Abstract:

In this essay, we had to look at an experience that affected our reading, writing and speaking, a literacy narrative. The experience that I chose to talk about was when I began to teach myself Arabic. By learning Arabic, I began to have a wider understanding of languages throughout the whole world, especially the ones that already I spoke. By learning Arabic created an interest in languages and how they influence the people who speak them and the world. This was a turning point in my life, and a moment where I had to teach myself, something that I had not done before.

Narrative:

Cover Letter:

Whilst doing this assignment, one insight that I got was on the way that I view languages; languages that I grew up and learned and languages from around the world. I got to better understand what my relationship with language was and how it shaped my views of the world, the main one being that languages allows for people of different backgrounds and cultures to get a better understanding of each other and once I learned that a lot of the languages are related and have some relation and influence on each other I began to see the world as more connected than before. It made me scoff at the idea of one being a language purist, or even discriminatory towards other languages. Also, while writing this assignment, I began to understand rhetoric more and how to use it. I know that as a writer we all use rhetoric to some extent but I didn’t realize how important it was and how much it helped in pushing a narrative further. I used Ethos and Pathos, throughout the assignment; pathos by talking about my love for language and how it influenced my beliefs and ethos by talking about learning new languages and learning about languages on my own shows that I truly have a love for languages and that when I speak about them, I sort of know what I am talking about. Out of the Course Outcomes, I don’t think that my assignment filled all of the outcomes on the list, however I did hit on a couple of them, like creating a well-reasoned argument with evidence, and the evidence I use is my experience with language. I think that the structure in my writing is good, although I could add more details so that I could make my writing more immersive. I also recognize the power of language, and like I mention in my writing that it has the ability to connect different cultures is they get to understand each other’s languages. I also try to reach multiple audiences through my writing, especially people who either have a love for languages or that don’t understand the significance of languages. Other than those, I don’t think that my writing has been able to reach all of the outcomes, maybe because it wasn’t my goal to fill all of those outcomes but to be able to talk about my linguistic experience, ya feel me? All in all, I really did enjoy writing this, it was the first to me that I had talked about my experiences in that way, and I seriously hope I can do that in later assignments, tie that in with research or from texts that we read in class.

 

 

Kevin Ramirez

FIQWS: Language and Literacy

Miller & Nagales

10/1/18

 

How Learning a Language Changed My Worldview

Learning languages for most people can seem hard and unnecessary, especially living in the United States, as the only language that we really only use is English. We only learn English and we only focus on that language for a very long time, it becomes very hard for Americans to learn any other language. I always admired people who could speak multiple languages, especially now more than ever, because I thought how cool it was that a person was able to speak all of those languages and how easy it was for different cultures to interact that if it wasn’t for knowing that language the cultures would have never interacted at all.

My love for languages began my Junior year of high school. I remember watching a video on a teenage polyglot, Tim Doner who was able to speak 20 languages and I was not only impressed with how many languages he was speaking, but with how he was able to connect with other people from different cultures and understand where they come from and why they think in a certain way. After watching that I became determined to at least learn five languages fluently before I died, a small amount compared to Tim Doner. I guess I just wanted to teach myself something hard; I did this because I thought that if I learned a hard language learning the rest of the languages would be much easier in comparison. So, I decided to learn Arabic. I picked Arabic because of the fact that, according to the internet, it was very hard. The Arabic alphatbet also looks very cool and beautiful, which is why some people get it tattooed on themselves. Finally, I was very interested in Islam and was considering converting. Arabic is the liturgical language of Islam, although not all Muslims speak Arabic, they are able to understand some of it because of their religion. I started by learning the alphabet and by trying to get the Arabic phonetics right. The sounds were hard to make because they weren’t found in English or in Spanish, languages that I had become very fluent in, through exposure and years of practice. I began to listen to native speakers online, and I tried to mimic the sounds. Then, I began to copy down the letters: alif, baa’, taa’; trying to get each of them right, writing them over and over again. I didn’t realize it then, but the seeds for my love of languages were planted and would then blossom from that experience. I began practicing every day and before I knew it I had learned the Arabic alphabet, I knew how to write, and I knew the sounds that came with each of the letter. Suddenly those scribbles began to make sense. It was like I had solve a piece of puzzle, and I was one step closer to completing it.  I had learned to write and read it, but I still couldn’t understand it or speak it properly. Suddenly another challenged emerged. I had found out that, Arabic had two forms: a Standard form, a form that was used in the news, books and different forms of media and that was rarely ever spoken as well as a dialect form, which were varieties of Arabic spoken throughout different regions. Each of these variations had different influences from the regions that they were from, for example Moroccan Arabic, were influenced from the French and Amazigh languages, and Iraqi Arabic from Persian due to their close proximity to Iran. This made each of the varieties hard to learn and learning just one would make it hard to understand another. I decided that I wanted to learn the standard form of Arabic first, and then pick a dialect. It took me about 2 months to understand the rules, grammar and phonetics and even now I’m still learning new things about Arabic.

To try to improve my understanding of Standard Arabic, I bought a book called Easy Arabic Reader—which I though was ironic considering that as soon as I had looked at the first, I saw how hard it was. It was an entire passage written in Arabic, with only some of the words being defined to the side of the page. The book already assumes that you have an advance knowledge of reading and understanding Arabic, which I didn’t. Nevertheless, I promised myself that I would read and understand all of it by the end of the summer and by then have intricate knowledge of Arabic. I just looked at the page not knowing where to start, being able to only read and make the sounds but not understand it. I decided to begin by looking at the word and trying to sound it out to the best of my ability, then I after sounding it out I would go online and use Google Translate so I could find the meaning of the word, I wrote the meaning above the word and continued. Once I had reached the period of the sentence I understood the first sentence: “Jamal lives with his father, Adnan and his mother, Basma in the City of Monterey, California.” Suddenly, I wasn’t as lost as I thought I would be and my goal of finishing the book seemed possible. However, I got distracted from my main goal of learning Arabic and I became intrigued with the fact that Arabic had so many variations and influences, that different regions had gotten influence from other languages. I began to do more research and began to learn about regional dialects, and then with my knowledge of history I remembered how the Arabs had conquered what is now Spain and Portugal, and I wondered what influence Arabic had on Spanish and vice-versa, if there was any.

Soon, I began to see how much more the world was interconnected, due to languages. I began understanding that most of these languages were more related than one would initially expect, and I began to have a different outlook on the world. Let’s take Spanish for example, Spanish is a Romance language, meaning that it is related to Latin and is very closely related to Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian. However, Arabic also plays a larger influence on Spanish, that one might not know existed. This is because of the fact that the Umayyad Empire had taken full control of what is known as Spain and Portugal; so, a lot of Spanish words that begin with al- in Spanish are either Arabic words or words influenced by Arabic. The word Ojala which means “hopefully” in Spanish comes from the Arabic, inshallah, which means “if God wills it.” A language that I thought had no connection to my mother tongue turned out to be very closely related to it.   Through this new-found love of languages, I really wanted to be a history professor, but now I also want to be a linguistics professor. Now that I see the connection between Spanish and Arabic and now that I am taking Arabic classes, I think I’m going to back to that book now, it’ll definitely be easier than before. After learning Arabic, I began to see the world as more intertwined and connected, especially now, during a time where we feel more separated than ever and rather than our differences making us stronger, we use them to build animosity between us.  To most people language can sometimes seem like a barrier, separating people, however, I feel as though they are bridges allowing ideas, cultures and understanding to cross over, back and forth; only if we choose to cross that is.

 

Self-Reflection:

This essay helped me put everything in perspective. I hadn’t realized what had happened and hadn’t fully understood my relation with languages until I wrote this essay. Not only has my personal view on what languages are changed, but I have also figured out that this love of languages can be used for other things, such as being a translator in the future if I master another language or become a linguist. I hope that by reading this you can understand how my love for languages flourished through this experienced and why it’s so important to me.