Concrete languages

In this post, the idea is that native language is unchangeable, and identifiable. We talked about how language makes us identifiable, and how it is not easy to adapt to another language after one has moved to another country.

Though many people in the class stated that they had not found that their language had made them identifiable, and that it most likely never would. Going outside of the nation, one would typically have to use a different language, and like the foreigners in our country, would have an easily recognizable accent. People would ask where they come from, and perhaps make fun of the accent, and the response would be that the said person comes from the United States of America. This would be the instance where language makes their identity. I would assume that most of the people in the class have not been outside the country, or outside the touristy parts of a foreign country. The point is, maybe not in the country, language will always be the identifying mark of someone, whether it be that someone comes from a foreign land, or goes from the South to the North.

Unchangeable language is fast becoming a problem in our society. We have so many areas of the nation in which have become practical enclaves of our nation. While I believe we have immigrants learning English, and establishing English and Spanish as national languages, every major culture has an enclave in the USA, which has not forced the issue for most immigrants. In case one does not know, enclaves are those things that are foreign, but in another foreign entity. For example, the Vatican is an enclave. I believe that in a country like America, where we have so many of these enclaves, such as Chinatowns, and Little Italy, and Little Havana, immigrants will never fully embrace the English language, which means we should either adapt or English could eventually be phased out of the country.

The point of the post is not that language is concrete, is that the learning of the language cannot be undone. This can be good and bad, good because it allows for identity, and bad because it does not allow for immersion.