Now that I am older, I sometimes look at all my experiences that I have had with literacy as I was growing up and how often other people and myself use literacy in our every day lives. Especially for me growing up learning and understanding two different languages, English and Spanish. Although with Spanish I had to learn two different dialects with my mom being from Guatemala and my dad being from Mexico. I also had to learn English when going to school or whenever I was outside of home, which also did have different dialects but in a different way. I would see how literacy was used differently from three different cultures. Its also interesting when I would use it when I was around family and during holidays. .
Growing up learning Spanish was a bit difficult for my siblings and I. Mainly because of how my parents would use words that have the same meaning but because of the dialect that they're accustomed to that's the word that they use. For example when we would say the word you in Spanish I would use "tu" because that's how my dad say you in Spanish. But my mother would always get upset with me because she would say that the correct way to say you in Spanish is "vos". She would then give me a lecture about how there are different ways to say you in Spanish, like vos, tu, usted, ustedes, and vosotros. But the most respectful way to say you in Spanish when talking to an adult or elder is "vos" or "usted", while "tu" would be best used when talking to your friends or peers. Also when naming things they both used different words even though they meant the same thing it's just the dialect they grew up around and where they grew up taught them differently. For example a straw, my mom would call it "una pajia" while my dad called it a "popote". This was most interesting when talking to other Spanish-speaking people because it helped me deduce where they were from.
