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Amberly Wegele  

Prof. Jewell

ENG1101

11 September 2019

Being a German Boriqua has brought a few troublesome terms of events that made it somewhat difficult to make my way around life. I was raised with my Boriqua family and developed the basic Spanish vocab as I grew, but a week after I turned 5 years old, I was sent to Santo Domingo till I was 6. I came back to NYC with a full Dominican tongue and no English. I couldn’t understand anyone that didn’t speak Spanish, my mother was flabbergasted to say the least. All she could do was look at me with astonishment and say out loud “My baby!! What did they do to you?!”. But what did she expect? A five year old who’s still absorbing what’s around her being sent to a place where there’s one language being spoken. Of course I learned spanish and forgot English, they didn’t need Englsih so why did I? Spanish was all they used and soon enough so did I. However, not only was it a problem that I forgot my English, but I only knew how to speak Spanish, I couldn’t write it or read it properly. The school wasn’t sure what classes to put me in, they put me in a class with all English speakers to force my Englsih back out and tuck away my Spanish tongue. I’m still not sure why they did that to me, because I still don’t know how to properly read and write in Spanish— I use common sense to read and spell, it’s not rocket science but my spelling and reading still isn’t perfect.