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More handpicked essays just for you.
Effects of bilingualism on the individual and society
Bilingualism and its effects
Effects of Bilingualism
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Being a bilingual, the author of the essay ‘Aria’, Richard Rodriguez had difficulties speaking English when he was in first grade in school. It would have pleased him to hear others speaking in Spanish with him. He somewhat ignored speaking English because he thought English is a public language and Spanish is private one. The writer was more comfortable with speaking his family language than speaking English. After a great effort put by his parents and teachers, he was finally able to speak English. Although English became his primary language, his parents responded him differently, as he spoke to them less. On other words, communication gap had been established between him and his parents.
Similar Themes in Richard Rodriguez' Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood and Carmen Tafolla's In Memory of Richi
In Aria,” from Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Richard Rodriguez shares his autobiography of when he first entered his classroom at catholic school. He writes of his transition through emotions of fear, insecurity, and self-doubt as he transitions from the privacy of his home to the public world. Richard develops an understanding that his that private language that is used in his home is different from the language that is publicly acceptable in school. His school teachers pushed his americanalization which led him to discover his identity, since he indeed was an American but grew up in a Spanish speaking home. Through this journey of journey of assimilation he discovers that learning this new language brought him a sense of comfortability and acceptance. Richard Rodriguez heavily relates to the Crevecoeurian immigrant because he was willing to learn a new language, leave his culture behind, and embrace his American identity.
Rodriguez highlights comfortable, soothing, and intimate sounds of his family language by saying, “Spanish seemed to me the language of home. It became the language of joyful return. A family member would say something to me and I would feel myself specially recognized. My parents would say something to me and I would feel embraced by the sounds of their words. Those sounds said: I am speaking with ease in Spanish. I am addressing you in words I never use with los gringos. I recognize you as someone special, close, like no one outside. You belong with us. In the family”. The private language is like an intimate secret code among the family. Despite the struggle with their family languages, the author understands that the private language being spoken has been a large part of their lives and has helped shaped their view of the
As his intimate family life at home ended, so did his childhood. The sounds of his family speaking Spanish were sounds of his childhood. When his family stopped using Spanish as their home language it shattered an intimate bond. Only when he established trust though friends in English and distinguish intimate voices, he was able to hear himself addressed as an intimate at home again. Spanish for him was associated with closeness. He does not "credit to language what he should credit to his family members" (35), which he feels is a convenient mistake many often make.
	"It mattered that education was changing me. It never ceased to matter. My brother and sisters would giggle at our mother’s mispronounced words. They’d correct her gently. My mother laughed girlishly one night, trying not to pronounce sheep as ship. From a distance I listened sullenly. From that distance, pretending not to notice on another occasion, I saw my father looking at the title pages of my library books. That was the scene on my mind when I walked home with a fourth-grade companion and heard him say that his parents read to him every night. (A strange sounding book-Winnie the Pooh.) Immediately, I wanted to know, what is it like?" My companion, however, thought I wanted to know about the plot of the book. Another day, my mother surprised me by asking for a "nice" book to read. "Something not too hard you think I might like." Carefully I chose one, Willa Cather’s My ‘Antonia. But when, several weeks later, I happened to see it next to her bed unread except for the first few pages, I was furious and suddenly wanted to cry. I grabbed up the book and took it back to my room and placed it in its place, alphabetically on my shelf." (p.626-627)
In the work of Amy Tan’s “Mother’s Tongue” she provides a look into how she adapted her language to assimilate into American culture. She made changes to her language because her mother heavily relied on her for translation. She was the voice of her mother, relaying information in standard English to those who were unable to understand her mother’s broken english. She tells about her mother’s broken english and its impact on her communication to those outside their culture. Her mothers broken english limited others’ perception of her intelligence, and even her own perception of her mother was scewed: Tan said, “I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mothers ‘limited’ English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say.” (419) The use of standard english was a critical component to Tan’s assimilation into American culture. Standard English was an element she acquired to help her mother but more importantly is was an element that helped in her gain success as a writer. Tan changed her ‘Englishes’ (family talk) to include standard English that she had learnt in school and through books, the forms of English that she did not use at home with her mother. (417-418) Tan realized the ch...
So that was the case for Richard Rodriguez in “Aria”, he expands on his life as a kid learning to speak English. And his parents not knowing how to speak English fluently. He would not like going to school because when he would try to speak English he would get made fun of. English was never comfortable to him. But that all changed when the nuns from his school came to his house to tell his parents to speak more English at home. He felt broken, there was no talking in Spanish in the house just English. From there he started to learn more English at school and became fluent in it. He even forgot how to pronounce things in Spanish after that. Richard Rodriguez said, “I would speak, or try to speak, Spanish, and I would manage to utter halting, hiccupping sounds that betrayed my unease” (Richard 319). He felt disappointed in himself for not being able to speak Spanish. This is a showing of how language has power. Just because he stopped speaking a language, he forgot it and became more fluent in another
Many people immigrate to the United States from different countries to begin a better life. Once in the American territory, the first step for success is to learn the English language. Richard Rodriguez, the writer of "Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood" describes the language decisions he faced as a child: "Outside the house was public society; inside the house was private" (16). The English language is the primary language in the United States, and it must be learned to be able to communicate with the public world. The language that we speak at home is considered to be private because it is only used in the presence of the people we feel comfortable with, our family. Families immigrate to the United States from Mexico to find and give their children a better opportunity to succeed. The children of immigrants who have been raised or born in the United States were able to adapt much faster to the English language. The Spanish language, in the case of Mexicans, is part of our origin that most of us inherit from our ancestors although in the United States many, including me, seem to add a new language, which gives us better opportunities.
The writings of Amy Tan and Richard Rodriguez’s depicts a bilingual story based on two differing culture. On Mother Tongue, “Tan explores the effect of her mother’s “broken” English on her life and writing” (506). On the other hand, Richard Rodriguez “recounts the origin of his complex views of bilingual education through Public and Private Language” (512). From a child’s eyes, Tan and Rodriguez describe each joys and pain growing up in a non-English speaking family. Hence, may be viewed that cultural differences plays a major role on how one handles adversities.
Tan’s essay does more than just illuminate the trouble with language variations; her essay features a story of perseverance, a story of making a “problem” harmonize into a “normal” life. Almost like a how-to, Tan’s essay describes an obstacle and what it takes to go above and beyond. Mirroring Tan, I have been able to assimilate “the [world] that helped shape the way I saw things” and the world that I had to conform to (Tan 129). Life is a struggle, but what makes it worth it is the climb, not what is on the other side.
In this summary the author Tanya Barrientos is explaining how hard it is be different. In the beginning of the summary Barrientos explained how people automatically assume that she is Latina. She grew up in an English-speaking world. Her parents are born and raised in Guatemala but she moved to the United States at the age of three. When her parents came to the United States of America they stopped speaking English immediately. Her parents wanted her to read, talk, and write only in English. She felt like she was the only one who needed to learn how to speak Latino, even though she looks like she can already. In the summary she went on saying that she was trying to fit in and become a regular person so other Latinas won’t judge her. All she
The audience Tan is reaching are people who are very ignorant to the fact that others who speak broken English, regardless of race, know that they are taken advantage of and are not given the respect that a fluent English speaking person would get. The essay is also aimed toward people who can relate to the ?language of intimacy? (36), which is a different sort of English ...
English is an invisible gate. Immigrants are the outsiders. And native speakers are the gatekeepers. Whether the gate is wide open to welcome the broken English speakers depends on their perceptions. Sadly, most of the times, the gate is shut tight, like the case of Tan’s mother as she discusses in her essay, "the mother tongue." People treat her mother with attitudes because of her improper English before they get to know her. Tan sympathizes for her mother as well as other immigrants. Tan, once embarrassed by her mother, now begins her writing journal through a brand-new kaleidoscope. She sees the beauty behind the "broken" English, even though it is different. Tan combines repetition, cause and effect, and exemplification to emphasize her belief that there are more than one proper way (proper English) to communicate with each other. Tan hopes her audience to understand that the power of language- “the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth”- purposes to connect societies, cultures, and individuals, rather than to rank our intelligence.
The purpose of Amy Tan’s essay, “Mother Tongue,” is to show how challenging it can be if an individual is raised by a parent who speaks “limited English” (36) as Tan’s mother does, partially because it can result in people being judged poorly by others. As Tan’s primary care giver, her mother was a significant part of her childhood, and she has a strong influence over Tan’s writing style. Being raised by her mother taught her that one’s perception of the world is heavily based upon the language spoken at home. Alternately, people’s perceptions of one another are based largely on the language used.
...xpressing her Chinese culture. Mastering a second language allows her to articulate her and her mother’s thoughts; it is a foundation for her pride and a foundation to express herself. For Gloria Anzaldua, instead of choosing one language over the other, she chose a mix of the two and fights for it. She realized the value of her language when she lost it and now treasures it. The kind of Spanish she speaks is neither English nor Spanish, but both. It is overflowing with culture from Medieval Spain, France, Germany, etc., just from the origins of the words. It is her pride and a representation of herself, fighting and living. In conclusion, in addition to Lera Boroditsky’s article proving that the structure of language affects how we think, the articles by Eric Liu, Amy Tan, and Gloria Anzaldua show how language is a foundation for a person’s culture, pride, and self.