that all individuals can benefit from education. In this essay the discussion of whether bilingualism is beneficial or not in an educational system will be discussed.