The Importance of Diversity in Language Development

“If you want to be an American, speak American. If you don’t like it, go back to Mexico where you belong” Those were the words of an Anglo teacher, to young American scholar of cultural theory, Gloria Anzaldua when caught speaking Spanish in class. Gloria, of Mexican decent, was no exception to what many of us have experienced sometime in life, language discrimination. In America, ethnic linguistic minorities are often faced with day to day challenges because of their language or accent. We have seen that several US schools and other institutions aim for cultural diversity but this is it’s hard to believe when the staff doesn’t put their mission into practice. It’s astonishing to see how cultural diversity has become a “smoke screen” to individualism in one of the most diverse countries of the world. However, in a multicultural driven society that promotes self enhancement, the acceptance of minority languages should be considered to prevent feelings of inferiority and to understand other cultures appropriately.

First of all, language does not define us. The language generally we speak does play a central part in shaping our personality, nonetheless. Still, even folks that speak the same dialect experience cultural differences due to their distinct cultural identities and unique experiences. We tend to see our language as a whole more positively than other languages. This is an automatic thought, but to actually bringing it to light and make someone feel inferior because of the way they speak, is not. In spite of the fact that people may make powerful arguments concerning which languages are more pleasing to the ear or hard or fast to learn than others, no one language allows people to communicate better than another.

Going back to Gloria, she believes that language plays an important role in o our identity, since it unite us and help us identify ourselves with one another. A melting pot entails equality between majority and minority groups but America’s pot is more like an enclave. Still, it’s up to each one of us to value the language we speak. It’s up to us to decide what language to speak. We should not allow anyone to dictate us what is a right way and what is a wrong way to speak. All languages have the formal and expressive power to communicate the ideas, beliefs, and desires of their users and this is without doubt, a special ingredient to a melting pot!

Another way to look at the stress language discrimination causes, is through American schools. Tomorrow’s leaders are also facing the crude reality of language discrimination. Gloria’s experience is one of many. Linda Christensen, an English teacher that creates passionate curriculum, centered on the lives and voices of her students, is also concerned about this language crisis. According to her students, the ones who study the linguistic history of the colonized, their teacher accustoms to “whitewash” students of color or students who are linguistically diverse. Language anxiety is defined as the fear or apprehension occurring when learners have to perform tasks in a target language in which they are not proficient. Imagine that, an internal battle, on top of a teacher setting their linguistically diverse students to standards as high as the level of native speakers.

Our language is a part of us since the moment we begin to comprehend it. How do you expect us to just act like if it doesn’t exist in class when it’s part of us? How do you expect we put aside a significant tool to our learning process to grasp something new to us? We are not babies to absorb everything like a dry sponge. We already come with framework and making changes to it to so it can function with another system does cause some tension. I’m a living proof that achieving fluency in another language is a process that takes time, and no one can’t expect us to become fluent overnight. Whether we’ve been studying English for years or only for a few months, we’ve put in a lot of works to get where we are, so we should let anybody’s negative standards stand in our to the leaning path.

A better piece of evidence is that we would have never witness the beauty of multiculturalism if it wasn't for the acceptance of people from different parts of the world. How can we be willing to incorporate aspects from other cultures in our life when we don’t accept their people? This is like befriend someone you dislike for their money not for who they are or the values you might share. This is the biggest form of antipathy, and very contradictory as well! Not to accept someone else’s accent, however, when we talk we want others opinions and criticism based on our ideas not on the way we sound, right? In this life we live, empathy plays a huge role in the progress of our self-actualization and global development too. If we don’t have the support of others at some point in our life, we feel lost. That’s life, sooner or later, we all need some empathic fuel to push us forward.

Thus, Gloria and Linda motivates minority people not to be discouraged and accept the fact that we are different and special and just take the challenge of being bilingual. Likewise, they encourage the rest to accept everyone regardless of the way they speak. The bad habit to control the tongue of linguistic minorities does nothing but harm, especially in those who still don’t dominate the language very well. We should accept each other’s differences and personal identities of every person because we all want to be accepted and language is a very essential part of our identity.

Most conclusively, languages are methods of understanding the world. They provide different routes of structures for thinking, problem solving. They have a collection of knowledge, involving geography, zoology, mathematics, navigation, astronomy, pharmacology, botany, meteorology and more. “No culture has a monopoly on human genius, and we never know where the next brilliant idea may come from…We lose ancient knowledge if we lose languages,” says David Harrison, co-founder of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. The Cherokee language, for example, is a result of countless years spent living in the southern Appalachia Mountains. Cherokee words exist for every single berry, stem, frond and toadstool in the area, and the names also reveal what type of properties that the item has; if it’s safe to eat or if it’s medicinal.

“When a language dies, a way of understanding the world dies with it, a way of looking at the world,” said American literary critic and educator, George Steiner. Therefore, when a language dies out, future generations lose a vital part of the culture that is necessary to completely understand it. Languages convey unique cultures. In English, we don’t have words that distinguish between a maternal grandfather and a paternal grandfather. Swedish, however, there’s a particular word for each grandparent: morfar is mother’s father, farfar is father’s father, farmor is father’s mother, and mormor is mother’s mother.

On the other hand, Cherokee language, does not have an specific word for goodbye, only “I will see you again.” Additionally, it has unique expressions of its own. For instance, the word oo-kah-huh-sdee depicts the sweet, cheek-pinching pleasant experience of seeing a cute baby or animal. All of these things convey a culture, a way of interpreting human behavior and emotion that’s not conveyed the same way as in the English language. Without the language, a culture itself might totter, or what is worse, disappear. If we lose languages such as Cherokee, we lose one way that involves human understanding of the world, and we’d never get it back.

So, it is clear to see that if we are to survive, to continue on and to exist as a people without leaving our culture in oblivion, then we have to have a language. Languages are conduits of human heritage. Writing, for instance, is a relatively recent development in our history. In my western civilization class, I learned that written systems exist for only about 1/3 of the world’s languages, so language itself tends to be the only way to communicate a community’s songs, stories and poems. The Odyssey was an oral story before it was written, as was The Iliad. “How many other traditions are out there in the world that we’ll never know about because no one recorded them before the language disappeared?”

So remember, we are not our language but we are whom we are because of our culture and no one can tell us to let go of what actually shaped us, including our language. It’s up to every individual to value the language they speak. It’s up to us to decide what language we speak. We should not allow anyone to dictate us what is a right way and what is a wrong way to speak. We all have to accept the fact that some people might speak differently, and many Americans in this so-called multicultural nation, should change their mindset towards diversity.