Blog Post #3 Students’ Rights to Their Own Language Response

With an unequal distribution of education in the first place, it’s hard for me to completely say whether or not a language is right or wrong. Some people were not given the tools or education to learn standard English and some people don’t speak standard English at home. I grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood and education system. I even had a speech pathologist as a child so I could pronounce all of my consonants and vowels correctly. For most of my childhood, I had a stereotypical, New York Italian accent since because of my dad. I guess before I was born, my mother from Jersey spoke like that even though her parents have heavy Filipino accents. It’s very confusing. But growing up, I was taught Spanish throughout middle school, high school and half of college. Latin was another language I was forced to learn, that in which I earned a lovely 50% on the final since I didn’t think it was important and no other school on Staten Island made this a requirement. Eventually, I came to the idea that speaking properly without a New York accent sounded a lot more educated and would be better for my career as a broadcast journalist. My entire accent transformation is available through my YouTube channel where you can watch my speech change over the past 9 years. Cringy— I know. 

In Staten Island, however, a lot of the Italian-American people who honestly probably have never been to Italy in their entire lives, pronounce so many Italian words wrong. Calamari sounds like “galamad” and soppressata sounds like “soop-uh-sohd”. A year ago when I went to Italy and asked the true opinion of a native Italian did I learn for a fact that these pronunciations were horribly wrong. I was embarrassed because when you go back to the origin, you hear the best version of the word. I still pronounce words like calamari and mozzarella wrong, but that’s because it’s how I was raised and sometimes I will feel out of place in a social situation with my Italian-American friends if I say it the proper way.

The whole reason why non-standard English is scrutinized is because of the implementation of institutions by white people who colonized America. I feel like this topic has too many circles to go in because what is the standard supposed to be? Is there supposed to be a standard? If there is no standard then how do will we be graded and tested? Is this standard fair? For example, if you’re writing a medical journal on the coronavirus, using non-standard English could possibly confuse people and lead to discrepancies. In a medical case, you would want to use standard English. But, in other cases that don’t need standard- English to convey a message very precisely such as a memoir or personal narrative, I feel like that’s fine to speak however one would like. I don’t know. I’m confused. Because also copula absence or the absence of using the verb ‘to be’ in a sentence historically roots back to West Africa. But, a double negative doesn’t as far as I know. However, the Students’ Rights to Their Own Language says, “ If teachers understand that the spoken language is always primary and the written language is a separate and secondary or derived system, they will be able to recognize that students inexperienced in the written system may still have great competence and facility in the spoken language.” If a student can’t pass a standard exam, it doesn’t mean they aren’t smart and don’t understand the idea of the text. It may just be that they’re not used to standard phrasing and structure, which is rewarded by passing. I don’t believe a student should be corrected if they speak non-standard English. They may very well be articulate in their own home language, which should not be discredited and looked down upon.