My Language My Name

When many people talk about language barriers and things like that they are referring to the understanding of a person from a different country. Although that is the typical type of language barrier there are others that struggle with language right here in their own country. One of those people use to be me. There have been many instances that I can think of when language barriers made me feel uncomfortable.

One time was when I started going to a new school. For nine of the twelve years I went to school I attend Davidson Academy, which is a private Christian school in Nashville. This was a school that had high standards for its students. We couldn’t listen to any kind of pop, r and b, or rap music. We got in trouble at that school if we told someone to shut up. Davidson Academy was a great school. I loved everyone there and learned a lot, but when my family moved closer to downtown Nashville, the kids that I went to school with were no longer the kids that lived in my neighborhood. So during the summer before my ninth grade year I decided that I wanted to dropout of private school and go to public.

On the first day of my ninth grade year I felt normal. Most of the freshmen were like me. They were getting use to a new school. For many of them this was the largest school they had ever attended, but for me two buildings seemed like a joke compared to my private school campus. It wasn’t until we went to lunch that I felt like I was different from everyone else.

When lunch started I tried to find people that I had seen I class. I remember the first words I said, Hello, how are u this afternoon. There was that awkward moment of silence at the lunch table before the guy directly in front of me started to laugh. Finally that same guy introduced himself to me as T man. Of course later I found out that that was not his real name but instead what everyone on the block called him. I remember him asking me what planet did I come from and I really didn’t understand why he had posed that question, so I decided not to entertain it. After that I sat down and really just listened to everyone else talk. I had never heard so many curse words and the N word used so many times in one sentence before in my life. It was awful. After lunch we went to our next class and that was when I realized that they use curse words and the n word at my school not to show anger but just because. When in class it seemed like every time I would speak that awkward moment of silence would come. It didn’t matter whether I was introducing myself or answering a question. So at the end of the day I went home and of course my parents asked me how my first was and I explained to them what I observed. Then my father sat me down and explained to me that I was in a very different environment and that people will probably look at me strange because of my up bringing. So, the next day I went to school and already I had people that for some reason did not like me. That’s when I met my friend Josh who explained to me that those people were just “haters” and all they do is hate on people. Then he said that word had got around that I was stuck up and thought I was better. All of this came about just because of the way I talked. I would go to class and answer a question and hear people say that’s that proper dude everyone talking about. Finally Josh offered to come to my house and tutor me on the language at school.

When Josh came to my house he commented on it by saying, “ this house is bad.” I took offense to that cause my parents worked to get where we were and for someone who I barely knew to criticize our house seemed wrong. Josh just laughed and explained that our house was dope and finally after he realized I didn’t know what that meant he said that bad means good so when he said our house was bad he meant it was nice. I just my tutorial session started sooner then I thought. So finally we went to my room and again Josh let me know how nice it was but this time by saying, “damn this is nice.” Hen he explained to me that curse words were used to express forms of excitement and that the N word was used as a culturally bonding unit. Now, most of this seemed crazy but I went a long with it any way. So the next day I tried to have a conversation like everyone else and again that awkward moment of silence came followed by laughter.

It was finally explained to me that the first few days of school I had made a name for myself and that everyone knew that I was proper so me trying to be like them was fake and that no matter how hard I tried I would always be known as the proper kid. That came to be true. The next four years went by and I was known as either the proper kid or Carlton, which was the son on Fresh Prince. My language was who I was and nothing I did could over shadow that.

English 102: The First Impression

When I first found out the topic of this course I was a little concerned. The inquiry to language did not sound all that exciting to me. I really did not know what to expect of the class. At first I thought it would be a class that would be all about writing and having to write perfect papers. Then I figured the class would talk about different languages and that excited me a little, but I have never had a class that just focused on the English language.
In just the two weeks that I have been in English 102 I have come to realize that the English language is very confusing. I do not know why anyone who is not American would want to learn such a complicated language. To me language is like a maze, because the more you think about it the more lost I get. For example, every year I try to retain all the rules for writing that I have learned over the last 12 years of school, but lately every year I find out the a least one of the rules that I learned the previous year real doesn’t exist. My senior year of high school all my English teacher ever told me was never use I in a formal paper, but in my 101 class last semester my professor told me that that rule really didn’t wasn’t important enough to keep using. Instead, she told me that as I writer I should claim my own words, cause if I did not then someone else will. Now, when I write papers all I do is say I. I probably say it too much cause in this current blog I’ve used the word I more then twenty times. Lol!
The readings that w have had to do in for class have been very interesting to me. I really enjoyed reading the first two, The Teacher, and “How language Works.” The idea that words are not things and things are not words but instead words are just ways of describing things is fascinating to me. I had never looked at language like we have done in this class and if it was not for this class I probably never would have. So to sum thing up, I love this class and I’m excited about the forth coming weeks!