My Autobiography on Language

My name is Ali and I’m Brooklyn, born and raised there actually. A little background of myself my parents immigrated from Yemen in the 70s. Yemen is a Middle Eastern country located right to the south of Saudi Arabia. Their national language is Arabic. Growing up was a bit difficult because my parents are very fluent in Arabic while I was just learning. However, growing up I was surrounded much more by English speaking individuals, whether it was school, or my social life. It just stuck with me. My parents sort off tried that only speak Arabic bit at home so I can learn the language but me and my siblings all stuck to English and spoke amongst ourselves in the English and to our parents in Arabic. We even had our own dialect of speaking, by mixing both English and Arabic to converse with each other. Nowadays we mostly speak English at my household but however keep the Arabic conversations with guests, family and friends sometimes. Arabic is a really difficult language to learn, there’s so many dialects and pronunciations that makes it difficult. It’s still very exotic and beautiful and there are words that most languages cannot define making it really unique.

I strongly believe that language is something that is socially-constructed in a person’s life. Individuals that are surrounded by an environment of a certain language and use it for basic survivals are more likely to adapt and evolve to this social need. If your workplace, school and home are all using just one universal language then you will mostly likely learn the language that surrounds you.  You are less likely to learn a language fluently if you only speak it in small sectors of your life. Such as taking a French class in middle school and never speak French again. That actually sounds like me, well it is exactly me. I took French in the 7^th grade and aced it with flying colors. But I have never spoken it after and completed forgot the language. It’s really upsetting actually because I would have been able to add a third language to my list. But my second isn’t even that great I can only speak Arabic, can’t read it or write it. Plus I can only understand the Yemeni dialect as well as its surroundings neighbor’s dialect.  Nations in north-western Africa and northern mid-east I have a difficult time understanding.  

I truly believe that language is a social need in society because humans are social animals as Locke would put it. Language is what makes the world go around, people understanding and acknowledging one another in their own unique national language. Social Universality is needed for beings to connect to one another and to survive in life.