Language is me.
“Hi, I’m Taytiana.” It was my first day at SLA freshman summer institute, and I wanted to make a good impression
“Hey Taytiana, My name is Jess! I love your bangs!”
“Thanks, I like ya hair, ya're so pretty”
“Awe, thanks hun. You have an accent,where are you from?”
“Uhh….North Philly.You?” I said puzzled thinking to myself, where else could I be from and what accent?
“Fishtown!”
This statement confused me even more because where I live in North Philly is right next to fishtown. Fishtown is a primarily white neighborhood. My neighborhood is more of the slums of North Philly, with all the drug corners and junkies. Coming to terms with the fact that I had an accent was hard for me because it was so unbelievable that I could have one! Of course everyone has a distinct voice but did I really have an accent? When I got home my mom said ‘maybe it’s because you are Puerto Rican’, which made me look even closer at the typical stereotypes of Latina speech. I slightly fit the bill; feisty, fast and putting accents on English words the way they were in Spanish. Although, these things were barely noticeable to my family(who barely considered me Puerto Rican or Nicaraguan, because the color of my pale skin, freckles, and light eyes) me speaking surely must of stuck out to someone who has barely heard anyone roll their R’s or or put accents on A’s and O’s. Something else that must of stuck out to people must of been my slight use of slang from my ‘hood’. Growing up with uncles as drug dealers and gang members you might develop a sly but tough tone. Not to mention having family from the bronx, I must of picked up a thing or two.
For a long while I figured if I can find a way, a way maybe to sound more white, maybe people wouldn’t take me as a huge joke or laugh at the way I say things. Maybe, just maybe, if I could cover where I am from people's moms they wouldn’t look at me in fear from my slang or be threatened by the loud proudness in my voice. “ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity-I am my language. Until I can take pride in my Language, I cannot take pride in myself” as Glona Anzaldua said in borderlands/ la frontera. This is exactly what I did, instead of excluding myself from the beauty of my roots, I tried to rip them out; but this was my time to reground myself and take pride in one of the huge things that make up me - my language.
From borderlands/ la frontera by Glona Anzaldua “for some of us language is a homeland” The way my tongue rolls and I exaggerate sounds is making each word mine with a little twist. It’s the only thing that keeps me sane when I am not walking on the ground where I was raised on or taken back to the things that gotten carried from the motherland my family speaks so greatly of, that I know is great. When I speak spanglish, my mix of spanish, english, and slang; I can feel my family in my veins and my jays smacking the pavement as my cousin's footsteps follow all at once. No matter where I am, my language takes me home to my family.
“My name is Taytiana and I am from North Philly” Said Saamir with his hand on hip and other snapping in one long circle on stage, in a feisty manner.
I dropped my jaw and I thought to myself ‘what? are you kidding me?’crossing my arms as a slightly irritated emotion took over my face. While laughs filled the room.
“I don’t think I sound like that.”
“A little,” Savannah said giggling.
Then I realized the point of it was to portray and pick up characteristics of someone who inspired us and I laughed and joined the claps because I am proud of where I am from; and if a funny Puertorican accent,that I never knew I had until my freshman year at Science Leadership Academy High School showed that then that's okay with me. You can’t hide from your speech only improve upon it. My language is much more than the way that I speak or how I speak, it is my culture, my neighborhood, my family and most of all me. When I open my mouth and a rhythm of my molded and made-up words are released, it is music to my ears. Growing up I have never cared about how I spoke, unless of course I was being rude or trying not to say something a bit crazy; now I take the greatest pride in my speech because it is everything I am, from, to and going to.
