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December 01, 2005
james baldwin response
“A Frenchman living in Paris speaks a subtly and crucially different language from that of the man living in Marseilles; neither sounds very much like a man living in Quebec; and they would all have great difficulty in apprehending what the man from Guadeloupe, or Martinique, is saying, to say nothing of the man from Senegal – although the “common” language of all these areas is French.” I think that this point made by James Baldwin is very accurate and true. People can speak the same language, but it can be totally different in different areas of the world or even the same city. I found this to be true in my life in a few areas. The other day in class when we were searching for articles online for certain topics, I came across an online quiz about what kind of English I speak. It asked questions like “What do you call the thing you put groceries in and push around the store” and “does the second syllable in pajamas sound more like the sound in jam or the ‘a’ sound in father?” I answered to what I normally call things and how I normally pronounce things. Then Katie did it, and she had different answers than me. What I thought was weird is that we only live about 20 minutes away from each other. She called something ( I forget what is was) something that I would never call the same thing, and granted I would probably be able to figure out what she meant by how she would be using it in a sentence, it was still different. She is speaking the same language, and I could understand her, it was just the word choices and the way she worded things that were different and confusing. I have also seen examples of this during my studies of Spanish. There are many different dialects and styles of the Spanish language. When I was learning it in high school, we would occasionally watch Spanish movies. My teacher would always give us a list of vocabulary words that we would never have seen before because they were slang or words used only in the upper part of Spain and not spoken in the, I guess, to call it for lack of words “general Spanish language.” Also, in our text books there would always be culture pages about different Spanish speaking areas and words that they use that are not used by other Spanish speaking areas. I find it very hard to understand movies in Spanish when there is slang being used or different words that aren’t used normally, just as Baldwin points out that it is hard for one man to understand fully another man speaking the same language but from a different area. In general, a language has more than one dialect and more than one correct way of speaking. This is evident through the English language, French, Spanish, and I’m sure a lot of other languages. I think that this is a main point that Baldwin is making. However, I was confused about some of the other points that he was making. Some questions that I have are: Is he trying to say that we, as white people, do not understand the black language? I don’t fully understand the main topic, what is it? Why is he bringing up slavery? Is he saying that slavery was the birth of African American language?
Posted by lcisnelson at December 1, 2005 03:42 PM