Speaking American

Every semester my dad asks me what I've learned in hopes that his money spent on tuition will finally yield positive results. Since I've been in college, the results have been less than positive and almost always end in me shrugging and not really knowing what to say. Today my dad popped the question. After several minutes of thinking about what I was going to say I finally decided I had a great answer. Though the answer nearly cost me my next semester's tuition, after hearing me out I think he liked what I had come up with.

I told my father that I didn't speak English.

To his surprise, I was right.

See, I told him that I spoke American. This is when I almost lost the paycheck for the tuition. As he rolled his eyes he encouraged me to continue.

I told him that English is the base of my language, but that American is what I speak. The concept was similar to Spanish and Mexican. I was losing him, I could tell, so I had to get to the point quickly. I went on to explain that I merge the words 'whats' and 'up' to create “sup.” I great people with “yo” instead of “hello.” I explained to him that when I say I want to hang out or chill I don't literally want to dangle from a rope or sit in a freezer, but that I want to enjoy time with others doing exciting or relaxing things. Finally! He was getting it! What shocked my dad the most was when I told him I discovered this during my blogging class.

True story, blogging made me realize that I write similar to the way I speak, and what I speak strays far from the typical English language. I may or may not know if I nominalize, and I probably don't have perfect sentence structures, but I think thats what makes my writing more “Americanish” instead of “English.” The conversational hey-girl-whats-up style that I strive for only shows how relaxed both my personality and writing styles are, or at least I hope so anyway.