Think about the languages you speak –not just the kinds of big languages that get printed on the spines of dictionaries (English, Arabic, Spanish, and so on) but the languages that your smaller communities have built and use to, in Baldwin’s terms, “describe and thus control” their realities.
Many of these authors discuss the ways languages create and define group identities by inclusion and exclusion. How have you observed this in your own life? Think about the groups you belong to: what “secret languages” do you use? Choose one word or phrase that a groups you belong to uses that people outside of that group do not use and/or understand. In what ways does this word or phrase operate? Use at least one of our readings as an analytical framework or point of reference.
Write about this word or phrase in an essay of 750-1000 words. For your first submitted draft, you submit this essay via Turn It In on our Blackboard page. (See my email if you are confused.) Your final draft will be published as a blog post on this site.
First Draft due Saturday, 10/2, 11:59 pm
Final Draft due Sunday, 10/10, 11:59 pm
Take A Long Walk Off A Short Pier
Eight little words that could mean so much. How would you go on to decipher them? “Take a long walk off a short pier” is something my grandfather used to say to my mother on a daily basis.
My grandfather was born in 1940 also known as “the silent generation”. A time when America was in an ongoing war and suffering from the economic depression. In those times is when I believe most of these “vulgar” sounding phrases were used popularly. Similar phrases like “go jump in a lake” or “go play in traffic” are not really being used anymore today.
What does the phrase actually mean? Did my grandfather really want my Mother to jump off a pier and drown? Obviously not. The phrase is a tongue and cheek way of telling someone to “scram” or “get lost”. Most of the time these would be used if you were annoying someone or if someone just had enough of you. Since then the phrase has continued to be passed down from my grandfather to my mother and to me. I’m sure I will also use this when I end up having kids.
Nowadays most people who hear these idioms will absolutely think they are unrefined. With times changing rapidly since the 1940’s and as people pass, generations are lost. Most of these phrases will die out. With the new generations and (in my opinion) more “sensitive” people you really have to watch what you say, post, or do.
In conclusion the reason I decided to use this phrase is because growing up with my grandfather and mother I would be used to constantly hearing it and most of the time it would be directed at me. I cannot even tell you when the last time I heard someone say it was. I wonder what would happen if we took a poll to see how many people are actually familiar with it.
The Language of My Hearth
Language is a beautiful and powerful tool that connects thoughts and feelings between people it has been composed over the years from different perspectives that developed grammatical rules, sounds, accents, dialects, movements, and facial expressions relating to their sense of reality. In the words of James Baldwin, language incontestably reveals the speaker (If Black English Isn’t a Language…) defines that language would show who a person is, making them feel vulnerable or predominate over others depending on how the person assumes life. Using language as a powerful instrument to impose the predominant without respect to other’s identity, has been one of the most controversial topics in human history. Language is a battlefield of cultures, keeping alive the stronger ones and discarding those that aren’t important. For James Baldwin, Black English was “despised by history”, and “patronizingly called “dialect” …” when this one must have been recognized as a language, the reason that he decided not to be “doomed” for the wrong definition of white Americans about language, that made youngers black generations lose their worth in life. James Baldwin decided to spoke against racism and inequalities in the American system to keep his language alive.
This example is just one of many situations in which language has been threatened to disappear,
Nataly Diaz is another good example of persistence; she is a writer and athlete who is accustomed to winning every basketball game decided that she would not lose the game of keeping her native language Mojave flourishing. Her labor is not easier she works with three elder speakers to rebuild her native language knowing that no matter how much effort puts, she won’t get the original language as their ancients used to speaking.
These two examples made me realize the value of my own language and its roots, I was born in Bogota, Colombia, my language is Colombian Spanish but deeply it is composed of the Castilian (Spain) and Chibcha which is the native language of Muiscas, the community that inhabited in the cold mountains of the Colombian Andes, as a result, Spanish ended with the existence of Chibcha, predominating as Bogota dialect, but fortunately we still keep some curious words from Chibcha as “changua” that is a typically food made of milk, eggs, onions, salt, and coriander, “totear” it was only used to say that something broke but today we usually say “te vas a totear de la risa” (I used this one a lot with my friends) to say you’re going to laugh too much, or “se toteo la cabeza” when there’s been a heavy blow to the head(1). Also, we keep some Chibcha names for places as Bogota, derived from Bacatá, Fontibon (the locality that I used to lived), Chia, Tunja, Guatavita, Funza, …etc or the name of some fruits as Curuba, known in North America as Banana passion Fruit, (a funny name for me) or Uchuva known as Groundcherry.
However, there is a bitter taste left by not remembering my ancient tongue, and I desire of revived as well, maybe it is not too late but in the words of Natalie Diaz, you do not know that you had taken on a job of loss, because recover a language is accept that you will lose miles and miles of words, meanings and feelings, adding that just a small portion of people will try to speak it because this would not guarantee a “steady” future that dominant languages have sold to the new generations.
This is one of the huge reasons that make me come to the United States, which is a country that has a different culture and a different language that guarantees a “better life” but is full of challenges that you must deal with without forgetting your own language.
Language is a big barrier but is not a reason to belittling people’s feelings and experiences, as a bilingual person I feel I am the bridge between this big wall that separates Spanish from English and try to get the best of both to build my own identity, my own language.
Is not easy to speak about language and more when history has been convinced you that this one is not important, the reason I admire what James Baldwin did for the Black language. We must keep fighting for who we are and where we come from, accepting our mistakes, and do it until we make it.
I believe that My language won’t die in me, and I will try to share it to keep it alive, meanwhile, I will learn from other’s language too, from other’s worlds, to build my own. Discovering opportunities to connect with others, and help them with their necessities, and discover life in different ways without losing mine.
Language is infinite, there are at least 6,500 languages spoken in the world. That doesn’t include all the sub languages spoken within communities. Language is how we communicate with one another, it can be an expression of emotion for some and for others that’s the only way to express themselves.
In my household we speak English and Creole, growing up my grandmother tried to teach me little words to understand the language. I would always know when she was upset with me, she would yell “ou ap resevwa sou nè mwen an” which translates to “your getting on my nerves”. This grade stands out because it’s also how she expressed her love with a smile on her face. Unfortunately when she passed the knowledge of my language slowly slipped away from me. It reminds me of how Natalie Diaz mentioned in “Losing Father, Losing Faster”, “One of the saddest is when my elder teacher cannot answer a question, when he looks at me and says, you are ask me because I don’t know the answer but I also do not the answer and there is no one left for me to ask”. It is a quote that will continue to resonate with me because I understand what it is like to have no one to ask about your past, who you are as a person. Language makes a huge part of who we are