Every summer i trouble to my home country “Dominican Republic” with the goal of spending time with my father how had divorse with my mother when i turned 4, and this is a really important part of my life and to the story because it will explain why i travel every summer and any other time that i have the chance. I am now 18 years old and came to the U.S when i was around 13 or 14, after coming to the U.S and learning a  new language i noticed that a lot will be changing of course and i would have to adapt because life is different here in the U.S and in my home country the Dominca Republic. But something that I did not prepare for is that when translating from english to spanish, the wording I must use is very different when talking to a person within my community compared to another person that speaks spanish just as good as me but from a different country/community.

After noticing the big difference in the way i talked spanish compared to others who also talked Spanish, i was shocked at the big difference within the same language, actually it was so different that me as well as other communities wouldn’t call it speaking spanish, instead they would say i was talking Dominican which i found really interesting and so after thinking for some time i could not help but accept that we talk very differently we all do. And so i decided to pick the word which i believe to be most commonly used by my community and most unique since just like many of the things we say does not only change meaning because of the sentence it is being used with but it also changes according to your face expression/body language.

“Klk” is a word which is used by my community a lot and it makes sense to us to bring it up in almost every single one of our conversations. This word is most commonly written as “klk” which is just three letters K, L, K but it can also be written as “Queloque”, “qlq” again three letters Q, L, Q, and many more but this are the most common ones, as for the meaning it could mean various things like, what’s up“klk”, how are you“klk (with a face expression)”, what’s up with you“klk con tigo”, what do you want “klk (with a tone)” and much more, this word can fill in for a lot of other words all depending in the situation, sentence, physical expression and face expression. The reason why the word is important to us is because it is something that we have used for a very long time now and although we have no problem with others using the words, it would be like an insult if someone were to try and make it their own or try to change the meaning of what i would call “our word”. Something which people should be aware of while using this word is that, because of all of the different meanings behind the word it should be used at the right time with the right words in order to get your message across and so it does not get misinterpreted.

If i had to publish this writing i would not have a community in specific, instead i would want everyone to be able to read it, no matter what language they speak because it could explain a lot as of why is it that my community/Dominicans use that word so often, because people who are new to the word or that hang around with my community they would sometimes try to make fun of us for constantly using the word without knowing that we use it because it comes natural to us and it is something which we grew with and so we find it short and comfortable to use.

This word doesn’t have to be use in at a specific time or place or with a specific person, this word is use whenever it feels write, this is used as a everyday word which is freely used but mostly used when talking to someone you don’t happen to have professional relationship with for example, when in a interview or when giving a presentation although it is not offensive it is not a very professional word to use, although you can use it anywhere, anytime and with whomever you want, it is less commonly used when wanting to be professional. Some examples of people using this word in the U.S is constantly seen when talking to a friend or family member, but in DR this is also used when talking to a strangers and enemies/people you don’t like not just families or friend, because although here we are able to use it not everyone will understand or uses the same words to communicate with even when talking spanish while in DR people understand the word no matter the where you go.