I was/am a nutcase!

I was searching through 3.5" floppy disks for an essay I wrote many years ago. I found that essay and so much more! I came across some funny/crazy sh*t that I wrote in a journal assignment for a professor I was crushing on at the time.

Check it out! Dang, 8 years ago!


Philip Jucaban
Professor Gimenez-Rosello
Due: 10/5/00
Assignment:
Personal Language Narrative
Word Count: 616

Yimmy Ya

Language is in constant flux. New words are added to the dictionary every year, words change meaning, slang becomes popularized through music and movies, the rules of grammar loosen up and words that may have been considered obscene in the past lose their shock value. Diversity is the buzz word now days, and so it is with language. In the United States, language once seen as deviating from mainstream pop culture has become mainstream. It diversifies our society, so we accept and sometimes embrace the differences in language. And hey, it’s fine with me.

Have you ever been browsing through the reference section of the bookstore and seen those dictionary covers with “NOW WITH 1,000 NEW WORDS!” written in big bold face type? Do you ever wonder where these new words came from? I don’t know the formal process of how a word gets put in the dictionary, but I’m sure it has a lot do with how frequently and how wide-spread the word is used. But where did such words come from? Was it by accident that people started using them or did someone consciously create a word to fulfill a need, such as words for new technology? (Yes)

Or. . . . . did someone like me decide to make up a word and started using it like everyone else knew what it meant (even though it didn’t exist prior to me using it) and gradually a few people who heard the word figured out the meaning and began using the word as well and taught it to their children, and used it in their writing and taught the word to their English teachers and these teachers believed it was a word because so many students used it in their speech and in their writing, and then linguists discovered the word and felt compelled to petition to have the word put into the dictionary? It’s possible. So to prepare you for the new “Jucaban” words that are coming to your dictionary in years to come, let me tell you about my personal language.

I am a multi-dialectal schizophrenic. I speak English, Spanish, and Tagalog and my own weird dialect. Now, mix those together and you get Span-Tag-lish! In different social contexts I speak differently (I‘m sure most people do).

There are times when I’m feeling spunky and will talk in my weird, crazy, hip , cool, “ghetto” accent/dialect using slang like: this and that and like woo, woo, cuz I be getting all loco and sh*t, ya know what I’m sayin’? Like the other day I was postin’ at the library marinating on simmer, loungin’, doin’ my thizle, you know. . . then this fine ass breezie came through and I was like Dzamn, she lookin’ proper, but then I did me a double take and saw her face was lookin’ kinda janky. Actually she was hurt. Just straight toe up. I didn’t know what I was thinkin’.

Other times, I’ll speak Spanish and my identity changes. I am speaking specifically of when I used to work in a grocery store where over half the employees where bilingual Spanish/English speakers. I spoke to them in Spanish. They were convinced I was Mexican. They said the Spanish I spoke had a Mexican accent and I looked Mexican. Sometimes it’s funny how language is linked with identity. In my life, I have been mistaken as being Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, and once African American. I take it as an indirect compliment that I can speak with different accents and mannerisms. So let me say this to end: nada, wala, nothing, zilch (they all mean nothing).