Isi Luna
Caitlin Geoghan
WGCI History & Culture
09/30/21
Language Narrative Analysis
While reading Irfan’s essay, I found it remarkably interesting how we both have so many similarities among us. He as well must from young are and freshly learning this new language, he had to translate/speak for his family members. This is something hard to do because when you just learn a language you aren’t expected to know everything, and it can be difficult to put your thoughts into speech. At an early age we are put under pressure and become our parents’ personal translator. Irfan also mentions that he felt “proud and achieved”. This is very touching and underestimated, typically done to us. We don’t acknowledge the fact that we’ve never seen, heard, spoken before and simply being able to have decent communication is a great milestone to hit. He also says “I am less confident when I am writing in my teacher’s homework” I feel intimidated when it comes to writing or speaking in-front of someone with a higher that’s able to tell me if my way of something doing is correct or if it meets the standards they’re looking for. Overall agreeing that language is a challenging thing to perfect since we all have different perspectives on what language is to us sense many of us must accommodate and code switch between 2 different languages from the one we speak at home and or at school Ifran states “Learning a language is difficult at times, and it is more difficult when someone has no prior knowledge of the language yet has to acquire it in order to function in his other daily life” having zero knowledge about a new language makes it hard and already having learned and used a language completely different before had just has more to it.
Jack’s essay I found so many similarities between myself and Irfan. How we all felt excluded from society in this case school because of the language barrier. Jack also mentions “When I was a little kid, I thought it would be impossible to learn a new language” this is something we all had in common in out essays, despite managing to come a brand-new country with zero knowledge of what’s going on we still managed to overcome those stressful satiations and learned a language in which now we are confident enough with to communicate with others. Something no one really talks about is the separations most of us as immigrants experienced, most of us don’t migrate with both our parents, typically one parent comes first and sort everything out before bringing the whole family this is just to ensure that they have a place to stay or simply to obtain money. Jack was one of those families that were split as he says “mom told me we were going on a trip to visit my dad. I was excited because it was about to be almost six months without seeing him. At that time, I was a little bit confused. I thought we were just going to go to another town or city, but the thing I didn’t realize was that we were actually moving to a whole different country” this alone plays a part into adapting into a pristine environment. By Jack, this Suttle but especially important detail helps the reader connect with the essay as he using anecdotes to develop his story. Jack also says “A new language is not supposed to represent a barrier for someone, a new language is a whole new life with different experiences and opportunities” this is something we all had similar thoughts throughout all our essays despite being had learning a new language is an opportunity filled with great advantages to become successful if not someone better in this new opportunity that we were lucky enough to have change to obtain. Not everyone has the financial support to move into a whole country searching for a better live.
