She said, "You know what nay-nay, I am so very proud of you being a big girl for your little brother. Moving is always a difficult decision to make especially when you have children. But, once you get a chance to make friends in the neighborhood I am confident that you will love this place. Don't knock it until you try it". And that's exactly what I did.
A whole week had gone by before I came out of the house again. This summer was going to be the worst for me. All my friends were in the old neighborhood, probably playing at the community playground. I wonder who took my place in the hop scotch tournament we had going. The words "don't knock it until you try it" came back into my mind. What the hell, I thought, why waste the entire summer cooped up in this house" I grabbed my jacket and went outside to see what the neighborhood had to offer me. As I sat down on my front porch I heard an intoxicating sound coming from the house next door. I could not for the life of me understand what he was saying, and even though the words were foreign the music was catchy. .
After about twenty minutes, my foot begun to uncontrollably tap to the beat. I was so busy enjoying the new sound that I heard I did not notice a group of girls around my age waving at me trying to get my attention. One of the girls motioned for me to come over to where they were sitting, "Me", I said loudly as I pointed to my chest, "Si", said the little girl while shaking her head up and down. I walked across the street and sat on the steps. One of the girls spoke the most broken English out of all of them; she seemed to be the overall interpreter for the bunch. "Hi, my name is Bambi and I am 8 jears old, be here since I was 5 jears old. What is you name"? "My name is Willena, but you can call me Nay-Nay, I just moved here. Do any of you go to Roger Williams Middle School"? Silence which at first creeped me out until I realized that her English was nowhere near broken, it was just missing all together.
In many Latino (also called Hispanic) youth subcultures, it is fashionable to variously mix Spanish and English, thereby producing Spanglish. Spanglish is the name for the admixture of English words and phrases to Spanish for effective communication. ... The new generation of American Hispanics want to preserve knowing and using Spanish as equal to learning and using English. ...
These parents and family members tend to force their children into first learning their native language and culture before learning English and the American Culture. ... This prevented them of extensively learning both languages, English and Portuguese; and ended in a very similar case of the "Spanglish" language that many of the Hispanic Americans speak in Miami today. ... Without a doubt, their children and grand-children will have the pleasure of discovering their parents and family's culture and language after they succeed in learning the culture of their new home. ...
However, being bilingual is very challenging; learning another language besides from someone's first language usually takes a lot of time and effort. ... On the other hand, some people believe that learning a second language is not necessary and is a waste of time. ... They may then have a mash up of the two languages that they are learning and speak languages that are improper such as "Spanglish" and "Chinlish", etc. ... Learning Chinese and English simultaneously at early age had given me a lot of additional work, but I ended up coming to the Land of Opportunities where I have more oppo...
