Englishes

Laura Rivas 

English Unit 1

September 11, 2020 

                                                                                                        Englishes 

                                 When watching the “3 Ways To Speak English” video by Jamila Lyiscott I automatically understood where she was coming from. I experienced this a lot growing up and especially once I started getting older. When I was in middle school every class had a poster that read, “STANDARD ENGLISH.” This was one of our most important rules. Our teachers and principals believed it was important to teach kids how to speak “properly” from a young age, so that when they get older and have to look for jobs they know how to have a proper conversation with others. Our teachers would even go to the extent of ignoring the students comment or question if it wasn’t said in what we called standard english. That would result in the student thinking about what they said and correcting themselves and to remembering to think before they speak next time. They would also remind us that there are different ways to talk to people and the way you would speak to your friends isn’t the same way you would speak to your parents.

Even though at times this was very annoying, I am grateful for it because when it was time for me to go to find a job I was successful. I can switch from slang to spanglish to “standard english.” in the video Jamila Lyiscott said something similar. She says, “‘Cause I speak three tongues One for each: Home , school and friends I’m a tri-lingual orator Sometimes I’m consistent with my language now Then switch it up so I don’t bore later.”

“Today, a baffled lady observed the shell where my soul dwells And announced that I’m “articulate” Ironically this isn’t much of a complement, the person saying this is basically stating that she knows how to speak well, but there is no correct way to speak. Sometimes people have accents, sometimes english is not everyone’s first language. In the environment that I grew up in, there were people from all around the world. I went to school with Latinos, Asian, Indian, and a lot of times they had accents, but that did not make their English wrong or bad.