Reminiscing

"In an instant, they agreed to give up the language (the sounds) that had revealed and acentuated our family's closeness."

8:33 PM |

Aria by Richard Rodriguez

Argument: The argument in this piece is that having to learn and practice an unfamiliar language at school and at home can potentially harm your relationship with your family. It's like all these years of you growing up so closely knit to your family by the ways of communication have been completely changed due to the language barriers in schools. (ex. Ricardo is now Richard) Basically, you have to change who you are and what makes you, you in order to succeed.

Quotes:

"- the clash of the two worlds, the faces and voices of school intruding upon the familiar setting of home."

This quote made me feel bad because I could not imagine someone coming into my house and, in an instant, changing my relationship with my family. (whether they knew it would happen or not)

"After English became my primary language, I no longer knew what words to use in addressing my parents."

I would feel so lost if I did not know how to talk to my parents, or if everytime I would speak in a way that was once comfortable for all of us, have them correct me in an unfamiliar language. I appreciate the author for writing this because I never thought it was this life altering for someone to be forced into another language.

"We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed. No longer so close; no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness."

This quote was important for me to include in my entry because it showed that by this family speaking a different language that they were unique. They were happy with joking around with each other's broken English. They were happy being who they were and proud of their individualism. No matter what experience they went through, they remained loving, but they were no longer as close. The father stopped speaking as much and became shy. This surprised me because he was the one who agreed to speak English. I think because, to his children, he knew a lot of the English language; now that his children and wife were progressing so much faster than he was, he didn't feel as included.

Questions, Comments:

I enjoyed reading this article because, again, it helped me realize what it is like not to speak fluent English. My boyfriend is from Brazil and there are so many times when I get frustrated with him because he doesn't understand what I say or what I mean and vise versa. I feel bad now that I get so upset because he really tries. I help teach him and he is getting A LOT better, and he even started teaching me Portuguese.

I felt that this was a pretty easy read. Not because it was short, but because I could relate. I understood where he came from because my boyfriend tells me all of the time. It takes a lot of patience and you can't expect anyone to be an expert in something so unfamiliar in an instant.

This related to Delpit...everything Delpit says we shouldn't do is being done. Trying to teach everyone the same way wil not work....it just doesn't happen like that! Everyone is different (clearly) so we need to think of new ways in helping everyone understand.