When it comes to my linguistic background, I can speak, read and write English and Spanish fluently. When I was smaller, I didn’t know how to speak Spanish at all. Not even one word. I was able to learn it in my time living in the Dominican Republic. Interestingly enough, people tell me that when I speak Spanish, they don’t hear any accent at all. They would expect for me to speak Spanish with some sort of American accent since my first language is English but according to them I don’t. I live by myself so the I speak English mostly at home but when I’m at my mother’s house in DR or my aunt’s house then I speak Spanish all the time. When I was living in DR, since I spoke mostly Spanish, my English was starting to fade a little bit. I remember that when my dad used to tell me things in English, I would answer him in Spanish and that would get him upset because he didn’t want my English to fade. Now that I have been living here for a long time, my Spanish has developed a bit of an accent and certain things that were east for me to say back then, now I get a little tongue tied or I just say it in English instead. What I like about my Spanish is that when I speak it, people automatically know where im from. I feel stronger and closer to my Dominican roots than my American so it makes me feel happy that my second language can be traced to my country. Nowadays, when my mother speaks to me in Spanish, I answer her in English most of the time.

I only speak English, but my family is from Jamaica. Growing up I spoke with a Jamaican accent which is called patois. Most Americans call it “broken English”, but I didn’t speak in a clear English accent until I started going to school. I think of patois more as dialect than another language because of the way we speak, we have different saying for things that people wouldn’t understand but it’s English. I still have my accent and it comes sometimes when I say certain words. It especially comes out when I’m talking really fast or when I’m angry. When I’m home or talking to my mom my accent comes out more and fluently. I also have a New York accent which people from other states automatically recognize whenever you speak to them. Their favorite thing to say is “Oh, you’re from New York”. Us New Yorkers have a very distinct accent and dialect which can also be our slang. That’s the only way I think it affects me because will know where I’m from when I speak.

My ethnic background is Jamaican so in my home my parents spoke to us in Patois but me and my sister spoke mainly in English at home and at School. I studied Spanish for three years and I speak it when ever I get a chance to. I also studied French for one year but need to practice. I do not believe I have an accent that is not native to New York City, that being said I’ve been told certain words give away a Patois influenced lingusitic background.

I migrated to the US at the age of 12 with my family and only spoke my native language, which is Bengali. Back in Bangladesh I studied English a little bit—mostly learning the alphabets and spelling words. I was first fully exposed to English language when I began school here. However, I did not begin to speak English then; it took me few years. While I was learning English at school in New York, I continued practicing Bengali. At age thirteen, I wrote my first poem in Bengali, and since then I realized I have fully developed the way I read, write or speak in Bengali. During my conversation in the early days in America I used to translate English to Bengali first in my head, think in Bengali what to say in response, translate it to English, and then respond. I still do that sometimes. English is foreign to me and no matter what other languages I learn the feelings that I get while reading Bengali literature is never the same. It is sweet to my ears and I feel content reading it. English as my second language is definitely an advantage for me to be able to communicate with the students, teachers, and community. I was selected to be the president of a Bengali Student Association in High School. I was hired at HSBC multinational bank simply because I was bilingual in addition to my experiences.

At home I speak a dialect of Bengali language known as Noakhali with my family, and with my friend I speak standard Bengali. Over time I realized when I do not practice my native language on a regular basis it takes me some time to recall certain words. Usually when I speak Bengali people from the community cannot tell by my accent as to what part of Bangladesh I am from. I sometimes play around and make jokes telling otherwise. Bengali poets are astonished to discover my Bengali poems. They say the feeling and emotion my poetry contains are simply breathtaking. They simply cannot believe that I was able to hold on to my native language so well. Despite many other priorities in my daily life I yet managed to learn a little Spanish, which helps me to navigate in a Spanish speaking countries when I travel.  Thus, language is a powerful tool anywhere in the world.