English Is A Challenge

English is my first, and only, language. I took Spanish in high school, my junior and senior year. My Spanish II teacher was hardcore. She spoke English, Spanish and French. She taught all of these too, even to the AP level. And her classes were hard. The homework was hard, the tests were hard, remembering the “yo, tu, usted, nosotros” forms were hard. I was not the only one that saw this either. Every pop quiz came with protests from my classmates and groans followed behind every homework assignment she wrote on the board. 

Finally, she was sick of our complaining. She sat down on a desk in front of the class and told us, “This is not hard. You are making it hard. English, the language you guys speak is hard.” She explained to us that Spanish, along with many other foreign languages, has a set list of rules. For the most part verbs end the same way based on the tense and who you’re talking about. Once you get the rules down (like in math) the only things that change are the words (like the numbers of a problem). English however, has all sorts of crazy rules. “I before E except after C” and there are three different meanings for the words “there, their, and they’re”. She told us that English is one of the hardest languages to learn. 

Which gave us all some perspective on how non-native speakers feel when they come to this country - a country where we primarily speak English. I feel that often they’re looked down upon. Often people ask, “Why can’t they just learn English? They’ve come to OUR country, they should learn OUR language.” While this would probably make life a little easier, I find it ridiculous that in a country that has no official language and is considered to be the melting pot of countries that we would say this. 

There is no doubting that English has become a very globalized and important language. According to an essay by Mauro E. Mujica (pg. 168 in EL), 66,000 people from 50 different countries were asked if they thought that you needed to know English in order to be successful. Ninety percent or more of the people surveyed in countries like India, China, and Japan, answered yes. Which comes at no surprise considering that America is known as a superpower in terms of countries. 

People come here for a better chance at life. But is the better chance at life really worth the risk of losing your language simply to conform? Is it worth not being able to read signs posted in your workplace or being able to properly communicate with doctors when your health is in trouble? Imagine if you have a severe allergy to something and you go off to visit Japan. Except you can’t read the label on the packaging because it isn’t in your language. Now you’ve eaten it and broken out in hives and are getting sicker and sicker. And what does the rest of the country say? "Oh, you should have learned Japanese.”

Having English be such a prominent language has to be difficult for non-speakers. I think it's something we as speakers don't really think about. There's such an expectation for everyone to know what we're saying that at times we don't think to accommodate them and at other times it is just too difficult to accommodate them. I feel like other cultures are trying to be more English proficient but there's no denying it - English is a difficult language to learn.

Two sides to EVERY story.

Often the media twists things around to push a political agenda. In turn, one event can be retold several ways. It is kind of like that game “telephone”. There is one person that saw it one way and then told someone else and that person told someone else until the whole thing doesn’t even sound right anymore. The problem with the news media is that the people who watch it tend to hear something and take it as fact just to spew it out again. Let’s take for example Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally. For this, I took two internet articles from two news companies - CNN and Fox. Traditionally, people think that CNN is liberal and that Fox is conservative. Then there are those that argue that one or the other is “fair” and “balanced”. 

Whatever you believe, here are the two articles:

CNN - http://articles.cnn.com/2010-08-30/politics/glenn.beck.rally.monday_1_conservative-commentator-glenn-beck-rally-king-anniversary?_s=PM:POLITICS

Fox - http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/28/thousands-expected-glenn-beck-rally-civil-rights-leaders-protest-event/

If you happened to be following this story at the time there was a huge controversy over how many people actually showed up to Beck’s rally. People estimated that there were tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. Fox’s article simply states “tens of thousands” showed up, while CNN devoted several paragraphs to cover the controversy of the actual numbers. Also, if you’ll note, CNN’s article was much longer and hit on many points. Not all of which were important to the event. They touch on how Glenn Beck said some very criticizing things about Obama, and touched on the idea of a Glenn-Palin campaign for 2012. 

Both articles also touch on Al Sharpton’s thoughts of the rally. Sharpton lead his own demonstration, saying that Beck was being insensitive for having the rally on the same day and at the same place as Martin Luther King Jr. made his “I Have A Dream” speech.  While Beck urged that the rally was not political, Sharpton seemed to attempt to turn it into that. It seemed to me though that Fox turned Sharpton into the cynical villain who tried to crash Beck’s rally. On the other end, CNN does the same thing with Beck. They say that he seems to be trying to become some sort of religious movement leader, teaming up with Evangelicals, but the criticizing him for being Mormon. If you can’t tell, this is where I get the idea that the two companies are a little more one sided than they want to let on.

For the most part however, both CNN and Fox’s viewpoints on the situation seem to be the same. They both note that the rally was meant to be religious, not political. They also seem to cite the same things - the presence of Sarah Palin, the input of Al Sharpton, the date and place being the same as Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech and that there was a large amount of people attending. The main difference seems to be the writing style. CNN seemed to be all over the place, pulling old information and bringing it into something it didn’t have a lot to do with. Fox, while it stayed on track, seemed to me that they were more over trying to glorify Beck than simply report on the rally. Which makes sense, since the guy works for your network and brings in amazing ratings. 

I suppose that there are always two sides to the story and that overall we should be doing a lot of research before we take anything as fact. 

(Blog Wk 4, Pg. 140, Prompt 2)

Status Quo

In relation to the community that I live in, I often go against the status quo. At least when it comes to the majors - politics and religion. I’ll say it right now, just to get it over with. I’m a Liberal Atheist. Now, see, I’m pretty positive I just lost a few readers! Calm down before you click on the x to leave the screen though. Please, hear me out.

I was born into a Catholic family. That is, my mother’s entire side of the family, though mostly Lebanese, is Catholic. People think that just because you’re an Arab, all of the sudden you’re a Muslim. Oh, sorry. I guess I left my hajib at home! My father’s family is also Catholic. Perhaps you would assume that I too, would be Catholic. Ah, but you are so wrong!

One day when my father and I were walking to the mailbox, I asked him if he believed in God. At the time I was going to a Wednesday night bible study with my friends - simply because of my friends, not because we ever went to church. My dad said no. I asked him why not and he said, “Because I can’t see him. There’s no one up there.” I looked up into the sky and thought to myself “Well, of course! That makes perfect sense!” 

Basically, ever since that day I’ve rejected God. From later elementary school on I’ve only stood for the Pledge of Alligence. I see it like this: I love my country and I love my ability to have freedom of religion. I love my soldiers and I have respect for them for risking and sometimes losing their lives to protect my right to not believe in God. This is why I stand. It is respectful. I do not put my hand over my heart because this to me, somehow, signifies my pledge to God. “One nation, under God...” is something I cannot agree with and so I do not repeat the pledge and I do not cross my heart. As an American, I have a right to do that. 

So now, to the picture. This depicts President Obama ALSO not putting his hand over his heart. When I first saw this picture, I didn’t think much of it because that is exactly what I do. But Obama is Christian (let’s not even get onto the “he’s a Muslim terrorist!” controversy) and his reasons would not be the same as mine. For me, he was going against the status quo. In a “Christian nation” and when running as President of this Christian nation, it was extremely wrong for Obama to not put his hand over his heart during the National Anthem. And shortly after that is when the political mess heated. This photo was used in ad campaigns to send the message that Obama is not patriotic, that he doesn’t care about or respect our country and my goodness, how can we elect someone that doesn’t even have the decency to put his hand over his heart? 

I’m not going to try to explain his actions because to be honest, I don’t know why he didn’t. But just as this section of the book has shown, there’s a level of expectance that people have for politicians. Obama didn’t have to say a word and already his image has been tainted. I go against the status quo by not putting my hand over my heart - this doesn’t mean I don’t love my country and that I wouldn’t back up my country until the end. It just means the way I love my country is different. And even though people may get attacked for not following the status quo, they should keep on doing what they’re doing or nothing will ever change. Change can be good. Change can lead to tolerance for all view points and I think now more than ever that is something that we need. 

Illiteracy in 2010

There are so many things that I need to do in my life that involve reading and writing. Everything from reading an article on the internet right down to reading a street sign. It’s so hard for me to imagine being illiterate. 

I used to find it hard to believe that in this day and age people don’t know how to read or write. I understand not being able to read or write in English, but not being able to do either at all is a completely different story. Which is why I was so amazed a few years ago to find out that my boyfriend’s uncle was illiterate. He can only sign his name.

This, obviously, has made it somewhat hard for him in life. He never had a very well paying job throughout his life, he’s never moved out of his parents house even though he is now headed towards his 50’s. When he gets a prescription of medication he needs to make sure that he knows which pill is for which because he can’t read the name of it on the bottle. He doesn’t read the newspaper. He never obtained his license because he can’t read the manual or take the written test. He can’t be alone to sign documents because he can’t read them. He can speak two languages but he can’t read or write in either of them.

When I heard all of this about his uncle, I just couldn’t imagine living my own life like that. I live in a community where most people I know can read. Even if they can’t read well, they can still read and sound out words. They know how to use a dictionary. I’d never heard of anyone dropping out of school in the second grade. Yet still it amazes me that he doesn’t want to learn how to read or write. Perhaps it’s the pride or maybe even shame, but I would think it would be better to at least try in order to be just a little more independent.

I think of it as what the slaves in the earlier history of America must have gone through. There must already be a feeling of being powerless because of the slave owners and all of the horrible things they put their slaves through but on top of that telling them that they are not allowed to read had to make life so much more difficult, especially when planning to escape. I know things are much different now than then and maybe reading is a bit more important now, but I think that if I weren’t able to read or write I would feel inadequate. Just by knowing that slaves would try to teach each other to read or that some white people would try to teach them to read as well shows exactly how important reading is to us as humans and to our culture. It is the easiest way of giving out mass information. It helps us organize our thoughts and can connect us even though at times we can be so different. I definitely feel that it can make us think more, understand the world a little better. It is unfortunate that people are still illiterate in this day and age and I think it’s a struggle that we really need to help people with.