Wande Adeyemo
August 28, 2015
Prof. Young
English 1100 Section 35
"How to tame a wild tongue"
1. The opening scene of Anzaldua in the dentist's char connects to the overall point of the essay because she's basically explaining what is happening to her. It show's that she's in the chair and the dentist doesn't know what to do with her tongue because it keeps touching the wads of cotton and it is always moving in her mouth. "The dentist is cleaning out my roots", this relates to the story because they're telling the main character that she isn't allowed to speak her language in certain places. They're trying to tell her that she can only speak English and the "Chicano" language she speaks isn't the right language
2. Anzaldua's use of Spanish between the story was very informative. She was explaining what specific phrases or words meant in Spanish. She was speaking the story about how her how she was talking to her mother and then she translated it into her language. In her culture and language, certain words were derogatory to men and some were to women. It wasn't confusing at all because she would foreshadow the translation before she said it. Her purpose was to prove that she didn't need to be robbed of her own language. She could speak both languages without being told that it was "wrong."
3. American english can be defined as standard Spanish and chicane Spanish can be described as nonstandard. Why? Because standard english and Spanish is something everyone is very common with. If you ask someone if they speak Chicano Spanish, it's more than likely that no one relates with the language so that's why it's nonstandard.
4. The necessity of speaking and/writing in Academic English is very important. It is very needed because people use it to communicate. Most people in this world, their first language is English. For them it's easy to read and write in English so in order to communicate with everyone else, they must know English.
5.Their are a lot of different types of "English" or should I say different types of how people speak it. There's proper english and there is slang english. I use both, I use slang when I'm with my friends or people around my age and I use "proper english" for people who are older than me or higher people than me like my manager, or my older siblings.
6. I use a secret lanague to communicate with my friends, especially my twin sister. When me and my sister are around a bunch of people and someone says something strange around us, we tend to glance at each other signaling that we both just heard something weird. We also text each other small words.
7.The form of english that I speak when I'm with my friends are slang english. We all have a different type of language outside of proper english that we use to understand each other. People that are older than us tend to ask why we talk that way. The form of english that I use when I talk to my mother is proper english. Because she is responsible for my life, I talk to her like I should properly and not like she is one of my friends from school.
8."I am my language." This means this is how I communicate with the outside world. This is who I identify myself with. This is correct. For me, I tend to remember people from how they talk. If they're talking out of the language that I know, then I remember it. With language, you can tell where the person is from, what type of person they are and how they revolve around their language.
9. The introduction and the conclusion of this story connects greatly. The narrator mostly speaks about how people were trying to rid her of her accent or her language. She often questioned why she would have to do it and she told other people what she was going through. Towards the end of the story, she shows that shes strong with her language and she know's no one will change that even if they try harder. She goes from questioning to confidence.
10. Language can be apart of your identity. It's how people can choose a way to remember you. Also, people can judge you off the way you talk. If you talk in a language that isn't clear or precise or people really don't understand how you talk, they'll remember that. If you talk properly and have a sense of knowledge, people will also remember that too.
11. Identity is very important to me. I want people to remember me in a positive way. I would hate for people to remember me badly because of how I talk. Anazaldua thinks it's important to have identity because in the story she says, "We know how to survive. When other races have given up their tongue, we've kept ours. We know what it is to live under the hammer blow of the dominant culture..." She is basically staying strong about the langauge she speaks. She wants people to identify her as having a strong language and not always settling because someone wants her too.
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