Many Americans feel as though everyone in America speak the same language, English. Even if English is not your first language, even if you’ve spoken another language your whole life and you come to America in your senior years, you are expected to learn English and only speak in English. Even when you only speak English, you need to use a certain dialect. You are expected to speak in the same way as “American-born” people.
This idea can be traced back to learning how to write. You are taught to write in a specific format, and certain spellings, and words are considered incorrect. Using an apostrophe after an “n” for a word ending in “ing” for example, “nothin’” instead of “nothing” is considered incorrect in writing. Using the word “wanna” rather than “want to” in writing would also be considered incorrect. But why? If you think about it, that’s just how the average person talks. Why would it be considered incorrect to write the way you speak out loud? If anything, as Zachary Martin says in “African American Language is Good English”, writing in the same way you spoke would make writing easier to accomplish, and in a lot of cases, easier to read. Genuine spelling errors should be seen as incorrect in writing, but if you write how you speak, or in another language that you speak, that should still be considered correct.
Leave a Reply