I have lived with my grandparents since I was born, and they are both fluent in Spanish. When I was little, they would speak Spanish to each other when they did not want me to understand what they were talking about. However, I soon understood what they were saying, so they started just speaking in English again. They would occassionally talk to me in Spanish so that I could retain the language, but they eventually stopped when I got to middle school. I started taking Spanish in high school, and I finished the AP track. I was never as fluent as I was when I was younger, but I could read almost anything in Spanish. Speaking and listening were harder for me.
I am now taking Italian at Stanford, and I am in first year-third quarter. I originally took Italian because I wanted to learn a new language after so many years of Spanish, and I also wanted to study abroad in Florence. I also felt that I knew enough Spanish to get by in a foreign country, so I thought it would be a good idea to learn another language. However, I soon found out that Italian and Spanish are much more similar than I thought, and I confuse the two languages constantly. In order to learn Italian, I have had to intentionally forget my Spanish. Now, when I am spoken to in Spanish or I try to read Spanish, I can only understand by listening for or looking at the words that are similar to Italian. I plan on continuing Italian throughout my years at Stanford, and I hope to become fluent and maintain the language because I have not been able to do that in the past.
I am interested in this class because of the vast amount of information the topic has to offer. One thing that I am very intrigued by is the relationship between language and identity. I wonder why the language a person or community speaks has such strong implications on who that person or group is. I would like to further discover how certain languages suggest superiority or inferiority. I am also interested in how language affects people's views of each other. For example, how does a politician's language influence how he is perceived by the public? Overall, I find the general topic of this class open to a variety of interesting topics and discussions, which I hope to learn more about.
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Hey Nicole! I thought your story here and in class about your Spanish and Mexican heritage was really interesting. Also the fact that you first learned a lot of Armenian which is completely unrelated to Spanish. The whole ideas about language and superiority (as they played out with your grandparents) reminded me of my Spanish classes during high school. All the 'native' speakers (who often were first generation Mexican) hated learning Spanish spoken in Spain (the tense vosotros). Even my teachers would tell us that it isn't that important to know conjugations for vosotros or they would criticize the Spanish spoken in countries aside from Mexico. At the time I would laugh at my teachers' mockery of the different Spanish pronunciations or styles that varied across the countries. However it does raise some important questions as to the attitude people have about their native language and how that affects their perception of other languages.
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