Englishes – Shon Mack Jr

Growing up in Brooklyn, East New York, I remember multiple encounters with different “englishes”. To me, it depends on who I was around. Many people speak differently around the the 5 boroughs because people come from all over. We have so many races and cultures in New York City that its wild, so of course there will be people that doesn’t speak “English” fluently due to them not really learning. This can lead to many confusing conversations, and instead of responding with “I understand \” we respond with a awkward “Huh?” or “what?” or we just stare with confusion. I experienced this before inside of the train station. One day I was going to work, regular Monday morning during school hours. I took the A train all the way to Hoyt which I usually get on the G train headed to Court Sq Queens, when a Filipino male asked for directions.  He spoke to me and he struggled with his words, his sentences didn’t come out “correctly” at all. Adjectives weren’t used right and he even used hand signals to point in the direction in which he needed to go. Now no lie, in my head I was like “HUHHH?”, but did I ask out loud? The answer was yes, yes I did ask but not in the disrespectful way. Just like Jamila Lyiscott stated “I have decided to treat all three of my languages as equals because I’m “articulate”. I have different ways of speaking the English language because “the English language is multifaceted oration subject to indefinite transformation.” Therefore, I didn’t use slang as I would normally talk, neither did I speak in a “intellectual” way. I spoke in a simple way that the man could clearly understand and so that I can understand what he is asking. I learned overtime that instead of lucking at the person who doesn’t speak my language fluently with confusion and rejection, use my knowledge on how to speak to different people in order to help that person. So I view english as a language of shape shifting. The reason being that “English” can be spoken and heard in different ways depending on the person or people involved. For example, my english can be different from a person in Texas. They speak differently so our english is different from theirs even though we from the US still. There is different situations where I need to adjust my “English” in order to communicate with other people who may not understand