I can somewhat relate to Rodriguez’s life. Both of our parents are immigrants whose first language is not English. However, while Rodriguez slowly drifted away from his family’s origin and language throughout the course of the book, I think I have grown closer to my family. Also, Rodriguez was ashamed of his parents’ accent when they spoke English in public. When I was younger, I would also get nervous when I heard my mom talking to the other moms at a museum. I am proud of my parents for coming to a foreign place.…
udwig Wittgenstein once said in his book Logico Tractatus Philosophicus ,“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” This quotation means language has no limit, it’s something that can be translated into a wide variety. Both Amy Tan in the essay, “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez in the essay, “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” write about their struggle with their identities not only because of their race, but also the language there families speak. Amy Tan and Richard Rodriguez both struggled with there families language conflicting with the need to speak the language of society. While children they share similarities with their struggles, and they differ in their perception of the importance of maintaining their families…
Language is the system of words or signs that people use to express thoughts and feelings to each other. Language has an impulse on a person that allows them to make ties with a certain society, thus giving them a cultural identification. When residents of another country come to America and speak a contrasting language to English, immigrants most likely feel uneasy having to adapt to a completely new culture and learn the English language. During this journey, the individuals’ cultural identities might fade away as well as losing their efficient fluency on their native language. In Amy Tan’s, “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez “Aria: A Memoir of A Bilingual Childhood”, both authors experience the difficulties of language barrier and adjusting to a different lifestyle in order to develop as an individual in the United States.…
Most of my young adult life I have walked into a room where everyone was listening to a person describing a story, in Spanish, and I could not understand the details? Being a non-fluent Latinas, this meant I would not hear and understand the juicy gossip. However, with not speaking Spanish I have gone thought many challenges in my life. I have realized being a non-fluent Latina I have missed out in learning about my heritage, been judged by my appearance, and have taken steps to carry my culture to the next generation. My parents did not teach us to speak Spanish which is one of my biggest regrets in life. This language is a part of my history that I will not be able to teach the next generation. However, as an adult I have made it a choice…
I looked around and I wasn’t in my room anymore, I was in the hospital during my grandpa’s surgery. The waiting room was cold and sterile and the smell of antiseptic was so strong I could taste it. Waves of uneasiness washed over me as if they were trying to drown me. My grandma and my mother were sitting in the room with me and they looked just as scared. I remembered how long my grandpa was in surgery to get his windpipe removed, how I had thought that I wouldn’t make it through the hours he was and that if he didn’t then I wouldn’t make it for much longer afterward.…
I was the first generation of my family to be born in the United States, so my family often spoke English and Spanish at home. When I entered pre-school I began learning more English and less Spanish. Throughout that year I began to speak less and less Spanish at all because I was ashamed of it. I yearned to be like the other girls in my class, those who spoke without an accent. My family rejoiced that I began speaking fluent English,…
I came to the United States from Colombia when I was just 3 years old. I was brought into the country of bright opportunities because like every other parent, my mother and father wanted what was best for me. My mother had to give up her dream job in Colombia, which was being an accountant for an essentially important company, in order to facilitate my well-being and open up the doors for my future. As the years progressed, I began to acquire both languages, English and Spanish, but there was a point where I became tongue tied and had to assist in speech therapy. My parents would talk to me in Spanish at home but in school all I would hear was English, my mind was extremely confused to the point that I made my own language by using both tongues in one sentence.…
On my first day of school, I was not able to communicate with my peers as Spanish was all I knew. Learning English became my priority and I worked meticulously every day to close the barrier between my peers and me. Fortunately, there was a bilingual teacher, Mrs.Verburg, who became the only person who could…
I agree with Rodriguez that your heritage will forever remain your identity but it is possible to have multiple identities in a sense of becoming accustomed to wherever you are. You can embrace your new profound identity and in a sense of individualism in order to succeed in life. Bilingual education to me is important because not only does it teach you to speak a universal language in America but also teaches you societal norms. Reason being is that once you’ve learned the proper language, mannerism, and culture you can choose to be the person you want to be. According to a writer at Kars4kids, which is an educational blog for parents, Merle Huerta suggests that “Bilingual education makes kids more adaptable and flexible in a changing environment.” (Huerta). With that being said, being bilingual can have adaptive benefits. The improvements in the cognitive and sensory process from bilingual experience may help students or anyone learning English to better process information in the environment. Furthermore, bilingual education can help train the brain by learning and inhibiting a new language which allows bilingual people to access newly learned vocabulary. In addition to benefits of Bilingual education Matthew Lynch, who is an author of The Call to Teach and editor of The Edvocate, states in his article that bilingual education, “helps remove international language barriers.” (Lynch). Lynch argues that bilingual education has cultural benefits to people learning two languages together. People who come from households that have English as a primary language can lend their language expertise to friends from Spanish-speaking homes, and vice versa. Overall in Rodriguez’s perspective, I understand that what once was his sacred and private language became something almost non-existent to him was abhorrent. Not only was language was changed but also his…
Growing up in an immigrant household came with many difficulties. Learning English was very easy for me because I was always in daycare but coming home was hard because I could not communicate with my parents. Trying to communicate with my parents was very difficult and frustrating. Even though it was at a young age, it was difficult to live in a household who only spoke Spanish.…
Everything was great until I went to school for the very first time. I remember feeling scared and out of place. Everyone around me spoke a language that I did not understand. It was not until a few days of going to school that a teacher finally spoke to me in Spanish and explained that everyone was speaking English. I knew the language as “lengua de el gringo,” which translates to “tongue of the gringo”.…
In “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” Richard Rodriguez describes his experience of growing up as an immigrant from Mexico. Rodriguez throughout the essay shows support against bilingual education and encourages immigrants to adapt to the English language because he believes immigrants can be more successful adapting and learning the American culture. Rodriguez recalls as a child he was forced to learn English when he started school. One day his teachers came to his home and explained that he was not doing so well in school and therefore the English language needed to be enforced in the house (453). The teachers asked for his parents to try to speak English with Rodriguez and his siblings. Rodriquez explains how speaking Spanish at home was the family language and it made him feel a intimate and close with his family and it seemed easier to bond. Rodriguez felt after the switch to English they lost the closeness and the bond within the family and started to fall apart from one another. The essay starts off with Rodriquez knowing only Spanish and English sounding like only noise to him, and later towards the end as he concludes the essay he ends with knowing English and losing his ability to speak Spanish, the language he remembered speaking with such warmth and love.…
Finally the day came and it was time for me to go to school. I was scared; I did not know where I was, and I did not know a single word in English. There was no way my mom would stick me in an English classroom. They moved me to a Spanish one; there I had a more clear idea of what I was learning. The teacher was a sweet, calm lady; she had patience with my wiggly and off place writing, to this day I have not figured out whether she understood it or not. Once I learned my ABC’s here came the small words of animals and things like for example “oso” which means bear in Spanish. Learning to read and write seamed so boring. I had to sit down and do homework which required my attention, but I preferred to draw and play. Learning was torture; I would read very slowly, even when I tried to read those small picture books for small kids, I was useless by that time.…
ichard Rodriguez, in his essay "Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood," wants reader to understand that bilingual education is not needed due to the fact that one can still keep their cultural identity. As he also brings about the point that intimacy is not about language you speak, but much rather about the people you are surrounded by. He points out the obstacles he faced as growing up a Hispanic American growing up in an American society. Many of those struggles he faced were in his early childhood as he battled to understand and learn english. As Rodriguez struggled to grasp the english language, he also found that he was losing the comfort he found in Spanish.…
The word processor has changed the way we use English Language because the popularly used word processor from Microsoft and similar other word processors which were from IBM and other open source software are all using the American version of English.Sitting here in Mumbai I am appalled by one thing is the dying European English which is being used lesser because it is limited to literature and books.Also I studied British English in school but my college education was completely ruled by American literature because we essentially didn't study British English in a world increasingly being dominated by American Literature .So as I am typing I am using British English and American Spellings because the word processor is designed so.I am not being Anti American here.Just an observation over the use of language because of the proliferation of Media from the US markets to the other parts of the world and a consumerist culture against the conservative British which uses an old English.Language has evolved but both the British and American English coexist and many of us have messed up big time with using our English because we fail to realize that we are using both types of English.Also Twitter and Facebook including Quora are American Mega websites all in big scale.So they endorse The US English.Anybody can share your thoughts here.When people read the bible they shifted from old testament to new testament though the old testament remained,it has some what been discounted.Similarly though the works of Shakespeare etc are becoming increasingly difficult to understand as we are shifting from an old English to new English which i call the English (US)this has also impacted Journalism in a big way where our Journalists are using essentially a mix of…