Connections

Magdalena Camargo

Professor Reyes

English  105

21 September 2015

Connections

The language you speak gives a  person an idea of your identity. For example, if you’re speaking Spanish people are quick to say that you are Hispanic. However, they don’t tend to question the way you speak it.  Gloria Anzaldúa talks about her different languages in, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”. Her examples are standard English, working class and slang English, standard Spanish, standard Mexican Spanish, north  Mexican Spanish dialect, Chicano Spanish, Tex-Mex, and pachuco., in other words she speaks 8 different languages.  Jamila Lyiscott, an orator, tends to see languages the same way. She calls herself   trilingual, she speaks English, slang, and her native language. She speaks three languages because “[She] had to borrow [our] language because [hers] was stolen”,  meaning she has to use or had to learn English to be understood and communicate, while her first language is only used at home . However, I see languages a different way. My version of Anzaldúa is that she speaks two languages, English and Spanish.  The rest of her 6 “languages” are her dialects of English and Spanish. Jamila Lyiscott speaks one language, English. Slang and Jamaican-English are her dialects. I don’t necessarily disagree with everything they say, Anzaldua and Lyiscott both have strong opinions, at one point Lyiscott convinced me to think her way, but I still think what they believe as “languages” are just their dialects.