Prior to reading Cangarajah, I viewed this change in personality through a monolingual lens. This experience made me think that languages are separate. After reading Cangarajah, I have had this belief uprooted and now look through a translingual lens instead. While my friend may be more confident speaking Spanish, it does not actually make a language more separate. There are factors and modes of communication besides language that can explain this increased expressiveness. Additionally, having taken French in high school I was able to understand the occasional word of their conversation. This slight competence reminded me of how similar languages are and how they draw upon each other just as Cangarajah talks about in Translingual Practice.
This past week after fraternity rush, I returned to my suite dorm room to find my two friends conversing in Spanish. One of my friends is a native speaker and the other only studied Spanish in high school. This is a common occurrence among these friends. I always found it amusing because for my friend who is a native speaker Spanish is his first language, and whenever he speaks Spanish he is more expressive than in when he speaks English.
Prior to reading Cangarajah, I viewed this change in personality through a monolingual lens. This experience made me think that languages are separate. After reading Cangarajah, I have had this belief uprooted and now look through a translingual lens instead. While my friend may be more confident speaking Spanish, it does not actually make a language more separate. There are factors and modes of communication besides language that can explain this increased expressiveness. Additionally, having taken French in high school I was able to understand the occasional word of their conversation. This slight competence reminded me of how similar languages are and how they draw upon each other just as Cangarajah talks about in Translingual Practice.
3 Comments
1/25/2015 03:02:42 am
Your personal experience with your friend is a good example of how translingualism affects your day to day experiences. I liked how you pointed out: "While my friend may be more confident speaking Spanish, it does not actually make a language more separate." Canagarajah would agree with this statement because he asserts that languages should not be treated as bounded systems. Instead, languages should be treated as "mobile vehicles" for communication that influence one another. Spanish, French, and English are all romance languages so it's important that you pointed out that studying French helped you understand Spanish as well. After all, languages all overlap in some way or another.
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Doris Cikopana
1/25/2015 04:56:34 am
Jacob, I like your post and I think it is a good example of translingualism and how it is helpful in communicating. As you mentioned, your French background helped you understand the topic of the conversation. This relates to what Canagaraj said about speaking and understanding languages, that people can understand more languages that they can speak. Since you know French, you can understand a little bit of Spanish, while for me is the opposite. I can understand a little bit of French because I speak Spanish.
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1/28/2015 03:18:15 am
Do your friends ever mix Spanish and English? If not, does this experience counter some of what Canagarajah says even as it confirms other aspects of his argument (like what he says about languages sharing certain features, which makes you able to understand some because of your French)?
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AuthorThis is where I, a rising freshman at Emory University, blog about multilingualism. Archives
April 2015
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