Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

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Doing It All With Two Languages
Nicholas Escoto

Personally, I hate how perfect speech is so strongly emphasized in the United States and other countries. It causes judgment towards others that is unnecessary. From personal experience in Spanish class during high school, the way Spanish was taught was hardly related to how I spoke Spanish. Pronunciations were completely different, and when I was first told to read aloud to the class I would try to pronounce every syllable and word because that is how we were being taught. Before I finished the reading I realized that I should just speak how I speak, and pronounce words how I learned the words should be pronounced. My teacher was white and she told me that I should try to pronounce the words how they are spelled because she was trying to teach Spanish the correct way.

The “correct way”, what way would that be? There really is no correct way of speaking, it all depends on your origin and how one was originally taught and if someone questions this then they would be taking away a part of that person’s identity. “Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent then war?” (Smith, in Anzaldúa, 164). It should not matter how one speaks as long as their point or view gets across and is understood. One can speak like the biggest “dumb ass,” using no structure in sentences or grammar, and still get their point across in a knowledgeable and understandable manner. The story, “How to tame a wild tongue” by Gloria Anzaldúa, shows how language, where, and how a person grew up play a huge part in one’s identity.

Wherever I go and talk English, the person that I am speaking to immediately knows that I am from Massachusetts from my Boston accent and my selection of words. When I speak Spanish, it is the same in the sense that they immediately know that I am Dominican. Language is different wherever you go even if it is a few miles away. It differs in every city, every town, and country. Anzaldúa explains this in her essay and states how labels are sometimes placed on someone because of this. If I meet someone from a South American country such as Colombia or El Salvador, they speak perfect Spanish saying every syllable and in every word without abbreviating anything. Unlike Hispanics from other countries such as The Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, or in Anzaldúa’s case the Chicanos and Tejanos in Mexico, who abbreviate everything and borrow words from the English language and make them their own: some might call this talking “slang” Spanish.

This would not be considered as “slang” to them; simply it is just a different way of speaking that defines their identity. Anzaldúa explains this when she says, “A language which they can connect their identity to, one capable of communicating the realities and values true to themselves—a language with terms that are neither espanol ni ingles, but both” (p. 166). Different dialects of language cause people to get labeled as uneducated or ignorant because of their speech. Anzaldúa has this problem in the Chicano society and it caused her to get criticism and give her own criticism about the language. Chicanas who grew up speaking Chicano Spanish have internalized the belief that we speak poor Spanish. It is illegitimate, a bastard language. And because we internalize how our language has been used against us by the dominant culture, we use our language differences against each other (Anzaldua, 169)

This happens all over the United States and many people do not understand the reasons. People from the northeastern United States might place labels on people from the south because of their accent, pronunciation, and selection of words, but in reality southerners have the same mental capacity and maybe even have the same or more knowledge then others. This happens in other countries such as the Dominican Republic where people from the Ciabao” (the farmlands) change the uer in words to ay, for example a ciabaeno, or person from el Cibao, would say puayta instead of puerta (door). In the Dominican Republic this type of discrimination exists the same way as in the United States.

Anzaldúa experiences the same with her Chicano Spanish. In Chicano Spanish, as well as Spanish in the Dominican Republic, certain consonants are left out when they appear between vowels; words such as lado would be pronounced lao or mojado would be pronounced mojao (Anzaldua, 168). Anzaldúa shows how language is different everywhere and Mexicans are distinguished between mexicanos del otro lado and mexicanos de este lado (Anzaldua, 172). Language is classified everywhere, and no matter where one goes there is a difference that is seen through identity. Language is a huge part of one’s identity and everywhere it can cause a misunderstanding with others because of the dialect, selection of words that the person is using, and the neighborhood one grew up in.

Anzaldúa shows how she was affected by other’s opinions and then she proves them wrong in the end by becoming a great writer and creating great pieces of work that are appreciated by many. She found her ideal self, stating: “I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue—my woman’s voice my sexual voice, my poets voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence” (Anzaldua, 170). I hope to do the same for myself and prove them wrong, finding my own ideal self like Anzaldúa did by going to college, staying in college, and making something out of myself. I will do it all being a Dominican and an American, just like Anzaldúa did being a Chicano and an American.