When Ms. Parham gave us this assignment, I immediately though about the language my family speaks at home. My mother and I are from Brazil, my stepfather is American, and we all speak English, and Portuguese. For myself , English was my first written language, but my second spoken language. For my mom, it was her second written and spoken language, and for my step dad, Portuguese was his second spoken language, but he never really learned to write it. Now, you can only imagine the mixture of the two languages there is in my house. In almost every sentence I say, just so my mother doesn't nag me about speaking Portuguese because she doesn't want me to forget it, I either switch some words to Portuguese, or to English. There, she has the best of both worlds; both parties are happy.
Writing that blog the way we spoke at home was easy as cake. Like I mentioned, it is a part of who I am, the way I grew up. It is our "Portuglish," just like Anzaldua describes all different dialects of English and Spanish like tex-mex and Chicano. At home, we communicate more-than-meaningful ideas. It is easy for us to understand each other, because we created this common tongue where we learn to communicate despite the differences in the languages and our preferences. Although confusing to other people, maybe even other portugues/english speaking families, to us, it is liberating, it is meaningful it is communication in our family. We live out our culture, even though we live in a different land than that of our birth, through the way we speak, while honoring our now Americanized and "Citizen of the United States" status. By speaking this mix of both Portuguese and English, we honor ourselves to the country we live in, while at the same time staying firmly rooted in our culture, and contributiing to keeping our language, portuguese, a "living language."
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